Digital Literacies

Edit 0 7 …

Digital Literacies & Emerging Technologies


Exploring Web 2.0: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts & Social Sharing

  • “Web 2.0 refers to a perceived or proposed generation of Internet-based services - such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies - that emphasize Internet-based sharing among users.” (Wikipedia)
  • Blogging
  • Podcasting
  • Photosharing
  • Wikis
  • Social Bookmarking
  • Video Sharing
  • Digital Story Telling
  • Putting It All Together (RSS)
  • Check out many other Web 2.0 at "Best of the Best Web 2.0 Apps"

MySpace, IM and Other Social Networks

  • Social Networks: "A social network is a map of the relationships between individuals, indicating the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds." (Wikipedia)
  • Social networking sites typically let users develop a list of friends (a.k.a. the buddy list)
  • You can explore your friends' buddy lists and find people with similar interests.
  • You can perform a number of online activities: blogging, media-sharing, commenting, testimonials.
  • You can personalize your 'space' easily using themes and widgets to make it look different from other people's.
  • Research into online, educational social networks via Google Scholar.

The Impact of Digital Literacies on Education

  • “The new literacies include the skills, strategies, and insights necessary to successfully exploit the rapidly changing information and communication technologies that continuously emerge in our world. A more precise definition of the new literacies may never be possible to achieve since their most important characteristic is that they regularly change; as new technologies for information and communication continually appear, new literacies emerge (Bruce, 1997; Leu, in press a; Reinking, 1998). Moreover, these changes often take place faster than we are able to completely evaluate them. Regular change is a defining characteristic of the new literacies."
  • "This simple observation has profound consequences for literacy and literacy education. The continuously changing technologies of literacy mean that we must help children learn how to learn new technologies of literacy. In fact, the ability to learn continuously changing technologies for literacy may be a more critical target than learning any particular technology of literacy itself." (Leu, The New Literacies)
  • "Computers, along with multimedia software and hardware, help us express our ideas as animations, video poems, slide shows, interactive movies, virtual environments, and other forms yet to be created. As we create these new texts, we are changing how we define literacy." (B. Reilly, 'New Technologies, New Literacies, New Patterns' (in C. Fisher, D.C. Dwyer & K. Yocam (eds.), Education and Technology: reflections on computing in classrooms (San Francisco, 1996), p.218)
  • "Knowledge and learning are almost always viewed in forms associated with current literacies; they appear to us through the lens of a literacy." (A.A. diSessa, Changing Minds: computers, learning, and literacy (London, 2000), p.65)



Other Technology Related Issues: