A discussion on new literacies and their inFluence on teaching & Learning

Peter Shukie – please comment at http://shukiesweb.blogspot.com/

As part of the ICT developments that you will look into for your design of a

learning opportunity that utilise digital tools, there are significant uses of

language within this technology that shape what you do - and what you

expect others to do. You have maybe ‘googled’ something, or mashed –

up a video, Skyped your friends or LOLd a funny sent via text.

These are all familiar enough terms, and relatively recent additions to

language, and in many cases the skills that lie beneath these linguistic,

semantic developments are also new. It is easy enough to take these

changes for granted, failing to recognise how significant these

developments are when planning to help someone mediate their way

through an increasingly digital environment.

Developing materials for learning that use these new technologies will

necessitate the uses of this language, the skills that are inherent and the

challenges such change can bring with them. The purpose of this

publication is to provide some background discussion on the issue that

new Digital Literacies may bring and to prompt you to consider what you

can do when planning and developing learning opportunities that use

technology. It is not a ‘How to…’ guide, but it does try and present you

some arguments about the language issues that are evident below the

surface. The focus is on using this as an introduction to some of the

discourse in the sector, and preparing you to look for resolutions to the

possible challenges and issues, while also recognising the positive

introductions that technology is making possible.

Initially, we are faced with a range of approaches that define this shift,

digital literacies (JISC: 2010; Digital Britain, dBIUS, 2009; Barton &

Gillens, 2010) new literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003 & 2006) and 21st

Century literacies (Jones-Kavalier & Flannigan. 2006).

For the teacher the issues seems to be where, amongst these new

definitions, is literacy as it is defined by what we need to teach in classes,

what we need to agree as shared skills. The move to include the issues

related to Web 2.0 technologies have created a new landscape in which

the discourse of literacy seems to prioritise the term literacy, but also blur

what it means, and how it applies to current practice.

The aim of this chapter is to explore what is new about literacy in the

digital age, offering a view that it is a shift in ways of thinking about

literacy, and of education in general, that is potentially liberating and

shifting the power of learning and knowledge away from the institutions

and prioritising individuals. This discussion will look at how well suited to

ne literacies for digital use the current environment is, and in the final

section I hope to provide evidence of what the new literacies are, and how

these offer potential for a shift in power from a static, state sponsored

education system, to a fluid, responsive environment created through

collaboration and sharing of knowledge and skills.

Lankshear & Knobel’s (2007) define new literacies as

‘…socially recognised ways of generating, communicating and negotiating

meaningful content through the medium of encoded texts within contexts

of participation in Discourses’. (Researching New Literacies. Web 2.0

practices and insider perspectives. 2007. p224).

From this definition Lankshear & Knobel create a further distinction

between the ethos and the technical that underpin these literacies. Here,

the ‘technical stuff’ (p225) constitutes the different ways that technology

requires interaction, clicking a mouse over using a pen for instance, but

also the prevalence of user-friendly technology now meaning that lots of

non-experts can create animation, and video, auditory as well as textual

communication.

The ‘ethos stuff’, using a distinction between Web 1.0s ownership and

‘industrial approach to material productive activity’ that largely replicated

the structures of the knowledge economy that existed before web based

tools, and Web 2.0s collaborative sharing approach to the development of

materials, software and knowledge. Elsewhere (Lankshear & Knobel.

2006. Blogging as participation. 2006. p1) these distinctions are described

as differing Mindsets, identifying these world views as fundamental beliefs

that shape how learning, teaching, participation and communication

should evolve.

In the preceding sections there have been significant attempts made to

unravel the changes in education to reveal what is at the heart of this,

looking at the revolutionary possibilities of a new digital landscape, and the

associated shifts in skills required to access them.

In this section the focus is not on possibility, but on actuality. Despite the

energy and optimism generated by new literacies, and new ways of

learning, it can be seen that at the heart of literacy teaching there seems

little that resonates a sense of changing practices, little evidence to

indicate a revolutionary response to in how education is developing in the

face of Web 2.0 and digital growth.

In looking to literacy education as the possible location for these changes

there are two key features that define what appears to be taking place. In

the first instance there is policy (Digital Britain. 2009; Learning Revolution,

2009: Harnessing Technology, 2008) that seeks to maximize the potential

of new technologies, but from the context of a structure that meets the

existing concerns of the curriculum, accreditation and replication of the

educational hierarchies. Secondly, there is the issue of literacy teachers

themselves and whether they have moved, or been encouraged to move,

from traditional notions of literacy to accommodate and develop learner

skills fit for a digital age, or whether they remain adherent to a skillset that

is based on approaches to reading and writing from the twentieth, not the

twenty first, century.

NRDC Reading is part of a series of practitioner guides specifically

developed for practitioners working with adult literacy and ESOL learners,

with related titles in Writing and Using ICT and published through NIACE

(National Institute for Adult Continuing Education) . Reading (2007) is

based on an NRDC (National Research and Development Centre for Adult

Literacy and Numeracy) research study ‘the largest study in Britain to date

of the strategies used to teach reading in Adult Literacy classes’ and

which was conducted across the UK between 2003 and 2006. What is

most surprising about this publication is the complete lack of reference to

any notion of a ‘new form of reading’ following the development of Web

2.0 technologies. The date of the publication is two years after the coining

of the term Web 2.0 (O’Reilly. 2005) and the research upon which it is

based concluded three years after Lankshear and Knobel released New

Literacies: Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning (2003).

Throughout, the emphasis is on a range of skills that are of use today, and

based on the issues of existing teachers in Adult Literacy. The book is

clear about its focus as a book from teachers, and for teachers, and the

currency of its advice,

‘…it is very much concerned by what happens in today’s adult literacy

classrooms and by the concerns of today’s teachers’ (NIACE. Reading.

2007: pvii)

That today’s teachers and today’s classrooms have little interest in, or

concern about new literacies, or the influences related to digital, Web

based materials, is very clear; what is not so clear is why. There have

been no studies of similar scope since 2007 to indicate the ways in which

teaching, and more significantly, learning have altered in response to Web

technologies, though it could be contended that the formal routes of

teaching have remained relatively static both in terms of ethos and

technology.

It is not that technology has been totally overlooked, but that it seems to

have been looked at solely as a means of replicating a more traditional

approach to literacy. In the same NIACE series that produced Reading

there is an accompanying volume entitled Using ICT (Nance, Kambouri &

Mellar. 2007). Clearly, this has at its core the ways in which the learner

can utilise mobile technologies, Tablet PCs, social networks and other

technologies. What remains constant, whatever the technology, is a

reference back to the Adult Core Curriculum, so that an activity requiring

uploading a students’ photos then forming a basis of a narrative from this,

much the way a blog may operate, is assessed on rigid criteria such as

‘Plan and draft Writing’ (Wt/E3.1b) Structure main points of writing in short

paragraphs (Wt/E3.2a)’. It is a form of assessment and prioritising of a

curriculum that seems to miss any possible liberating opportunity that the

blog could offer. A feature of the technologies is that they are reduced to a

set of skills, and do not consider any change in ethos that such

technologies could bring. The complete omission of technologies and

literacies having an impact on the ways these change each other would

indicate that for professional literacy teacher training in England, new

literacies are not at the forefront of any paradigm shift.

In the Adult Core Curriculum Overview (Excellence Gateway Online. 2010)

that outlines skills expected at all levels from the beginner, or Entry Levels,

to the highest level, Level 2, there is one mention of e mail, and one of a

website; the former as an Entry level activity included for its similarity to

writing a simple story (page 15, Adult Literacy Core Curriculum, Online)

while the reference to a website (page 7) was included as an Entry 3

example for recognising the purpose of a task, in comparison to a

newspaper.

While it is the case that these course descriptors are purposefully brief,

and serve as guides, the decontextualised inclusion of the single email,

and lone website can be compared to the numerous non technology

literacies included, including some anachronistic, culturally limiting

examples that include a ‘letter to a teacher’, ‘letter to a family member’ ‘a

thank you letter’ and ‘writing a plan for a birthday speech’ (Adult Core

Curriculum Literacy Progression Overview. 2010). That the whole exercise

seems trapped in an Anglo-centric, middle class approach to life seems

clear, but the exclusion of any form of digitally relevant material in favour

of these examples leads to questions about the purpose of the Core

Curriculum as a means of empowerment or development, in either

intention or in capability.

The fact that the Core Curriculum accessed here is online, as is much

other literacy, numeracy and language material, indicates that the

appropriation of the internet as a resources for teachers, and even for

students in partnerships such as the BBC Skillswise website

(bbc.co.uk/skillswise)and the Excellence Gateway teacher resources (only

available as online downloads), the onus remains firmly on teacher-led

activity, with the web materials offering support to the classroom guidance

rather than learner generated, independent use.

What is perhaps surprising is the rhetoric of government policy that

appears to fully endorse the digital environment as a site for future

development and a key area for growth in education and skills,

recognising the significance technology will shape the way we

communicate and the ways in which we live.

‘The move from analogue to digital technology is one of those

revolutionary changes. It will define the competiveness of our economy

and change the way we live our lives’ (Mandelson & Bradshaw in Digital

Britain. 2009. p1)

This revolution is not confined to the ways of the economy, but also to

education, where there is an understanding that, ‘None of us can ignore

technology now it is part of the learner’s world and is therefore part of our

world’ (Harnessing Technology. BECTA. 2008).

Elsewhere, the Learning Revolution white paper (March 2009) highlights a

concerted effort to appropriate many of the features of an organic, digital

culture, albeit from a government managed position. The title itself

indicates the revolutionary approach of a document that intended to

formalise informal learning, but doing so using many of the features

attributed to the digital revolution that was decidedly non-governmental;

perhaps recognising the power inherent in such a widespread and

burgeoning set of digital practices, the Learning Revolution appears to be

trying to recapture the educational discourse from the now web linked

individuals doing it for, and by, themselves. The paper begins by

identifying that,

‘It is human nature to seek out stimulation and enrichment, and to create

social bonds through shared interests and passions…over the past few

years there has been a quiet learning revolution…provided by easier

access to new technology” (The Learning Revolution. 2009. p1)

In addition to the recognition of a new ethos, even losing the emphasis on

economic benefits (though not totally, they are mentioned in the next

paragraph) the focus on ‘open space movements’, ‘self organising interest

groups’, and ‘digital mentors’ (Learning Revolution. 2009) replicates many

of the features of the new ethos stuff rather than the pedantic and

prescriptive approaches to functional literacies that the Core Curriculum,

through Skills for Life Changing Lives (March 2009) seems to offer,

through the primacy of written letters and traditional approaches to

grammar, spelling and punctuation that cater to schooled, not digital,

literacy. It is clear that the appropriation of this ethos, even to the point of,

‘encouraging broadcasters to make materials free to access and open to

share’ (p7), is in evidence, yet seems to be have little to offer if the

underpinning skills of application and responsiveness to the changing

literacies are not equally represented and built into the curriculum.

In Social Practices it is situation, the communities, and the individuals that

define what literacy is, through selecting what it does, and how it is used.

In this reading, Literacies are

‘...part of social practices that are observable in ‘events’ or ‘moments’ and

are patterned by social institutions and power relationships. This

encourages us to look beyond texts themselves to what people ‘do’ with

literacy, numeracy and language, with whom, where, and how.’ (Hamilton,

Hillier & Tett. 2006. p2). From this perspective we can free discussion from

the yoke of the core curriculum and the consideration of literacy purely in

terms of its ability to see people function at work and in society in general

(Skills for Life Strategy; 2001/ 2009) and consider how the internet creates

a space for a new literacy that is created through use, and defined by its

users.

It maybe the very heart of the liberating zeal of web 2.0 that it exists

beyond the formal, state governed educational routes, and as such it is

creating an informal, collaborative and liberating approach to literacy and

to education. Different models of commerce (eBay, Amazon), and of

knowledge (Wikipedia, TED Talks) are defining the power of the internet,

of the web, to change the ways in which the order of things exists.

It is recognised that such a utopian vision ignores much of the criticism

aimed at the Web, that it is largely defined by western ideologies, and

western cultural ideals of freedom and literacy (Hawisher G & Selfe C.

Global Literacies and the World Wide Web. 2000). While these are well

founded concerns, the focus on individuals within England is linked not to

national literacies, or cross-cultural concerns, but rather the ways in which

the literacy student in England is able to create, produce and interact.

It is contended that the web is challenging fundamental assumptions about

nationality, culture and literacy that will make discussion of these subjects

within the parameters of the ‘old’ fundamental assumptions impossible.

Just as the ways that commerce and politics have evolved in the face of

web technologies and the new ways of communicating, it seems possible

that education itself will ‘leave the classroom’ and take different forms. In

practice, this will create a different motivational imperative to engage than

would the formal, Skills for Life, focus on literacy. Rather than a state

sponsored reaction to a literacy crisis, real or imaginary (Barton, D. An

Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. 2007; Lankshear &

Knobel. 2006) the adoption of internet literacies could be seen as learner

generated, learner sourced and learner specific. These are communicative

approaches that are not learned, assessed and accredited in formal

educational structures, and would clearly require fundamental changes in

how social groups recognise and value education. They are used, and in

so being used they are transferred. New forms of delivery are spread on

the Web, and with each development there are those that adapt and

develop from it.

Despite the lack of any designed curriculum, or specifically assigned

teachers, or teaching assistants, educational hierarchy or awarding

bodies, the plethora of education taking place is perhaps unprecedented.

It does raise questions about how such learning is measured, and would

have little to offer the current methods of league tables, UCAS points for

University entry, international literacy comparisons and current

employment routes.

Examples of such informal learning are being recognised, Sugata Mitras

(1999) Minimally Invasive Education, or Hole in the Wall education has

computers with internet access made available to children in areas of

deprivation without teachers and with little facilitation beyond provision of

the technology. Based on a constructivist approach to learning, the focus

was on learners forming their own curriculum between collaboration with

their peers, and from within their community. The success of this approach

has led to much replication across the world (Australasian Journal of

Educational Technology, 2005, 21(3), 407-426) and sponsorship through

the World Bank (International Finance Corporation: Online).

YouTube has millions of tutorials generated by users on a wide range of

subjects, usually from interested individuals that want to share in a virtual

community, not with formal teacher training, or any teacher training, and

not offering qualifications, but knowledge, skills and advice; Facebook,

recently added the Facebook in Education page

(http://www.facebook.com/education), though the Social Network site

since its inception has had interest groups, campaigns and shared spaces

for diverse groups that have allowed for a radical overhaul of not only the

means of communication, but the breadth, the reach of this

communication.

The discussion about where education takes place, whether in the public

or private sphere or whether formal or informal predates the internet by

decades, if not centuries (Buckingham & Scanlon. 2003. p2). However, the

difference in the internet approach is that the teachers, those doing the

educating, are often the same people as the learners, those being

educated – sharing different skills, trading knowledge and information, and

collaborating in projects. The YouTube tutorials, created and posted for

others, Twitter followers that release news often before the broadcasters

and ‘official media’ (and are equally quick to get responses and gauge a

public mood), blogs that grow or recede based on the interest shown in a

localised specialist subject or massive worldwide concerns, that are

spontaneous and appear as the issues appear, and disappear or adapt to

whatever happens next.

Such a responsive and egalitarian discourse may use the internet that is

funded by multi-nationals and hosts conglomerates as well as individuals,

but the overall impact is one of individuals creating groups based on

communication, shared views and a willingness to create and to share

what is created. It seems to offer an excellent example of Freirean

dialogue, a move away from the power imbalance of prescriptive, didactic

banking education and offer a shared space for cognition and cooperation,

Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the-students-of-the-

teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with

student- teachers…they become jointly responsible for a process in which

all grow’ (Freire, P. 1970. p61).

It is here that we can perhaps best see the ways that a new ethos

(Lankshear & Knobel. 2006) is forming the new literacies, and requires a

different approach to what we mean by literacy as a set of skills, or a set of

practices. The collaboration between individuals removes the adherence

to a state defined definition of literacy, and instead replaces it with a

shared definition that relates to a social practices approach to learning. It

is bound up with this ethos that all developments come from this liberated

space, and that it would be awkward for the formal curricula based

approach to attempt an appropriation. Lankshear and Knobel leave no

doubt as to the feeling that such attempts could bring to this ethos if other

sensibilities attempted to ‘invade’, ‘Please don’t do that. It is better to keep

new technologies out of learning if the price of their integration would be to

impose outsider ways on insider sensibilities’ (p245).

Crystal (2006. How the electronic medium differs in How Language Works)

highlights how e mails, and other computer mediated written

communication, such as blogs and forum posts, are not like speaking, nor

quite like writing either (p153). Through the physical act of creating letters,

forming words, constructing sentences and building texts the keyboard

experience offers some clear similarity to more conventional forms of

writing. As the forms of e mail have morphed into other practices of

communication SMS, texts, IM Chat, forums and blogs, the rules that

define ‘correctness’ of these forms are largely undefined, constructed by

user groups themselves, and unrepresentative of the prescriptive

grammar, punctuation and spelling rules of the Adult Literacy Core

Curriculum.

‘…more than just a hybrid of speech and writing, or the result of contact

between two long-standing mediums. They display fluidity, simultaneity

and non-degradability in copying; they transcend the traditional limitations

on textual dissemination; and they have permeable boundaries…these

combine…to make electronic communication a genuine ‘new medium’.

(Crystal. 2006. p158)

So, does this new medium then lead to a need for new literacies, and

require skills that are not acquired in the traditional approaches, in the

Adult Core Curriculum? Kress (2003) demonstrates the ways in which the

‘screen text’ is fundamentally different form the page text that underscores

much of the core curriculum’s emphasis. Viewing, and writing, text on the

screen involves a set of skills related to the text being a ‘visual entity’

(Kress. 2003. p65) that has more than the considerations of grammar/

spelling/ punctuation, or even meaning, genre and register. As a visual

entity the text needs to be considered in terms of font, size, layout,

formatting, tabulation, margins, purpose (web site, e mail, forum, blog, text

to be printed) and a host of additional options such as imagery, sound and

animation that govern the sense of success in creating the finished text.

Many features have defined the ways in which preferences for how writing

is produced, appropriateness and purpose are equally impacted by more

basic issues such as expense (Kress. p5) and aptitude. In the digital

applications available, image, sound, and film/ animation are now within

reach of students and individuals with broadband connections. Being able

to use these skills to develop productive and receptive skills would seem

to far outweigh the need for handwriting as a basic attribute.

May of the skills required for the manipulation of the page on screen,

compared to the page as a sheet of paper, are a blend of computer skills

and traditional literacies to make a visual entity, but one with clear roots to

the textual entity that may equally well have been done with a word

processor, or electronic typewriter. Yet, beyond the means of text

production there is a fundamental shift in the ways that different ways in

producing text require different skills in accessing and reading these texts.

The webpage, the wiki and the blog are not the same as books,

encyclopedias or diaries. Layout, sequencing, links, interaction and

language make them different in as many ways as the text may seem to

indicate they operate on shared values of written words.

For instance, hyperlinks create the feature of greatest difference between

screen/ web text and printed text and allow the author to make links

outside the current screen to a range of other resources, either within the

same text (website, blog) or outside it, literally, linking to anywhere on the

planet with a link. This creates a shift in the reading skills that move

beyond the skill of recognising the linear process of reading the text, and

is different to from skills in skimming, scanning, using a, index, or cross-

referencing. The author can create a set of links to provide definitions, give

additional supporting, or alternative, information, link to videos or audio

files and use hyperlinks to create a multimodal text from the flat one

dimensional screen of a single page. Navigation as a skill is altering the

basic principles of reading, and as the figures for the UK indicate more

people have, than have not, access to the internet then such skills need to

be part of the basic approach to accessing, and to producing, texts – a

literacy for the ways in which people communicate now.

From the outline of these different ways of reading, and writing, in a

multimodal environment the challenges for literacy are clear; in

recognising these challenges it is also clear that the basic principles of

alpha-numeric recognition and awareness remain stable, perhaps more

important than ever given the multifarious ways in which they can be used,

manipulated, shaped to affect meaning and, subsequently, the power they

will have in the wider social community.

As digital skills and familiarity continue to advance it is clear that new ways

of using language, digital language, are evolving. In essence, much of

what has been discussed here relates to the ‘technical stuff’, while the

open source and user generated interaction constitutes ‘ethos stuff’

(Lankshear & Knobel. 2006).

From these evolving skills and applications there will be changes in how

communication occurs. Memes have been identified (Lankshear & Knobel.

2006. p128) as one possible new form of practice, the ways in which small

(or large) pieces of information are formed and disseminated to alter the

actions of individuals, and to cause patterns in social communities. These

can be varied in construct and constitute e mails, images, phrasing,

spoofs, or music, amongst many others, that require a mindset that is

open to the fact that they exist, and an ability to assign value, gauge for

use and respond to appropriately. Such skills are part of traditional forms

of literacy, but will need to be removed from the emphasis on the purely

textual, and related to a broader digital application.

Future issues may well consider Memetics (Lankshear & Knobel: 2006) as

equally relevant fields of study as grammar usage when facilitating

education in how literacy is developed. Such is the rapidity of new

technologies, emails being challenged by Twitter, the popularity of

websites being replaced by the growth of blogs, that any fixed set of ideas

on what literacy is, what new literacies are, seems impossible. The rapidity

of such shifts demands a reflexive and fluid approach to how we teach

literacy as we appreciate the temporal rather than a fixed historical

(Lankshear & Knobel: 2007: ELearning, Vol.4, No.3, 2007) view of literacy,

its processes, its artefacts and its practices. In developing a response to

the new environment the challenge remains on ensuring the real value of

teaching, and professional approaches to education, can be seen to have

value and meaning

‘...however informal learning might become, teaching is essential in

the imparting of useful frameworks for thinking and understanding’ (Barton

& Gillen. Digital Literacies. 2010)

The functional and reductive Adult Literacy curriculum aims to provide

learners with, 'the ability to read, write and speak in English…at a level

necessary to function at work and in society in general.'(Skills for Life

Strategy, 2001; 2009), and it seems one of the greatest challenges will be

to identify what these functions are if the content of literacy lessons are to

meet learner needs in a rapidly changing and evolving environment.

This chapter has been written from the viewpoint that the web, and the

internet, are ubiquitous features of how we communicate now, and will

increasingly communicate in the future. The open source, user generated

ethos seems to offer hope of egalitarian spaces, and for the moment at

least, a real hope that knowledge, information, learning and creativity can

take place in a wide range of ways that will move away from reliance on

institutional, qualification based routes defined by narrow, historically

rooted curricula.

The focus is on the ways in which literacy students, and literacy educators,

can recognize the power of the internet to create new ways of participating

that make possible Freire’s dream by active involvement and production,

‘the future of which we dream is not inexorable. We have to make it,

produce it, else it will not come in the form we would more or less wish it

to…we have to make not arbitrarily, but with the materials, with the

concrete reality, of which we dispose, and more as a project, a dream, for

which we struggle’ (Freire: Pedagogy of Hope: 1992: p87).

Advocates of the internet consider it a revolution, and, like Crystal’s

assertion that, ‘if the internet is a revolution, it is likely to be a linguistic

one’ (Crytsal: 2006). The revolutionary impact must be inclusive if it is to

be meaningful, it requires the ways in which we teach literacy, and prepare

learners for the future, to recognise the changes the internet brings and

adapt to them. The potential for facilitating capable, imaginative, creative

individuals that can flourish in such an environment needs to consider the

technical, the ethos, the restraints and the dangers alongside the positives

and the possibilities. What seems clear in all cases is that in considering

choices between traditional and new literacies, the only way is a blending

of both.