My colleague Peter Stordy drew my attention to the fact that Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel had generously posted Chapter 3 ("New literacies: concepts and practices") of the forthcoming 2nd edition of their book New Literacies http://www.geocities.com/newliteracies/ and going to their blog I found they had also posted Chapter 4 ("New literacies in everyday practice") as well. I am saving Chapter 3 for more careful consideration, but I skimmed through Chapter 4 and found that I am practising new literacies even more than I thought as I now & then write fan fiction (about the Archers), and I watch anime (Japanese animation: currently Cowboy Bebop and Full Metal Alchemist) even if I don't remix it, so at least I know what they are talking about. I think already mentioned that interacting with the blogs of my Sheffield colleagues Dr Joolz and Dr Kate have made me reflect on what the differences/ overlaps are between digital literacy and information literacy. It has brought home how you can't just barge into someone else's literacy (so to speak) and insist it's relevant to information literacy, as the perspectives, emphasis, interpretation, language etc. differ.Photo by Sheila Webber: Half a locally grown paw-paw, Yeppoon, Australia, June 2006.
Like you, I have just skimmed through the Chapter 4 (draft) of Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel's excellent new book with the aim of clarifying their conception of literacy. The examples cite several exciting examples of new literacies. What they all have in common is “encoded text” (even if it is only a short caption). This fits with their definition and DrJoolz’s conception (see http://digitalliteracies.blogsome.com/) of literacy. However, my research suggests some academics/practitioners/educationalists conceptions do not include “encoded text” or that it is incidental. Maybe, if you are an ICT teacher in a secondary school, the text that appears on the screen is incidental to teaching “Internet literacies”?
ReplyDeleteYes it is hard crossing disciplines - even where you think you are speaking the samelanguage, you may not be as the different epistomologies frame our thinking so much. I once wrote an article for a social geography journal with dire consequences!!
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