Literacy

According to Street (1984), literacy is a "shorthand for the social practices and conceptions of reading and writing" (p. 1).

According to Wagner and Hopey (1999), literacy development for educators will improve literacy for adult learners. Good development includes intensive experience with looking critically at issues of practice, provides leadership opportunities, and creates professional communities (p. 476).

According to Selber, for Gee, “literacy is emanciptatory whe it encourages students to put multiple discourse in conversation with each other, that is, to critique one discourse with another, in order to develop critical analytical capabilities” (p. 98).

Selber describes several kinds of literacy, especially when discussing technology like computers. He describes functional, critical, and rhetorical literacy (p. 25).

Morville (2005) uses the American Library Association's description of information literacy as being "a set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" (p. 8).

Jenkins notes that "more and more litearcy experts are recognizing that enacting, reciting, and appropriating elements from preexisting stories is a valuable and organic part of the process by which children develop cultural literacy" (qtd. in Lessig, 2008, p. 81).

According to Jenkins (2006), "Just as we would not traditionally assume that someone is literate if they can read but not write, we should not assume that someone possesses media literacy if they can consume but not express themselves" (p. 176).

New Literacies Literacy

According to Rainie & Wellman (2012), literacies that have emerged with new technologies are 1) graphic literacy (much is communicated through media and screens) (p. 272); 2) navigation literacy (being able to maneuver through channels and formats" (p. 273); 3) context and connections literacy (the ability to weave together sources of information) (p. 273); focus literacy (the ability to get one's job done amidst all the information flows and multitasking) (p. 273) [see Rheingold's literacy for controlling attention]; 4) multitasking literacy (the ability to do several things (like attend to networks) at once) (p.273); 5) skepticism literacy (the ability to evaluate the material one encounters online [see Rheingold's 'crap detection'] (p. 274); 6) ethical literacy (building trust and value by being accurate and thoughtful) (p. 274); and 7) networking literacy (one knows how to move through their network operating system of personal, institutional, and digital ties without being anchored to one in particular) (p. 274).

Rheingold addresses five [digital] literacies: 1) the literacy of controlling attention; 2) the literacy of filtering (out crap) information; 3) literacy of participation; 4) literacy of collaboration; and 5) the literacy of network savvy. First, for the literacy of controlling attention, Rheingold advocates harnessing your attention’s attention and practicing mindfulness which he states as the process of metacognition (p. 69).

In 1989 the American Library Association outlined six processes of information literacy: 1) recognizing information is needed 2) identifying what info in needed 3) finding the info 4)evaluating the info 5) organizing the info and 6) using the info (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008, p. 22).

Nationalism

According to Anderson (2006), literacy helps build nations. Anderson states, "The general growth in literacy, commerce, industry, communications and state machineries that marked the nineteenth century created powerful new impulses for vernacular linguistic unification within each dynastic realm" (p. 77-8).

Also See: Literacies

References:

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.

Lankshear, C & Knobel, M. eds. (2008). Digital literacies: Concepts, policies and practices. New York: Peter Lang.

Lessig, Lawrence. Remix. New York; Penguin Press, 2008. Print.

Morville, P. (2005). Ambient findability. Sebastopol: O'Reilly.

Rainie, H. & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge: MIT.

Rheingold, H. (2012). Net Smart : How to Thrive Online. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.Selber, S. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Street, B. V. (1984). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Wagner, D.A. and Hopey, C. (1999). Literacy, electronic networking, and the internet. In Daniel A. Wagner, Richard L. Venezky, and Brian V. Street (Eds.), Literacy: An international handbook (pp. 475-481). Boulder: Westview Press.