VIEWPOINT

Connecting the Digital Dots: of the 21st Century Literacy today depends on understanding the multiple media that make up our high-tech reality and developing the skills to use them effectively

By Barbara R. Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan

rior to the 21st century, literate defined a person’s ability to read Pand write, separating the educated from the uneducated. With the advent of a new millennium and the rapidity with which technology has changed society, the concept of literacy has assumed new meanings. Experts in the field suggest that the current genera- tion of teenagers—sometimes referred to as the E-Generation—possesses digital competencies to effectively navigate the multidimensional and fast-paced digital environment. For generations of adults who grew up in a world of books, travel- ing through cyberspace seems as treach- erous and intimidating as speaking a new language. In fact, Prensky1 recog- nized such non-IT-literate individuals as burdened with an accent—non-native speakers of a language, struggling to survive in a strange new world. tion methods, only now we have myr- The New Literacy and Literacy Then and Now iad more choices, along with new tools Perhaps literacy, and numeracy for and strategies and greater knowledge of Our research suggests that the lack that matter, have never really been effective communication. of education related to literacy is prob- optional for fully functioning members Digital and visual are the next lematic, and the situation is exacerbated of society. In our 21st century society— wave of communication specialization. in the field of education. A common accelerated, media-saturated, and auto- Most people will have technologies at scenario today is a classroom filled with mated—a new literacy is required, one their fingertips not only to communicate digitally literate students being led by more broadly defined than the ability but to create, to manipulate, to design, linear-thinking, technologically sty- to read and write. to self-actualize. Children learn these mied instructors. Although funds may Was it always so? History provides skills as part of their lives, like language, be plentiful to purchase new equip- examples of societies trying to build which they learn without realizing they ment, wire classrooms, and order cur- connectivity into their communications are learning it.3 Adults who did not grow rent software, few educational organiza- infrastructures two centuries ago.2 Using up with technology continue to adapt tions have developed comprehensive the technologies of their time, people from iteration to iteration. The senior technology plans that specify technical sought methods by which they might population approaches the new literacy learning objectives or ensure successful communicate faster, easier, and better. like a foreign language that is complex integration of technology to enhance Today, we still seek better communica- and perhaps of questionable use. students’ digital and visual literacy. We

8 EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY • Number 2 2006 have found a common void in profes- flashy technology to teach true literacy and apply new knowledge gained from sional development for faculty—training in this new milieu. Using the same skills digital environments. According to Gil- needed to gain the requisite computer used for centuries—analysis, synthesis, ster,5 the most critical of these is the abil- skills to integrate technology into the and evaluation—we must look at digital ity to make educated judgments about curriculum effectively. Too often success literacy as another realm within which what we find online. occurs in pockets within the institution, to apply elements of critical thinking. Visual literacy, referred to at times as where individually motivated faculty visual competencies, emerges from see- embrace advances in technology, mas- Connecting the ing and integrating sensory experiences. tering—on their own time—the skills Digital Dots Focused on sorting and interpreting— needed to merge the digital world with As we researched current articles, sometimes simultaneously—visible academia. books, reports, and papers related to actions and symbols, a visually literate Taking precedence over systematic digital and visual literacy, it became evi- person can communicate information planning is the trial-and-error approach dent that many definitions apply, and in a variety of forms and appreciate the to using technology in the classroom, the skills needed for digital and visual masterworks of visual communication.6 specifically for nontechnical courses literacy are still being identified. How- Visually literate individuals have a sense such as English or fine arts. Educational ever, common findings aid in further- of design—the imaginative ability to institutions have given priority to com- ing our understanding and awareness create, amend, and reproduce images, puter-based courses. An institutional of what it means to be literate in the digital or not, in a mutable way. Their modus operandi seems to justify tech- 21st century. Our world today is about imaginations seek to reshape the world nology funding for some disciplines over connecting the digital dots. The chal- in which we live, at times creating others. To approach the use of technol- lenge is in dealing with the complex- new realities. According to Bamford,7 ogy differently, to enhance teaching and ity—the dots are multidimensional, of “Manipulating images serve[s] to re- learning across all departments, requires varying sizes and colors, continuously code culture.” change. This change will be slow in com- changing, and linked to other, as yet Weaved throughout the definitions of ing, however, without vision combined unimagined dots. Nonetheless, to suc- each term are a host of other subclassifi- with practical, recognizable goals and cessfully connect the dots at any level cations including , incentives that encourage people to in cyberspace means we must be literate, lateral literacy, and reproduction literacy. embrace new digital and visual literacy both digitally and visually. According Specifically, each term defines skills inher- skills individually and collectively. to a recent report from the Workforce ent in a digitally or visually literate indi- Commission’s National Alliance of Busi- vidual. The variations in terminology, Our Digitally Savvy ness, “The current and future health including redundancies, represent the Students of America’s 21st century economy newness of this phenomenon. The lack of Our students are natives of cyber- depends directly on how broadly and extensive or at least longitudinal research space—they are digitally savvy. No longer deeply Americans reach a new level of related to digital literacy and, most impor- does it suffice for a teacher to retype over- literacy—‘21st Century Literacy.’”4 tantly, to its impact on the learner, also heads into PowerPoint and have students helps explain such variations and redun- take notes. No longer is it enough for a Defining Digital and dancies. Nonetheless, a common under- teacher to talk about another country Visual Literacy standing has emerged—a leitmotif that and point to a given city while holding Although a multitude of definitions characterizes a unique environment. Lit- up a map. These days, new media lit- exist related to 21st century literacy, our eracy, in any form, advances a person’s eracy technical skills catapult traditional study focused primarily on digital and ability to effectively and creatively use learning methods into orbit—traditional visual literacy—terms that often interact, and communicate information. chalkboards and overheads with pens do overlap, or share common meanings. not occupy the same realm as current Digital literacy represents a person’s abil- The New Literacy capabilities. As an example, now teachers ity to perform tasks effectively in a digital Environment can do a PowerPoint presentation with environment, with “digital” meaning Competency begins with understand- streaming video, instant Internet access, information represented in numeric form ing. Each medium represents a unique and real-time audio-video interaction, and primarily for use by a computer. Lit- environment, presenting the view of our and they can do it with relative speed eracy includes the ability to read and world from varying perspectives. Com- and ease. interpret media (text, sound, images), munications theorist Marshall McLu- The greatest challenge is moving to reproduce data and images through han coined the idiom “the medium is beyond the glitz and pizzazz of the digital manipulation, and to evaluate the message,”8 which seems prophetic

Number 2 2006 • EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY 9 in the high-tech reality within which we our development as higher-order think- A Nation of Opportunity: Building Amer- live. The idea that the world we shape ers, multiple realities are far less impor- ica’s 21st Century Workforce (Washing- in turn shapes us is a constant. News- tant to our survival than our ability to ton, D.C.: National Alliance of Business, 2000), p. 4. papers, television, and computers—all understand what we see, to interpret 5. P. Gilster, A Primer on Digital Literacy human inventions—help formulate our what we experience, to analyze what (Mississauga, Ontario: John Wiley & beliefs, perspectives, and even compe- we are exposed to, and to evaluate what Sons, 1997). tencies. And from each medium we cre- we conclude against criteria that support 6. B. A. Chauvin, “Visual or Media Liter- ate new realities. Cultural theorist Jean critical thinking. In the end, it seems far acy?” Journal of Visual Literacy, Vol. 23, Baudrillard used the term “hyperreality” better to have the skills and competen- No. 2, Autumn 2003, pp. 119–129. to describe the simulation of something cies to comprehend and discriminate 7. A. Bamford, “The Visual Literacy White that never really existed.9 An example within a common language than to be Paper,” a report commissioned for Adobe Systems Pty Ltd., Australia, 2003, p. 7. is a magazine photo of a model, the left out, unable to understand. e 8. M. McLuhan and Q. Fiore, The Medium is picture having been touched up or com- the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (Corte puter-enhanced—the creation of a new Endnotes Madera, Calif.: Gingko Press, 1967). 1. M. Prensky, (2001). “Digital Natives, Dig- reality. Hollywood’s ultimate depiction 9. J. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation ital Immigrants,” On the Horizon, Vol. 9, (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michi- of hyperreality was The Matrix, a movie No. 5, 2001, pp. 1–6. gan Press, 1981). about a world that does not really exist 2. A. D. Chandler and J. W. Cortada, Eds., or exists only in our minds. A Nation Transformed by Information: How Ironically, while some see the profu- Information Has Shaped the United States Barbara R. Jones-Kavalier (bkavalier@ sion of realities as threatening to us, to From Colonial Times to the Present (Oxford: tacomacc.edu) is Associate Vice President, our children, and even to democracy, Oxford University Press, 2000). Student Services, at Tacoma Community the new media is nothing if not simply 3. N. Andersen, “New Media and New College in Tacoma, Washington. Suzanne : The Horizon Has Become another way of viewing our world, of the Landscape—New Media Are Here,” L. Flannigan (fl[email protected]) is interacting with one another, of opening report produced by Cable in the Class- on the faculty in the School of Business at ourselves to learning in realms of pos- room, 2002, pp. 30–35. Camosun College in Victoria, British Colum- sibility we never conceived of before. In 4. 21st Century Workforce Commission, bia, Canada.

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