Group items tagged

n today’s media-saturated world, the concept of literacy is again changing. According to Pinkard, kids in school today may not be considered literate in the future if they don’t fundamentally understand new forms of media — things like blogs, Twitter and streaming video. To be truly literate, though, you also need to be able to think critically about media, discern fact from fiction, news from opinion, trusted from untrustworthy. These issues have always been thorny, but the explosion of self-publishing has only made media literacy more vital to the preservation of our democratic society.

But that’s because journalists have a strong background in media literacy. Somewhere along the line, someone taught us the skills necessary to think critically about the information we consume, how to recognize a trusted source, and how to sniff out bias and ulterior motives.

The typewriter prized one particular kind of intelligence, but with the Web, we suddenly have a medium that honors multiple forms of intelligence-abstract, textual, visual, musical, social, and kinesthetic. As educators, we now have a chance to construct a medium that enables all young people to become engaged in their ideal way of learning. The Web affords the match we need between a medium and how a particular person learns.

A common scenario today is a classroom filled with digitally literate students being led by linear-thinking, technologically stymied instructors.

David White makes the distinction between people who choose to integrate online activity into their working life to a high degree (digital residents), and people who choose to use technology for selective, short-term activities and then log off (digital visitors).

digital technologies can enhance three core areas of academic practice: accessing, searching and sifting information; communicating with others; and building peer-to-peer networks.