introducing “digital-critical literacies”
(or “new literacies”)
matthew clarkefaculty of education
university of hong kong
Session 1: overview
• Needs analysis
• Experiencing and creating new literacies texts
• Introducing the Digital-critical literacies wiki
• Exploring literacy
• Exploring ‘new literacies’
Logistics: Accessing materials
• M.Ed. Students:
http://vista.elearning.unsw.edu.au/webct/entryPage.dowebct
• Professional Development Students:
http://education.arts.unsw.edu.au/files/clarke
The context
A new literacy text
• Look at this example of a child’s photostory
• What did you learn about her and her life from the text?
• What semiotic resources does she use to communicate this information to you?
• How does language interact with other modes of meaning-making in this text?
Create your own photostory
• Follow the instructions at:
http://dig-crit-lit.wikispaces.com/Experiencing+digital+literacies
Reflection
• How might an activity like creating a photostory text support learning in the language classroom?
• What challenges and opportunities does an activity like this present?
Our wiki
http://dig-crit-lit.wikispaces.com
Please join as soon as possible!
And participate by creating and editing pages, uploading and sharing files, and taking part in
discussions
“My summer holidays”
• "My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we usd 2 go 2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :-@ kds FTF. ILNY, its gr8.
Bt my Ps wr so {:-/ BC o 9/11 tht they dcdd 2 stay in SCO & spnd 2wks up N.
Up N, WUCIWUG -- 0. I ws vvv brd in MON. 0 bt baas & ^^^^^.
AAR8, my Ps wr :-) -- they sd ICBW, & tht they wr ha-p 4 the pc&qt...IDTS!! I wntd 2 go hm ASAP, 2C my M8s again.
2day, I cam bk 2 skool. I feel v O:-) BC I hv dn all my hm wrk. Now its BAU ..."
In ‘standard English’• "My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to
New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York, it's a great place.
But my parents were so worried because of the terrorism attack on September 11 that they decided we would stay in Scotland and spend two weeks up north.
Up north, what you see is what you get - nothing. I was extremely bored in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but sheep and mountains.
At any rate, my parents were happy. They said that it could be worse, and that they were happy with the peace and quiet. I don't think so! I wanted to go home as soon as possible, to see my mates again.
Today I came back to school. I feel very saintly because I have done all my homework. Now it's business as usual..."
Discussion
• What issues does this (possibly apocryphal) incident raise?
• How can we categorize these various issues?
Exploring Literacy
How would you define literacy?
Claims in the name of ‘literacy’• Literacy has been linked in academic and popular debates
with:– Logical, analytical thought– General and abstract language– The ability to distinguish myth from history– The capacity for democracy and social justice– Social trends towards urbanization, healthier lifestyles,
increased longevity, lower crime rates, lower birth rates…• Harvey Graff (1979, 1995) refers to these assumptions as
‘The literacy myth’• These assumptions have underpinned tendencies of
politicians to attribute social evils to poor literacy and to view the promotion of literacy as a social panacea
The literate person, or ‘subject’, through the decades
• The 1950’s ‘moral subject’
• The 1960’s ‘technical subject’
• The 1970’s ‘deficit vs ‘disadvantaged’ subject
• The 1980’s ‘economic subject’
• The 1990’s ‘citizen subject’
Metaphors for literacy
• The ‘deficit’ model• The ‘medical’ model• The ‘skills’ model• The ‘back to basics’ model• The ‘personal empowerment’ model• The ‘social empowerment’ model• The ‘functional’ model
Defining literacy“Literacy is a socially contested term. We can
choose to use this word in any of several different ways. Each such choice incorporates a tacit or overt ideological theory about the distribution of social goods and has important social and moral consequences.”
“Literacy has no effects – indeed, no meaning – apart from the particular contexts in which it is used, and it has different effects in different contexts.”
Gee, J.P. 1996, p. 22 & 59
Defining literacy
“Socially recognized ways of generating, communicating and negotiating meaningful content through the medium of encoded texts within contexts of participation in Discourses (or as members of Discourses).”
Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, p. 64
Exploring Literacy• What kinds of literacy activities or literacy
practices do you engage in?• For each literacy practice you identify, what is the
purpose and the context for the practice?• What tools, medium or technologies do you use?
Literacy practices Purpose and social context
Tools, medium, technology
reading the news – current events
pleasure, ferry, home, alone
written language, photospaper, internet-computer and mobile phone
Exploring Literacy
How have your literacy practices changed over the past 5-10 years?
Exploring Literacy• Literacy is a social practice, involving particular purposes,
audiences and contexts (it is not simply a deconstextualized technical and neutral skill)
• Literacy practices involve Discourses, i.e. socially recognised ways of using language, thinking and acting in the world (Gee,1996)
• Multiple contexts, practices & discourses entail ‘Literacies’ rather than ‘Literacy’
• Today literacy educators refer to Multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) or New Literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, 3006) to reflect this complexity and diversity
Change as the new constant
• “The world continues to change in technological, social and economic ways... The literate person must be able to combine and recombine existing and new literacy knowledge, skills, and purposes for new purposes and new contexts using new technologies.”
Anstey & Bull, 2006
New literacies
What are new literacies?
• Digital and mobile technologies, the internet, and mass media have dramatically changed the nature of texts and of reading and writing in the 21stcentury
Digital media & new literacies• Digital media and ‘convergence’
– Computing, other information technologies, and media communication networks are increasingly interlinked
• The internet, computer games, digital video, mobile phones, PDAs provide – New ways of mediating and representing the world – New forms of communication and expression
• Not ‘information’, not ‘technology’, but ‘media’ that mediate our lives and our world in terms of– Knowledge – Social relationships – Identities
Buckingham, 2007
New literacies
• Involve multimodal texts: words, images, sound, movement, space
• Value sharing, collaboration, connectivity and creativity
• Reflect widespread distribution and consumption of popular culture (e.g. movies, music, characters etc) via media convergence
• Require multiple literacies, not ‘literacy’, including critical literacies
Other ‘new literacies’ platforms• wikis• blogs• email• IM• videogames• moviemaker• social networks• internet resources• online shopping
• TV programmes• movies• comics• cartoons• videos• advertisements• online storiesetc
“Old wine in new bottles”Web 1.0 versus Web 2.0
• Contrast the following pairs of sites:Britannica online and Wikipedia
http://www.britannica.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Kodak Gallery and Flickrhttp://www.kodakgallery.com/Welcome.jsphttp://www.flickr.com/
• How would you characterize some of the differences between the first and the second of each pair?
• What do you think Lankshear and Knobel mean by “old wine in new bottles” in relation to the internet and technology
The New in New Literaciesafter Lankshear and Knobel, 2006:38 and 60
Mindset 1 Mindset 2
Publishing
Centralized expertise
Individual intelligence
Individual authorship
Ownership
Value from scarcity
Stability and fixity
Participation
Distributed expertise
Collective intelligence
Collaboration
Sharing
Value from dispersion
Innovation, creative rule-breaking
Other key concepts• Affinity spaces“Specially designed spaces (physical & virtual)
constructed to resource people who are tied together…by a shared interest or endeavour.” (Gee, 2004, p. 9)
• Identities - Ways of being, and being recognized as, a particular sort of person– E.g. ‘real’ & ‘virtual’ identities, avatars…
• Memes - “Contagious patterns of cultural information that are passed from mind to mind by means of selection, infection and replication.”
(Lankshear&Knobel, 2006, p. 212-213)
Memes
http://www.metafilter.com/36801/A-Ribbeting-Storyhttp://lostfrog.org/
http://www.sesameworkshop.org/sesamestreet/?scrollerId=bert
http://funkatron.com/bert/bert.htmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/south_asia/1594600.stm
http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/bert.htm
A metaphor for new literacies practices: the rhizome?
“The rhizome, as embedded in the perplexity of the situation, goes in diverse directions instead of a single path, multiplying its own lines and establishing the plurality of unpredictable connections in the open-ended smooth space of its growth. In short, it lives.” (Semetsky, 2006, p. 73)
http://courses.washington.edu/hypertxt/cgi-bin/12.228.185.206/html/maps/quackgrass.jpg
• In what ways can you see the metaphor of the rhizome reflected in new literacy practices?
So what?• How would you respond to the following
(typical) comments:– “Technology involves ‘dumbing down’.”– “The internet only teaches kids about sex and
violence.”– “Video-games are antisocial and addictive.”– “Mobile phones & mp3 players should be left at
home.”– “If we get our students to blog it won’t help them to
pass the exams.”
Critical and creative engagement• Outside school, young people engage with digital media not as
‘technologies’ but as ‘cultural forms’ • Inside school, students need opportunities to be producers as
well as consumers of media texts, so as to1. Create and communicate messages
• For self-expression• To influence others• To interact with others
2. Engage in critical analysis of digital media & other texts in terms of
• The visual and verbal ‘languages’ they employ• The representations of the world they make available• The positions, or roles, they invite readers to adopt
Buckingham, 2007; Lankshear & Knobel, 2006
Homework
For tomorrow…
1.Read at least one of the chapters on critical literacy (and if you haven’t already done so, read one of the chapters on digital literacies)
1.Find, and bring to class, an article or an advertisement (from a newspaper, magazine, website etc.) that you think might be suitable for critical literacy work with your students
References• Anstey, M. & Bull, G. (2006). Teaching and learning multiliteracies. Newark,
DE: International Reading Association.• Buckingham, D. (2007). Beyond technology: Children's learning in the age of
digital culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.• Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (2nd
ed.). London: Taylor & Francis.• Gee, J.P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional
schooling. New York: Routldege. • Lankshear, C. &Knobel, M. (2006). New literacies: Everyday practices and
classroom learning 2nd Ed. New York: McGraw Hill.• Lessig, L. (2005). Free culture: The nature and future of creativity. New York:
Penguin.• Pegrum, M. (2009). From blogs to bombs: The future of digital technologies
in education. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.• Semetsky, I. (2006). Deleuze, education and becoming. New York: Sense
Publishers.
