Changing Technologies, Changing Literacy Communities?

Retreived August, 2004

In this article, I deal with the transition from traditional ‘school’ forms of instruction to educational processes that are fully mediated by digital technologies. Against the background of the idea the very institution ‘school’ is closely linked to the invention of the alphabetic writing system and to the need of initiating new generations into a literate culture, I focus on the issue of literacy training. I argue that with the digitization of education, a fundamental transition takes place regarding what it means to be literate, but also what it means to educate and to be educated. I do so by developing a ‘techno-somatic’ approach, which means that I look at the use of concrete instructional technologies, and the bodily disciplines that are involved. I set out a double comparison in which I contrast existing, ‘traditional’ ways of learning how to read/write with the way in which literacy training looked like before the nineteenth century, on the one hand, and with the initiation into literacy in the Chinese/Japanese language, on the other hand. I argue that these comparisons shed light on the differences between traditional and digital literacy. More precisely, I show that in each case, a different relation toward what it means to produce script is involved. As such, both forms of literacy go together with different spaces of experience and senses of being-able, and therefore with altogether different ideas of what education is all about.

Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, 2004

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2000

Computational Media and New Literacies-The Very Idea Literacy in the conventional sense of being able to read and write is both highly valued and commonplace in contemporary society. Although almost everything else-especially values-seems to be in dispute, no one questions the importance of reading and writing as foundational skills. Of course, there is plenty of disagreement about exactly what constitutes literacy and how we should go about bringing up children to become literate. Still, not even the most extremist politicians can expect to win converts by cheering the latest study that shows college students can neither string two sentences together coherently nor read a map. Because the social value of literacy is so important to this book, it is worth taking a few moments to evoke a more lively sense of the multiple

This article presents the theoretical background to a wider project that is attempting to increase our understanding of the impact and uses of large-scale digitization, being undertaken by the first author at University College London with the working title ‘What is the impact of large-scale digitization upon researchers and the information sector?’ It discusses the controversy surrounding the emergence of mass digitization: the creation and collection of huge resources containing millions of pages of textual cultural content. It demonstrates that the polarized nature of the literature about this technological development is far from unprecedented, and in fact can be traced through the theory of a number of varied fields: the debate surrounding mechanization and digital technologies, our understanding of the role of the sublime in modern representations of technology, the similarities between the sociology of city life and digital information overload, and the way in which innovations are diffused throughout society. It proposes that these theories explain why debates around technological innovation often become so hyperbolic, creating an almost mythological view of technological determination. It concludes that, as a result of the processes outlined in this theory, mass digitization has become stuck between two conflicting rhetorical movements, and that it is therefore necessary to begin working to increase our understanding of this technology and to move the debate onwards using evidence from the real world.

2002

Suggested Citation: Tsvetkova, Milena. How the Computer Vindicates the Culture of Reading. In: Nauka (Science). ISSN 0861-3362. 2002, 12(3), pp. 48–53. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1439138 Available at HAL: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01851094 Each new form of culture – from the first culture of the spontaneous, live communication, written culture and audiovisual culture to the current phenomenon of virtual culture – is a generator of some form of sign transformation -not only in the cultural layer of civilization, but also in the individual cultural skills and characteristics. Audiovisual culture, for example, legitimizes itself through the technical novelties for maintaining and transmitting images and sounds (television, video and multimedia). It provides a new medium for fixing and translating of cultural information, not only additional information, but also an alternative to its superior -verbal-written communication; the visible result of this metamorphosis can be seen in two major aspects: Firstly: we can talk of " duplication of the cultural medium " – that is all cultural products have an audio-visual expression, the written and audio-visual texts exist as mutually translatable, relative equivalents of the " prototext " and Secondly: a pluralistic cultural medium appears and what we have in this medium is a " peaceful co-existence " of texts of different nature. Audiovisual culture and the cultural practice have delineated the pluralistic tendencies of the cultural medium (feedback, eclectics, postmodernism) – which, according to many humanitarians have not produced anything particularly new but have resulted in a paralysis of the achievements of the written " veteran-cultural " and making-up or simply collating of the already discovered technologies and manners, and a certain " quoting " of the classical means by new technical ones. Keywords: new literacy studies, theories and models of reading, pyramid model, information literacy, reading literacy, media literacy, history of reading, history of writing, media evolution, mediamorfosis, evolution of reading

Journal of Literacy Research, 2007

Have you ever thought how you became literate? What influences-social, historical, political, technological-surrounded you and had an impact? What about how you came to be computer literate (or perhaps you do not consider yourself in this category)? What these books by Inman, and Selfe and Hawisher, bring to the area of technology and literacy instruction and composition studies is the human voices, the recognition that obtaining effective technological literacy is a complex web of interacting forces. They recognize that acquiring technological literacies-"literacy" in today's society-and associated practices cannot be described in a simple single cause-single effect way.

Education 3-13, 2020

Widespread changes in communication associated with new technologies have led to a growing interest in digital literacy. Although the concept of digital literacy suffers from a lack of agreed definition, this paper suggests that reading and writing with technology remains a central concern. The written word, a central feature of these communicative practices, is now used in new ways and often in combination with different media as new devices and physical practices are recruited to the task of meaning making. The influence of different ways of thinking about these new literacies has led to the development of the diverse body of research outlined here. Tracing these strands in current thinking about digital literacy helps to identify how literacy has expanded and diversified. But because it is now a significant aspect of full participation in society, reading with technology raises important questions for education. This paper suggests that policy in this area is poorly articulated and argues for more focused classroom research.

2008

International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 2001

As we enter a new millennium, most people are by now aware that we are in the midst of one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history that is changing everything from the ways that we work, to the ways that we communicate with each other, to how we spend our leisure time. The technological revolution centers on computer, information, communication, and multimedia technologies. It is often interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge or information society, and therefore ascribes education a central role in every aspect of life. This Great Transformation poses tremendous challenges to educators to rethink their basic tenets, to deploy the new technologies in creative and productive ways, and to restructure schooling to respond constructively and progressively to the technological and social changes that we are now experiencing.