Literacy is ‘The ability to understand information however it is presented’ (Lanham 1995 in The Electronic Word)
Lankshear and Knobel (2003) proposed that it has three dimensions:
- Operational – skills and techniques
- Cultural – development of shared meanings
- Critical – all literacies are socially constructed and selective, reflecting certain values, rules and perspectives, so individuals need to develop a critical stance
Reading on screen is profoundly different to reading print. We need to understand how meaning is constructed in different modes and which elements are most salient in different modes. A key part of gaming literacy, for example, is being able to anticipate what will appear on the screen next.
We teach literacy because it is the information medium. The need to read and write and compose texts remains very important,
(Notes from the OU Workshop on Digital Literacies – 20 May 2011)