History of Digital Media & Learning
Welcome to the part of the website where you will become familiar with the relevant theories, ideas, and concepts for educators and others interested in the history of digital media and learning. There are three categories we will focus on: learning, technology, and literacy as we believe that these three categories are foundational to your understanding of the rest of the content discussed on this website.
Each section will provide you with the important history, key terms and works by influential authors in each field. Check out the gallery below of the key scholars quoted in each section. What you may notice is that the same authors are quoted in two or even three of the sections and this is because it is hard to separate the ideas. Also, we fully admit that our overview does not take into account everything and we may have omitted an idea or author; each topic is so vast in scope we are focusing our discussions on each topic’s role to support digital learning.
Key Scholars
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Freire’s work has influenced people working in education, community development, community health and many other fields. While Freire’s original work was in adult literacy, his approach leads us to think about how we can ‘read’ the society around us.
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Illich was a Croatian-Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and critic of the institutions of modern Western culture. He is best known for his first book, Deschooling Society (1971) which was a groundbreaking critique of compulsory mass education.
Cuban is Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University. He has worked as a high school social studies teacher, district superintendent, and university professor. He has published op-ed pieces, scholarly articles and books on classroom teaching, history of school reform, how policy gets translated into practice, and teacher and student use of technologies in K-12 and college.
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Papert was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, who spent most of his career teaching and researching at MIT. He was one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, and of the constructionist movement in education. Papert anticipated the use of computers to educate children and stimulate their creativity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert
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Mizuko (Mimi) Ito is a cultural anthropologist of technology use, examining children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications and is Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California, Irvine, with appointments in the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the Department of Anthropology, and the Department of Informatics.
Sefton-Green is an independent scholar working in Education and the Cultural and Creative Industries. He is Principal Research Fellow at the Department of Media & Communication, London School of Economics, and a research associate at the University of Oslo working on projects in London and Oslo exploring learning and learner identity across formal and informal domains. He has researched and written widely on many aspects of media education, new technologies, creative learning and informal learning.
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Jenkins is an American media scholar and Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Jenkins has authored and co-authored over a dozen books. Beyond his home country of the United States and the broader English-speaking world, the influence of Jenkins' work (especially his transmedia storytelling and participatory culture work) on media academics as well as practitioners has been notable, for example, across Europe as well as in Brazil and India. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jenkins
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Thomas is an American scholar, researcher, and journalist. He is Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California where he studies technology, communication, and culture. He is the author or editor of numerous books. He has published numerous articles in academic journals and is the founding editor of Games & Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media.
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John Seely Brown (1940 - now) John Seely Brown also known as "JSB", is a researcher who specializes in organizational studies with a particular bend towards the organizational implications of computer-supported activities. His research interests include the management of radical innovation, digital culture, ubiquitous computing, autonomous computing and organizational learning.
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Ken Robinson (1950-now) Sir Kenneth Robinson is a British author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education and arts bodies. He was Director of the Arts in Schools Project and Professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick, and is now Professor Emeritus at the same institution. In 2003 he was knighted for services to the arts. Robinson has given three TED talks on the importance of creativity in education, viewed over 80 million times (2017). His presentation "Do schools kill creativity?" is the most watched TED talk of all time (2017).
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Michael Lee Wesch is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. Wesch's work also includes media ecology and the emerging field of digital ethnography, where he studies the effect of new media on human interaction.
Brennan is an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research is primarily concerned with the ways in which learning environments (in and out of school, online and face-to-face) can be designed to support young people's development as computational creators. Many of Brennan's research and teaching activities focus on constructionist approaches to designing learning environments - encouraging learning through designing, personalizing, connecting, and reflecting, and maximizing learner agency.
David Cayley is a Toronto-based Canadian writer and broadcaster, who was a friend of Ivan Illich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cayley
Renee Hobbs is an internationally-recognized authority on digital and media literacy education. Through community and global service and as a researcher, teacher, advocate and media professional, Hobbs has worked to advance the quality of digital and media literacy education in the United States and around the world. She is Founder and Director of the Media Education Lab, whose mission is to improve the quality of media literacy education through research and community service.
James Paul Gee is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies and a Regents’ Professor at Arizona State University and a member of the National Academy of Education. He works in both linguistics and education. His book Sociolinguistics and Literacies (1990, Fifth Edition 2015) was one of the founding documents in the formation of the “New Literacy Studies”, an interdisciplinary field devoted to studying language, learning, and literacy in an integrated way in the full range of their cognitive, social, and cultural contexts.
Sonia Livingstone OBE is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Taking a comparative, critical and contextual approach, her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published twenty books on media audiences, media literacy and media regulation, with a particular focus on the opportunities and risks of digital media use in the everyday lives of children and young people.
David Buckingham is a scholar, writer and consultant specializing in young people, media and education. He is an Emeritus Professor at Loughborough University, and a Visiting Professor at Kings College London
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Leo Marx is a Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science Emeritus at MIT. He is known for his works in the field of American studies. Dr Marx studies the relationship between technology and culture in 19th and 20th century America.
Passive learning & Active learning
Passive learning
Paolo Freire’ s ideas about learning as discussed in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) are among the most well-known ones. He discussed the so-called banking approach. This approach suggests that the relationship between a teacher and a student consists of one person narrating (the teacher) and the other persons listening (the students). This narration leads to students memorizing what is taught to them, but not actually perceiving what it means, or what the significance of the fact is.
“Education thus becomes an act of depositing” (Freire, 1970, para. 5).
The teacher makes deposits into the students’ minds and they accept this knowledge. This same knowledge is seen as a gift from those who have greater knowledge to those who are less knowledgeable (Freire, 1970).
Banking education comes alive through several behaviors and procedures, such as the ideas that
“the teacher teaches and the students are taught, the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing, the teacher talks and the students listen, the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply, and the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it” (Freire, 1970, para. 9).
The banking approach creates passive learners that have minimal creativity. It is important to note that many educators unknowingly use this approach. As Freire (1970) states, there are many teachers with good intentions who are not aware that they’re using this approach. Freire (1970) believes that we should step away from the ideas that make up the banking approach, and instead implement an approach where people are seen as conscious beings and active learners.
Another example of the banking approach comes forward in the part of Ivan Illich in Conversation (1992) where David Cayley discusses parts of education with Ivan Illich. Illich says that learning is often regarded as a process in which “you are the consumer and somebody else the organizer, and you collaborate in producing the thing which you consume and interiorize” (p. 67).
Many of you are likely familiar with the banking approach in your own reality. Even in 2020, these ideas can be seen in the traditional school. The complete opposite of this passive approach to learning is an active approach to learning.
Active learning
When it comes to learning, Ivan Illich (1971) says “the first transmission of a skill involves bringing together someone who has the skill and someone who does not have it and wants to acquire it” (p. 11). This could, of course, apply to the teacher-student relationship, but besides that, it applies to all kinds of situations because it assumes that people are able to learn from all other people, as long as they know the skill that you do not.
Larry Cuban (1986) writes about learning in his book Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920 and says that “no single theory of learning (or instruction) yet encompasses the uniqueness of classroom events or student differences” (p. 93). This leads us to conclude that according to Cuban, learning is a unique activity that is largely dependent on differences between students.
Seymour Papert (1993) says that “in the literature on education there has long been a pervasive tendency to assume that reading is the principal access route to knowledge for students” (p. 9), hinting at the idea that students mostly learn from reading. Papert (1993) suggested shifting away from this notion and exploring other routes to knowledge.
Cuban (1995) mentions the neoprogressive view where students are regarded “active learners creating knowledge that makes sense to them” (p. 5). He sees teachers more in the role of coaches that assist students in their learning.
In Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out , Mizuko Ito and her colleagues discuss their sociology-of-youth-and-childhood approach, which means that they “take youth seriously as actors in their own social worlds and look at childhood as a socially constructed, historically variable, and contested category” (2010, p. 6 ). Julian Sefton-Green (2006) called this same idea in his work “the new sociology of childhood” and he emphasized how youth is seen as having agency and power instead of being seen as passive objects. We see a huge shift from Freire’s banking approach where teachers simply deposit information into passive children and Illich’s idea of kids not necessarily learning, but “getting schooled”. Ito and her colleagues consider youth actors of their own world.
One of the aspects of media where youth can be seen as actors of their own world is in the participatory media culture. Henry Jenkins is well-known for his ideas about the participatory media culture. Douglas Thomas & John Seely Brown (2009) based their idea of “the second transformation” in new media on Jenkins, since news was first seen as factual, then as interpretative and now as participatory. Ito and her colleagues write about interactive media and communications technology and how “the constitutive role of youth voice and sociability is further accentuated in what Jenkins has described as a “participatory media culture” (2010, p. 10). Ito and her colleagues identify genres of participation with new media in order to describe everyday learning and media engagement. The main distinction they make is “between friendship-driven and interest-driven genres of participation, which correspond to different genres of youth culture, social network structure, and modes of learning” (p. 15). Friendship-driven participation focuses on mainstream practices of youth during daily negotiations with peers, while interest-driven participation puts interests and specialized activities first and friendships will then be developed through these interest-driven engagements. What’s interesting is how Karen Brennan and her colleagues (2010) “describe participation in the online community in terms of a spectrum ranging from socializing to creating” (p. 78). At one end of the spectrum are the socializers who mostly care for interactions with others and at the other end of the spectrum are the creators who are predominately motivated by creating. This can be compared to Jenkins’ genres of participation and they are largely the same.
Jenkins (2013) talks about participatory culture in this YouTube video from Edutopia’s Big Thinkers Series. He mentions the concept of “social motive production” where media is not produced to make money but to share it with each other. People gather together, there are no experts, simply someone who knows a bit more than someone else and passes the knowledge on. People learn from each other. He also mentions the concepts of Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out. He says that youth acquire their skills by simply playing around with media, messing with technology, and geeking out over a certain set of subjects. Jenkins also discusses the interest-driven networks and how, according to him, they are preparing a way for youth to think of themselves as citizens in a new way, to mobilize the skills they developed as contributing to online communities, and to direct them towards changing society and eventually the world. This is in line with the thoughts of many of the scholars we have mentioned previously, such as Papert and Cuban.
Learning linked to schools
Learning is often linked to schools. It is frequently questioned if schools “utilize the way human beings most naturally learn in non-school settings” (Papert, 1993, p. 5). How do we most naturally learn?
Ivan Illich (1971) believes
“schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets’’ (p.3).
Illich is big on the idea that school mostly teaches us the importance of school while Papert believes that if we become really involved with an area of knowledge, we’re going to learn it — with or without school. The same goes for if we do not become involved with the area of knowledge, we will struggle to learn it — with or without school.
Illich (1971) states “school removes things from everyday use by labeling them educational tools” (p. 7), while Cuban (1995) says these tools are there for teachers and students to “liberate themselves from inflexible ways of teaching and learning” (p. 6). Tools, whether intended to be educational or not, offer flexible ways of learning for students, in a classroom as well as outside of one. It’s not the intentions that matter, but the effects of them. These tools often possess gaming elements or are games. Papert (1993) believes that gaming leads to people observing so much being learned “in such a confined space and in so short a time” (p. 4). A lot is learned from these types of tools, especially outside the classroom.
Some people in the field of digital media strongly feel that youth are able to learn new skills by themselves, without any help or supervision from adults. This is part of the laissez faire approach (Jenkins, 2006). There are three main problems with this laissez faire approach (Jenkins, 2006). First, it overlooks inequality issues when it comes to the access youth have to digital media and technology, and the chances for participation that they get. This is the so-called participation gap. Secondly, the laissez faire approach supposes that youth are able to effectively think about their own experiences with the media and therefore are expressing what they learn from participation. This is known as the transparency problem. The third issue with the laissez faire approach is that it also supposes that youth by themselves are capable of developing the right morals and ethical norms they require to deal with a complicated and diverse online environment, referred to as the ethics challenge. We as educators cannot give effective media education unless we take these three main problems into account. Click here for the last part of this section where these main problems are discussed in more depth.
Illich believed that in order to realize any meaningful change in society, education has to change first. Ken Robinson talks about a human resource crisis in his TED talk, in which people make very poor use of their talents. He says you would expect education helps people look for their talents by creating circumstances in which these talents could show themselves but that’s not always the case. Robinson mentions how education is currently being reformed but that that is no longer an option because it’s not enough. According to him, we’re simply improving a broken model. However, we do not need evolution, we need revolution, says Robinson. We need education to be transformed into something else. If Illich and Robinson had met they would have agreed on this. What is your opinion on this?
Constructivism & Connected learning
Constructivism vs. constructionism
Constructivism locates “the primary driver of learning as internal to the developing child, rather than in the social (and technological) environment” (Ito et al., 2013, p. 43).
According to Papert (1993), constructivism most commonly refers to Piaget’s idea that knowledge by itself cannot be transferred or passed on as is. “Even when you seem to be successfully transmitting information by telling it, if you could see the brain processes at work you would observe that your interlocutor is “reconstructing” a personal version of the information you think you are “conveying” (Papert, 1993, p. 142). Constructionism, Papert’s personal reconstruction of constructivism, as widely discussed in The Children’s Machine (Chapter 7), is mainly different in that it looks at the idea of mental construction more. “It attaches special importance to the role of constructions in the world as a support for those in the head” (Papert, 1993, p. 143).
Connected learning
Constructivism vs. Connected learning
Ito and her colleagues take a sociocultural approach to connected learning that emphasizes how learning and development are implanted in social and cultural contexts and relationships (Ito et al., 2013). Their ideas are based on looking at people’s daily activities and not simply looking at formal educational settings and/or academic topics. “The emphasis is on the ways psychological processes emerge through practical activities that are mediated by culture and are part of longer histories” (Ito et al., 2013, p. 43). This is the opposite of constructivism.
Connected Learning: Why?
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out written by Ito and her colleagues tells us that “sociocultural approaches to learning have recognized that kids gain most of their knowledge and competencies in contexts that do not involve formal instruction” (p. 21). This is completely in line with some of Cuban, Papert and Illich's ideas, for example regarding peer-based learning and learning outside of the formal classroom. It also lines up with the point Michael Wesch makes in his “A Portal to Media Literacy” talk (2008). Wesch had problems with the traditional classroom and discussed what the walls of a traditional classroom say. It is telling us that “to learn is to acquire information, information is scarce and hard to find, trust authority for good information, authorized information is beyond discussion, obey the authority and follow along” (2008).
Basically, all the scholars we’ve mentioned are doing the same work by pointing out a divide between knowledge acquired in formal settings and outside formal educational spaces. They don’t want to radically reshape the way institutions operate, but they want to take formal academic learning and make it better by dropping it into context. “Many young people experience their learning in the three spheres of interests, peer culture and academic subjects as disconnected, and do not have sufficient exposure or support to explore their interests” (Ito et al., 2013, p. 65).
Connected Learning: What?
That is where connected learning comes in. It connects these spheres of interests to peer culture and academic subjects. “When learning is part of purposeful activity and inquiry, embedded in meaningful social relationships and practices, it is engaging and resilient (Ito et al., 2013, p. 74). Connected learning environments connect people to each other based on common interests or goals. This enables them to create a collective frame in which they can collaborate, compete, work on projects and/or take on cross-generational leadership.
Connected Learning: How?
“Design principles inform the intentional creation of connected learning environments” (Ito et al., 2013, p. 78). The design principles for the creation of connected learning environments are that everyone can participate, that learning happens by doing, that challenge is constant and that everything is interconnected. It’s important to keep in mind that they are connected: on their own they’re not effective. The Connected Learning Guide (2019), created by the Connected Learning Alliance, provides educators with recommendations, examples, and resources for how to design, implement, and reflect on the connected learning experiences they create. They are organized around interest, relationships and opportunities. This is a good guide for educators or others who need some help bringing the concept of connected learning to their classrooms.
Connected Learning: Technology
“Although connected learning does not require technology, today’s digital and net-worked technologies greatly expand the accessibility and potential reach of connected learning experiences” (Ito et al., 2013, p. 82). New media strengthens the opportunities for connected learning by fostering engagement and self-expression, increasing accessibility to knowledge and learning, expanding social support for interests and expanding diversity and building capacity. “Connected learning environments provide tools and opportunities for learners to produce, circulate, curate, and comment on media” (Ito et al., 2013, p. 75). In short, connected learning is about leveraging technology in ways that foster connections.
Since too many young people believe “their formal education is disconnected to the other meaningful social contexts in their everyday life” (Ito et al., 2013, p. 87) it is essential that we find a way to bring together their peer relations, family life and work and career aspirations.
Three Spheres of Learning
Connected Learning
What is Technology?
As technology in education is moving forward at such a fast pace it is important to look back and at where technology has come from. Going throughout history and looking at the invention of the printing press by Ben Franklin to the personal home computers technology has had such a big impact on society. Without technology we wouldn’t have cars, trains, medical equipment, or space exploration. With the use of technology life became “instantaneously easier” (Sutton). This includes in the field of education. Where textbooks, pencils and paper were once the technology used in classrooms we are now moving to a learning environment where a classroom can be virtual thanks to technology.
The word technology is based on the Greek root, techne meaning or pertaining to, arts or craft. In the 17th century it became an English word including anything in the mechanical arts. The problem with the question “what is technology?” is that there is no real definition to the term technology. Over time the term has evolved to include new forms of science and art, but there is still no clear-cut definition of technology according to Leo Marx. Jacques Ellul has a definition of technology that is frequently used, he locates technology in any manifestation of technique. This is done either by identifying it as an act of making or doing or using material or being social. Throughout the Industrial Revolution to the 19th century most of the technology items included a simple paper, pencil and book just to name a few. To better understand why there isn’t an exact definition for technology we have to understand it’s history.
The term technology was heard as early as 1828 when Jacob Bigelow, a Boston botanist and physician attempted to bring the term to life. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until a century later when technology really started to take off. His greatest success was that his new term was used in the name of MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1862 which he was a trustee of.
In the 1840’s there were two categories of technology discussed, ideological (changes in the ideas involving mechanical arts) and substantive (changes in the organization of the mechanical arts). The concept of ideology in technology is that ideas are not just simple ideas because that underestimates them. Marx uses an example in his article entitled Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept about the railroad. It was first seen as a minor idea, but to a town that relied on it for transportation it was a brilliant idea. The concept of substantive is that one idea the organization of the company can expand. For example, with the same railway scenario, the railway might need to expand to other towns, get more conductors, and mechanics to work on the train. It goes from being a small single piece of technology to expanding into a whole company of people working on different parts of the technology.
“By 1847, the joining of science and the practical arts was under way, but it was not until the end of the century, with the growth of the electrical and chemical industries, that the large scale amalgamation of science and industry helped to call forth the concept of a new realm of innovation and transformative power--a new entity--called technology.” Even after the electrical and chemical industries caused a technology breakthrough, it still was not up to it’s full potential yet until around 1880-1920. These years were called the second Industrial Revolution because of the large breakthrough of products such as; radios, the telephone, the automobile, airplanes and the moving picture. This large jump in use of technology has led to the use of technology in schools.
Computer use in the Classroom
Technology (specifically computers) have changed the way we socialize with each other and the way we work and go to schools. Larry Cuban wrote the article Public School Teachers Using Machines in the Next Decade to discuss how the history of instructional technology has evolved overtime to eventually lead us to using computers in the school system. “Throughout the early 20th century, progressive educators sought ways of transforming schools to secure these aims. Many educators in pre-World War II schools saw the invention of the motion picture and radio as useful tools to help achieve their aims.” During this time period they also attempted to promote educational T.V. shows and computer-assisted instruction but technology was not a focus at this time in our history.
There was however a large increase of technological changes in the 1980’s and 1990’s including in the school systems. “In 1981, for example, there were, on average, 125 students per computer; in 1991, there were 18.” Cuban discusses that as more schools were being built, they were being wired to withhold the technology of these machines. With several reports stating how, schools have failed academically and how this failure is leading to an economic failure in our country they decided to incorporate more computers and telecommunication into the schools to try to fix the problems.
The inclusion of technology in the classroom leads to three impulses. First, making sure that the school's technology matches up with the technology in the workforce. In other words, they realized that it is important that students should be learning how to use and work with the same technology they will be using once they enter the working world. Second, they want students to engage in more self-directed learning. They want schools where the students can conduct their own search for understanding of a subject. The last impulse is the idea of productivity. Basically, this is teaching more material to students in less time and spending less money doing it. Cuban once stated that “Computers, in other words, are the future and schools must prepare students for it.” Not everyone shares this view however. Karl Marks calls technology dangerous due to the fact that it is a competitor to man. He finds that technology is always on point and is a powerful weapon.
Learners Participating through Technology
As we move out of the 80’s and 90’s one of those impulses is brought up again when Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown later discussed the idea of the learners becoming more involved in the theory of learning to become. This theory is a 21st century theory while leaving the 20th century “learning is about acquiring skills and knowledge” theory in the past. With this change we are making the shift between interpretation to participation of the learning that is going on. Participation in the learning leads to more learning overall. The introduction of the blog begins to make its debut, and it makes a huge transformation on journalism and how the media reports the news. The great thing about blogs was that they were platforms where people could now have a conversation and open discussion about a topic instead of just being spoon fed the material. It is a way for everyone to contribute to the learning.
With this 21st century theory of, learning to become, there are three important parts of learning that go along with the theory. These components are knowing, playing and making.
Knowing- The term used is Homo Sapiens also means “knowing human”. “The learning itself is the practice of participating and that participation is constitutive of the social context in which the learning takes place.” This method of learning brings out the learner’s imagination and the subject matter is changing over time; therefore the community involvement and learner’s engagement is always at a high level with the use of blogs and podcasts.
Making- The term used is Homo Faber also means “human as maker”. This is simply the ability to make within a social context. Learners need to have the ability to express themselves creatively. “We learn through making, building, and shaping not to produce something static, but to engage in the process of participation.”
Playing- The term used is Homo Ludens also means “human as player”. “Much of what makes play powerful as a learning environment is our ability to engage in processes of experimentation, which becomes the gateway to opening up the imagination.” From playing an educational game to playing a simple game not involving technology play is a form of learning that is a big component of learning to become.
Later with the introduction of other forms of social media such as Myspace, Facebook, Wiki, Twitter, and many more, these three components become known as “hanging out, messing around and geeking out” The knowing became part of where learners would hangout on social media platforms and share their knowledge with each other. Messing around became the playing around with technology. The learners wanted to know more about how it worked so they began exploring to find the answers to their questions. Geeking out is a combination of all three components. For example, students can geek out by using the computers to expand their knowledge and research a topic they have interest in. They could also play a game in which they interact socially with their friends and share knowledge. They can even use their computers to geek out and make something like a website or game of their own.
With this newfound ability of learners to hang out, mess around and geek out while learning in the 21st century there came a wise warning to be careful of what is online. Since in this new learning environment the learners get to participate we now have the creation of “fake news”. “Informed users of media need to be able to evaluate the material they encounter, for example, by assessing the motivations of those who created it and by comparing it with other sources, including their own direct experience.” Users of the internet must also be aware that they are a targeted audience by sites they visit and searches they make. This has changed the way technology affects our lives in a day to day manor.
Technology in Education: Now and in the Future
With the integration of the computer into the classroom there comes a new type of learning environment that is possible called hybrid learning. In a hybrid type class some aspects of the class would be done by the instructor while other parts such as “basic lectures, presentations of materials, peer-to-peer interactions and projects requiring minimal direct supervision” can be done with the available online media (Greenhow). The ability to open up education to a virtual world will allow for a more diverse culture and by opening the digital network, there is no longer a limit on the number of students in a classroom. In doing this it will lower the cost and there is no daily schedule for the students. This allows for a student to have the freedom to learn when it is best for them. “Digital networks also facilitate many-to-many or peer-to-peer education.” (Greenhow) With the large number of students enrolled, it makes it a lot easier to facilitate a discussion, group work or partner work. This is a great way to establish a connected learning environment for students. Technology in the 21st century needs to be used to “enhance engagement and promote collaboration.” (Sutton)
Literacy
This section will explore the concept of literacy, multiple literacies and the New Literacy Studies that started in the 1980’s by highlighting key events in the history of literacy through influential works by key authors and scholars in the debate. While this section will not give you tips and tricks to teach literacy in your lessons, links to useful sources and resources are included throughout the section.
“Theories of literacy are aligned with changes in communications media and are responsive to cultural anxieties about technological change in general.”
- Renee Hobbs (2016), pg. 1
Traditional Literacy
The purpose of this section was to highlight key ideas in the research and debate around literacy. Traditionally, the concept of literacy was defined in the terms of one’s ability to read and write. According to James Paul Gee (2015), this original concept took an exclusively psychological approach as it was solely concerned with the mental processes of retrieving, decoding, comprehension, and so on (pg. 35). In this view, literacy is a cognitive practice and is concerned with the individual's internal processes to form meaning from arguably abstract symbols. Historically literacy was only available to the politically and economically elite and confined to written language; however, beginning in the 20th century, literacy expanded to include speaking and listening skills (Hobbs, 2016, pg. 4).
Literacy in Sociocultural Contexs
The way we read, write and speak is adapted to our specific cultural and societal surroundings so that the way one reads and writes for a scientific journal is different from reading and writing as a financial analyst or architect. The skills are fundamentally the same in the three examples - decoding and comprehension of the letters and symbols used to convey meaning - however, the terminology and texts used in each setting are unique to the group.
As an example, consider the statement “he is spilling the tea.” Do you envision someone spilling a cup of tea or a tin of loose leaf tea? What if instead of “tea” it was “T”? Now do you think of someone sharing gossip? Meanings of words, phrases and sentences are situated in the social and cultural contexts that allow the participants to understand the message conveyed (Gee, 2013, pg. 138). This analogy can extend to include the scientist who speaks one way with her research assistant and another way with her introductory level science class or with her non-science colleagues. Or the student who sends text messages to her friends in a short-hand coded language but writes in grammatically correct prose in her Language Arts class.
David Barton and Mary Hamilton (2000) assert that literacy is a social practice and note that the notion of literacy practices offers a powerful way to conceptualize the link between the activities of reading and writing and the social structures in which they are embedded and which they help to shape (pg. 7). In this situation, the usage of the term practice is different from the meaning to learn to do something by repetition. Barton and Hamilton contend that there are different literacies associated with different domains of life (pg. 8, 10-11).
To take this idea further, language is not about conveying neutral or objective information and is instead used to communicate perspectives on experiences and observations (pg. 139).
“... words and grammar are not primarily about giving and getting information but are, rather, about giving and getting different perspectives on experience. I open Microsoft’s Web site: Is it selling its products, marketing them, or underpricing them against the competition? Are products I can download from the site without paying for them free, or are they being exchanged for having bought other Microsoft products (e.g., Windows), or are there strings attached?”
- James Paul Gee (2013), pg. 139
Like education and technology, literacy is not politically neutral and Paolo Freire (1970/2000, quoted from Hobbs, 2016) coined the term conscientization, which he defined as the combination of reflection and action to transform society (pg. 8). Educators who practice conscientization challenge the ‘banking model’ of education/learning.
Multiple literacies
The recognition of literacy as a social and cultural process and the subsequent multidisciplinary studies that began in the 1980’s was undertaken as The New Literacy Studies (“NLS”). The NLS opposed traditional psychological views of literacy, but there is a similarity to the Situated Cognition Studies, which argue that we think through paying attention to elements of our experience (pg. 38). Where the Situated Cognition Studies looks for patterns in experience and what we pay attention to, the NLS is concerned with the context in which the experiences take place and the member’s participation in the group.
“So what determines how one ‘correctly’ reads or writes in a given case? Not what is in one’s head, but, rather, the conventions, norms, values, and practices of different social and cultural groups: lawyers, gamers, historians, religious groups, and schools [...] People do not just read and write in general. They read and write specific sorts of ‘texts’ in specific ways. And these ways are determined by the values and practices of different social and cultural groups.”
- James Paul Gee (2015) pg. 36
The New Literacies Studies is a related movement that links the NLS with the new experiences and popular culture to study new types of literacy, and resulting sociocultural practices, as a result of digital technologies.
According to Hobbs (2016), most literacy scholars recognize that literacy is no longer confined to printed language (pg. 9) with the new forms of expression arising from technology and the internet. Sonia Livingstone (2003) argues that literacy refers to the “interpretation of any and all symbolic texts” (pg. 5) and questions if the literacy required to function in today’s digital environments is an extension of, or a radical break from, “traditional” literacy (pg. 4). What do you think?
As the definition of literacy has expanded to accommodate the variety of forms of expression and communication, terms like visual literacy, media literacy, computer literacy, and news literacy are used to capture the wider range of competencies and skills needed when engaging with these modes of communication (Hobbs, 2016, pg. 9).
Scholar David Buckingham (2015) challenges the proliferation of multiple literacies as these multiple ‘literacies’ have little to no relation to the original meaning of the term literacy (pg. 22). Instead the term ‘literacy’ is used as a synonym for competence (visual literacy, news literacy) or skill (computer literacy) and is used to convey the importance and validity of the subject (pg. 22-23). However, as literacy involves more than reading and writing as discussed above, attaching the term literacy to a subject conveys the purpose of uncovering a larger view of the subject within society.
Digital literacy
One of the multiple, non-traditional literacies that has developed in the later part of the 20th century is the concept of digital literacy. Arguments for ‘computer literacy’ date back to the 1980’s and arose from the arguments of the vocational relevance of computer skills and the value of learning with computers, but the term has been poorly defined in its scope of practice (Buckingham, 2015, pg. 23). However, Livingstone (2003) comments on a common feature of definitions of digital literacy - they are skills based and not medium or platform specific (pg. 15), owing to the rapid advancements in technology. Here are two definitions of digital literacy to consider:
Digital literacy is “the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, understand, evaluate, create and communicate digital information. Basic reading and writing skills are foundational; and true digital literacy requires both cognitive and technical skills.” - definition from the American Library Association (2013); from Hobbs (2019) pg. 10
Digital literacy “encompasses a range of skills and knowledge necessary to evaluate, use, and create digital information in various forms. Digital literacies include data literacy, information literacy, visual literacy, media literacy, and metaliteracy, as well as related capacities for assessing social and ethical issues in our digital world. Digital literacies represent the habits of mind that enable individuals to effectively evaluate and critique information and its use in the digital age.” - Trudi Jacobson, et al. ( 2019) pg. 1
Both definitions are skills-based; however, they are focused on the individual. Buckingham (2015) notes that most discussions of digital literacy focus on digital information and efficiency of use and tend to neglect the broader social and cultural uses of the internet (pg. 24). Indeed, the first definition completely omits any reference to social or cultural context, but recognizes that digital literacy is a combination of skills sets and competencies. The second definition mentions “assessing social and ethical issues” and critiquing information to continually expand the definition.
As noted above, literacy exists in a sociocultural context, so why should digital text and communication be treated any differently? Media literacy as defined by Hobbs (2019) is the knowledge, competencies and life skills needed to participate in contemporary society by accessing, analyzing, evaluation and creating media in a variety of forms (pg. 1) includes the participation and therefore begins to consider the social and cultural norms of the online community.
Thomas and Brown (2009) say that “understanding the processes of learning which underwrite the practices emerging from participation in digital networks may enable us to design learning environments that harness the power of digital participation for education in the 21st century” (p. 1), leading to the idea that we can only discuss the role of technology in literacy when we have established what literacy is in the first place.
Participatory Culture & the Need for Digital Fluency
Now that our students are seen as their own active agency with an ever increasing presence online, there is a need for “an enhanced understanding of the meaning of media culture for young people” (Sefton-Green, 2006, pg. 300) and our role as educators in supporting them.
According to the Pew Research Center, today around more than 70% of Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content and for entertainment purposes. As discussed in all three of the preceding sections, the internet has allowed for a greater participatory culture online and authors like Brennan et al. (2010) argue that the ability to consume information online should be complemented with the ability to create media (pg. 75). They caution that it is often expected that because young people have always been surrounded by digital media they inherently understand it and use it effortlessly (pg. 76), but this should not be assumed.
“Participatory culture places new emphasis on familiar skills that have long been central to American education; it also requires teachers to pay greater attention to the social skills and cultural competencies that are emerging in the new media landscape.”
- Jenkins et. al (2006), pg. 18
Educase’s 7 Things You Should Know About … series on digital literacies by Jacobson and colleagues (2019) points to “expanding data collection and analysis and the explosion in the sharing of information in the digital age” as important forces that will drive the need for citizens to continually develop the skills needed to make sense of our increasingly digital society (pg. 2). Jenkins et al. (2006) identify three concerns with the current approach to teaching digital literacy and engaging in participatory culture: the participation gap, the transparency problem, and the ethics challenge (pg. 3) which are described in more detail below.
The Participation Gap points to unequal access to opportunities, experiences, skills and knowledge. It is crucial youth and adults learn how to use the necessary digital tools effectively. Since the 1990s, the United States has increased its efforts in decreasing the digital divide in technological access by making sure that youth has access to computers at their schools or in libraries. However, there is of course a big difference in what a student can do with an outdated computer in a public library and what a student can do with a home computer. In the report, Jenkins and his colleagues note that “closing the digital divide will depend less on technology and more on providing the skills and content that is most beneficial” (Jenkins et al., 2006, p. 13).
The Transparency Problem relates to the user’s ability to evaluate the material they encounter online and assess the merits of the information. Youth are becoming more and more skilled at using media and technology; however, they often aren’t able to be critical of the media themselves. Young people tend to assume that information in games is authentic and these concerns about the transparency of games are connected to the worries about how youth assesses the quality of the information they get (Jenkins et al., 2006). “Determining the truth value of information has become increasingly difficult in an age of increasing diversity and ease of access to information” (p. 15).
Jenkins and his colleagues (2006) point out that research has found that “issues of format and design are often more important than issues of content in determining how much credibility young people attach to the content of a particular website” (p. 16). Students often are not capable of distinguishing between professional and amateur websites or commercial and noncommercial content online. These findings are supported by a 2016 Stanford study in which over 80% of students surveyed could not distinguish between sponsored content and real news stories online (WSJ). In a world where commercials are no longer separated from entertainment, transparency issues become especially dangerous.
The Ethics Challenge encompasses the breakdown in traditional training that might prepare young people for their roles in online participatory culture. “Young people are creating new modes of expression that are poorly understood by adults, and as a result they receive little to no guidance or supervision” (pg. 17). Additionally, the social norms that exist for professional organizations, and the opportunities to enforce them, are not explicit or consistent in more casual settings although most online users can generally converse on acceptable and unacceptable behavior online. Ethics become even less defined with the use of fictional identities online. Education should encourage young people to become more reflective about their actions and choices online and the impact they have on others (pg. 17).
As society’s use of technology continues to expand into all aspects of our daily lives, we need to make sure that learners develop the digital literacy skills that will help them make sense of the digital world and their role in participatory culture.
Digital Fluency
Taking the concept of digital literacy further and putting it into practice results in the concept of digital fluency. Much like there is fluency related to literacy and language, digital fluency speaks to the skills and practice of digital literacy.
To help learners navigate information in an expansive, ever-changing digital landscape, educators have a pivotal role to play in helping students understand how information is shaped and shared today across the digital landscape. During a time of tremendous and rapid change in the information landscape, a critical consideration will be how best to integrate digital literacy and fluency in the curriculum so that learners can develop a deep and well-informed understanding of what it means to be a consumer and creator of digital content (Jacobson et al., 2019, pg 2).
"Digital fluency is the ability to leverage technology to create new knowledge, new challenges, and new problems and to complement these with critical thinking, complex problem solving, and social intelligence to solve the new challenges. Digital fluency also requires excellent communication skills, new media literacy, and cognitive load management to address the issues, and concerns we face today and in the future."
- Jennifer Sparrow (2018) pg. 54
Citations
Learning
Brennan, K., Monroy-Hernandez, A., & Resnick, M. (2010). Making projects, making friends: Online community as catalyst for interactive media creation. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/40401734/Youth_as_content_producers_in_a_niche_so20151126-7927-18ljr1y.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DYouth_as_content_producers_in_a_niche_so.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20200311%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200311T155438Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=7c5b29ac2857b669e0653ae1669d234291785e8777f4ac428a2e58edb8185542#page=88
Cayley, D. (1992). Ivan Illich in Conversation. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=E9I3ihEv4UIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=illich&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiE-d7RndTnAhVFpFkKHXU-CfUQ6AEwAHoECAUQAg#v=onepage&q=learning&f=false
Connected Learning Guide. (2019). Retrieved from https://resources.chicagolx.org/clguide/clx-connected-learning-guide-compact-4-29-19.pdf
Cuban, L. (1995). Appendix E: Public School Teachers Using Machines in the Next Decade. Retrieved from https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk1/1995/9522/952208.PDF
Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uQeEn1vEUSQC&oi=fnd&pg=PP13&dq=larry+cuban&ots=4PF2IwrchZ&sig=2-DfgYbYtBpcpW_tehdljbLGhQo#v=onepage&q=learning&f=false
Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Chapter 2. New York: Continuum Books. Retrieved from http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/philosophy/education/freire/freire-2.html
Illich, I. (1971) Deschooling society: Chapter 6. Retrieved from: https://learn.media.mit.edu/lcl/resources/readings/deschooling-ch6.pdf
Ito, M. et. al. (2013). Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Retrieved from https://dmlhub.net/wp-content/uploads/files/Connected_Learning_report.pdf
Ito, M. et. al. (2010). Hanging out, Messing Around, and Geeking out. Retrieved from https://clalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/files/Hanging_Out.pdf
Jenkins, H. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Retrieved from http://www.newmedialiteracies.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/NMLWhitePaper.pdf
Jenkins, H. (2013). Henry Jenkins on Participatory Culture: Big Thinkers Series. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gPm-c1wRsQ
Papert, S. (1993). The Children’s Machine, Chapter 1 & Chapter 7. Retrieved from https://ia800909.us.archive.org/23/items/pdfy-WeLwkqLL6w830OqF/Papert%20Seymour-The%20Children's%20Machine.pdf
Robinson, K. (2010). Ted Talk: Bring on the Learning Revolution. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFMZrEABdw4
Sefton-Green, J. (2006). Youth, Technology, and Media Cultures. Retrieved from https://lhsblogs.typepad.com/files/4129775.pdf
Thomas, D. & Brown J.S. (2009). Learning for a World of Constant Change: Homo Sapiens, Homo Faber & Homo Ludens revisited. Retrieved from http://www.johnseelybrown.com/Learning%20for%20a%20World%20of%20Constant%20Change.pdf
Wesch, M. (2008). A Portal to Media Literacy. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=J4yApagnr0s&feature=emb_logo
Technology
Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uQeEn1vEUSQC&oi=fnd&pg=PP13&dq=larry+cuban&ots=4PF2IwrchZ&sig=2-DfgYbYtBpcpW_tehdljbLGhQo#v=onepage&q=learning&f=false
Greenhow, C., Sonnevend, J., & Agur, C. (Eds.), Education and Social Media: Toward a Digital Future. : The MIT Press. Retrieved 26 Apr. 2020, from https://www-universitypressscholarship-com.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262034470.001.0001/upso-9780262034470
Ito, M. et. al. (2010). Hanging out, Messing Around, and Geeking out. Retrieved from https://clalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/files/Hanging_Out.pdf
LEO MARX. (2010). Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept. Technology and Culture, 51(3), 561.
Sutton, B. (n.d.). The Effects of Technology in Society and Education. from https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1196&context=ehd_theses
Thomas, D. & Brown J.S. (2009). Learning for a World of Constant Change: Homo Sapiens, Homo Faber & Homo Ludens revisited. Retrieved from http://www.johnseelybrown.com/Learning%20for%20a%20World%20of%20Constant%20Change.pdf
Literacy
Barton, David, Mary Hamilton and Roz Ivanic (2000). Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context. New York: Routledge. URL: https://utah.instructure.com/files/44665614/download?download_frd=1
Buckingham, David (2015). Defining digital literacy - What do young people need to know about digital media? Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 10, 21–35. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284919482_Defining_digital_literacy_What_do_young_people_need_to_know_about_digital_media
Gee, J.P. (2013). Chapter 4: Reading as a Situated Language: A Sociocognitive Perspective, in Donna E. Alvermann, Norman, J. Unrau, & Robert B. Ruddell, Eds., Theoretical models and processes of reading (6th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 2013, pp. 136-151. URL: http://jamespaulgee.com/pdfs/Reading%20as%20Situated%20Language.pdf
Gee, J.P. (2015). The New Literacy Studies, in Rowsell, J. & Prahl, K. (2015). The Routledge handbook of literacy studies. (ppg. 35-48), London: Routledge. URL: https://jamespaulgee.com/pubs/the-new-literacy-studies/
Hobbs, Renee (2016). Literacy, in The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (eds K.B. Jensen, E.W. Rothenbuhler, J.D. Pooley and R.T. Craig). URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/9781118766804.wbiect162
Hobbs, Renee (2019). Media Literacy Foundations, in The International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy (eds R. Hobbs and P. Mihailidis). URL: https://mediaeducationlab.com/sites/default/files/Hobbs%20ML%20Foundations%202019.pdf
Livingstone, Sonia (2003). The Changing Nature and Uses of Media Literacy. URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/13476/1/The_changing_nature_and_uses_of_media_literacy.pdf
Participatory Culture & Digital Fluency
Brennan et al. (2010) - see Learning Citation
Jacobson, Trudi, Debra Gilchrist, Alison Head and Joan Lippincott (2019). 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Literacies. Educase. URL: https://library.educause.edu/-/media/files/library/2019/7/eli7169.pdf Accessed 28 April 2020.
Jenkins, Henry, Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, and Margaret Weigel (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education of the 21st Century. Chicago: The MacArthur Foundation. URL: https://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
Sefton-Green (2006) - see Learning Citation
Sparrow, Jennifer (2018). Digital Fluency: Big, Bold Problems in New Horizons Technologies Ahead. Educase. URL: https://er.educause.edu/-/media/files/articles/2018/3/er182107.pdf Accessed 28 April 2020.