Digital Literacy
Defining Digital Literacy
Digital literacy involves reading eBooks and acquiring information through the internet. Digital literacy requires foundational reading skills as well as knowledge about digital text structures and online research. For example, while print texts are structured in a linear fashion intended to take the reader on a sequenced journey, digital texts are nonlinear making each reader's journey through the content different. Hyperlinks and navigation buttons are features of digital texts that are not part of print concepts. In this video, Bill Bass and Shea Kerkhoff talk about the digital literacy needs of today's students on the Show Me Literacies podcast.
Creating Digital Texts
Digital literacy includes reading digital texts, but it also includes creating digital texts. As stated in the research article by UMSL professors Drs. Kerkhoff and Makubuya (2022):
"Moving beyond acquisition-focused literacy practices, digital literacy also includes the ability to create digital texts by choosing the appropriate mode(s) and to communicate one’s ideas using the affordances of digital platforms (Coiro, 2021); Leu et al., 2019, as well as to participate, collaborate, and connect with people across borders (Kerkhoff & Cloud, 2020; Kim, 2016; Law, Woo, de la Torre, & Wong, 2018). Learners creating and communicating digital texts, rather than merely consuming, is in line with the constructivist orientation.
"Another affordance of creating and communicating digital texts is multimodality. Multimodal compositions can include text and static images or, through the affordance of digital tools, become dynamic with moving images and hyperlinks. As Hull and Nelson (2005) asserted, “multimodality can afford, not just a new way to make meaning, but a different kind of meaning” (p. 225). Through a review of research, Smith, Pacheco, and Khorosheva (2021) found that using multimodal composition to teach literacy can be an effective learner-centered and culturally sustaining teaching practice for students for whom English is a new language, which is particularly relevant in Kenya because most students learn English in school as a third language after their ethnic language and Kiswahili. However, in a study in Kenya, “teachers’ responses reveal[ed] that the multi-media approach is not popular as only a small number use this with their pupils” (Dhillon & Wanjiru, 2013, p. 20). Multimodality provides opportunities to communicate using language and images through hybridity and to play with language through remix (Kim, 2016).
"In addition, creating digital multimodal compositions in school has been found to be motivating for students (Alvermann, 2002; Heinrich et al., 2020). One reason is because digital platforms provide students opportunities to share multimodal compositions with authentic audiences. Students can apply their digital literacy in storytelling and activist spaces online, making digital literacy an important part of civic and community life, in addition to career preparation (Lee, Meloche, Grant, Neuman, & Tecce DeCarlo, 2019; Lewis Ellison, 2017; Nixon, 2013). Nixon (2013) described collaborative digital storytelling as a meaningful practice to explore issues of identity, such as race and gender, and to bridge storytellers’ home literacies to school literacies. An important instructional practice in multimodal composition, such as digital storytelling, is to provide opportunities for learner choice, such as choice of mode, digital tool, and story to tell. Making such decisions is both an essential digital literacy skill and empowering for learners (Lewis Ellison, 2017).
For full article see: Kerkhoff, S. N. & Makubuya, T. M. 2022.
