Nuevas alfabetizaciones: tecnologías y valores

It is too easy to make light of ‘new literacies’ by saying things like: “Well, there are always newer ones coming along”. Such remarks suggest new literacies have a similar kind of life trajectory to an automobile: new in 2009, semi-new in 2010, and old hat by 2011. Against this kind of “that’s so yesterday” perspective, we suggest in this article that ‘new literacies’ are best understood in terms of an historical period of social, cultural, institutional, economic, and intellectual change that is likely to span many decades – some of which are already behind us. We associate new literacies with an historical conjuncture and an ascending social paradigm. From this perspective we suggest that the kinds of practices we currently identify as new literacies will cease to be ‘new’ once the social ways characterizing the ascending paradigm have become sufficiently establised and grounded to be regarded as conventional. Furthermore we suggest that at the heart of the idea of new ethos stuff is the idea of technological change aligning with a range of increasingly popular values.Pensar en las “nuevas alfabetizaciones” con afirmaciones del tipo “seguro que algo más nuevo está al caer” es un recurso fácil, que asimila la trayectoria de las nuevas alfabetizaciones a la de un coche: nuevo en 2009, seminuevo en 2010 y un usado en 2011. Frente a esta perspectiva de “eso ya pasó de moda”, en este artículo proponemos abordar las “nuevas alfabetizaciones” como parte de un periodo de cambios sociales, culturales, económicos e intelectuales cuyo inicio se remonta varias décadas en el tiempo. Desde esta perspectiva sugerimos que “las nuevas alfabetizaciones", entendidas como paradigma social emergente, forman parte de una coyuntura histórica. A su vez sostenemos que este conjunto de nuevas prácticas dejarán de ser “novedosas” cuando los estilos sociales que caracterizan este paradigma emergente se hayan incorporado al quehacer cotidiano, hasta el punto de que se den por sabidos o se consideren “normales”, pasando a formar parte de las alfabetizaciones convencionales. Por añadidura, consideramos que en el epicentro del nuevo ethos yace la idea de un cambio tecnológico, identificado con un serie de valores cada vez más populares

‘New’ literacies: technologies and values

It is too easy to make light of ‘new literacies’ by saying things like: “Well, there are always newer ones coming along”. Such remarks suggest new literacies have a similar kind of life trajectory to an automobile: new in 2009, semi-new in 2010, and old hat by 2011. Against this kind of “that’s so yesterday” perspective, we suggest in this article that ‘new literacies’ are best understood in terms of an historical period of social, cultural, institutional, economic, and intellectual change that is likely to span many decades – some of which are already behind us. We associate new literacies with an historical conjuncture and an ascending social paradigm. From this perspective we suggest that the kinds of practices we currently identify as new literacies will cease to be ‘new’ once the social ways characterizing the ascending paradigm have become sufficiently establised and grounded to be regarded as conventional. Furthermore we suggest that at the heart of the idea of new ethos stuff is the idea of technological change aligning with a range of increasingly popular values.It is too easy to make light of ‘new literacies’ by saying things like: “Well, there are always newer ones coming along”. Such remarks suggest new literacies have a similar kind of life trajectory to an automobile: new in 2009, semi-new in 2010, and old hat by 2011. Against this kind of “that’s so yesterday” perspective, we suggest in this article that ‘new literacies’ are best understood in terms of an historical period of social, cultural, institutional, economic, and intellectual change that is likely to span many decades – some of which are already behind us. We associate new literacies with an historical conjuncture and an ascending social paradigm. From this perspective we suggest that the kinds of practices we currently identify as new literacies will cease to be ‘new’ once the social ways characterizing the ascending paradigm have become sufficiently establised and grounded to be regarded as conventional. Furthermore we suggest that at the heart of the idea of new ethos stuff is the idea of technological change aligning with a range of increasingly popular values

Digital literacy and digital literacies: policy, pedagogy and research considerations for education

[English abstract] «Digital literacy» is increasingly being identified as a formal educational goal. While mainstream definitions vary in detail, the scope and meaning of digital literacy are rarely seen as problematic. This paper argues that typical mainstream accounts of digital literacy are seriously flawed. Rather than conceiving digital literacy as some unitary phenomenon it is better to think in terms of diverse digital literacies. The paper concludes by identifying some implications of this argument for educational policy, pedagogy and research. [Scandinavian abstract] «Digital literacy» er i stadig større grad uttrykt som et utdanningspolitisk mål. Populære definisjoner varierer i innhold, men målsettingen for begrepet er sjelden problematisert. Denne artikkelen diskuterer «digital literacy» ut fra en forståelse om at begrepet ikke er lukket, entydig og selvforklarende. Snarere enn å forstå «digital literacy» som et enhetlig fenomen, er det bedre å tenke seg et spekter av «digital literacies». Artikkelen konkluderer med å synliggjøre dette argumentets mulige implikasjoner for utdanningspolitikk, pedagogikk og forskning

New literacies: everyday practices and social learning, 3rd edition

The new edition of this popular book takes a fresh look at what it means to think of literacies as social practices. The book explores what is distinctively 'new' within a range of currently popular everyday ways of generating, communicating and negotiating meanings. Revised, updated and significantly reconceptualised throughout, the book includes: * Closer analysis of new literacies in terms of active collaboration * A timely discussion of using wikis and other collaborative online writing resources * Updated and expanded accounts of digital remix and blogging practices * An explanation of social learning and collaborative platforms for social learning * A fresh focus on online social networking * A new batch of discussion questions and stimulus activities The importance of social learning for becoming proficient in many new literacy practices, and the significance of new media for expanding the reach and potential of social learning are discussed in the final part of the book. New Literacies 3/e concludes by describing empirical cases of social learning approaches mediated by collaborative learning platforms. This book is essential reading for students and academics within literacy studies, cultural or communication studies and education

Learning and being as cultural producers in online fan-based remix affinity spaces

This chapter will explore some dimensions of participation by young people within new kinds of structures and settings for collaborative endeavour built around shared interests and causes. These new kinds of structures and settings are what James Gee (2007) calls affinity spaces, of which there are many kinds. The kinds of online affinity spaces we will be concerned with here are ones that support and showcase cultural production on the part of fans of popular cultural icons and artifacts. These are fans who enact their “fandom” by remixing original material through acts of writing fanfiction, creating fan art, and producing multimedia artifacts that combine music, images, text, and other media in varying proportions. We will argue that such activity has some interesting and important implications for understanding relationships between learning, identity and power from an educational perspective

Nuevas alfabetizaciones: tecnologías y valores

It is too easy to make light of ‘new literacies’ by saying things like: “Well, there are always newer ones coming along”. Such remarks suggest new literacies have a similar kind of life trajectory to an automobile: new in 2009, semi-new in 2010, and old hat by 2011. Against this kind of “that’s so yesterday” perspective, we suggest in this article that ‘new literacies’ are best understood in terms of an historical period of social, cultural, institutional, economic, and intellectual change that is likely to span many decades – some of which are already behind us. We associate new literacies with an historical conjuncture and an ascending social paradigm. From this perspective we suggest that the kinds of practices we currently identify as new literacies will cease to be ‘new’ once the social ways characterizing the ascending paradigm have become sufficiently establised and grounded to be regarded as conventional. Furthermore we suggest that at the heart of the idea of new ethos stuff is the idea of technological change aligning with a range of increasingly popular values.Pensar en las “nuevas alfabetizaciones” con afirmaciones del tipo “seguro que algo más nuevo está al caer” es un recurso fácil, que asimila la trayectoria de las nuevas alfabetizaciones a la de un coche: nuevo en 2009, seminuevo en 2010 y un usado en 2011. Frente a esta perspectiva de “eso ya pasó de moda”, en este artículo proponemos abordar las “nuevas alfabetizaciones” como parte de un periodo de cambios sociales, culturales, económicos e intelectuales cuyo inicio se remonta varias décadas en el tiempo. Desde esta perspectiva sugerimos que “las nuevas alfabetizaciones", entendidas como paradigma social emergente, forman parte de una coyuntura histórica. A su vez sostenemos que este conjunto de nuevas prácticas dejarán de ser “novedosas” cuando los estilos sociales que caracterizan este paradigma emergente se hayan incorporado al quehacer cotidiano, hasta el punto de que se den por sabidos o se consideren “normales”, pasando a formar parte de las alfabetizaciones convencionales. Por añadidura, consideramos que en el epicentro del nuevo ethos yace la idea de un cambio tecnológico, identificado con un serie de valores cada vez más populares

Literacies: social, cultural and historical perspectives

This book presents sixteen essays in the new literacy studies tradition, written during the period 1985-2010. It covers a diverse range of themes with a particular emphasis on topics of cultural, political and historical interest. The collection includes both previously published and unpublished works, and is organized in four sections. Topics addressed in Part 1 include functional literacy, the politics of literacy in Nicaragua during the Sandinista period (1979-1990), the rise of the working class press in Britain, and reader response and the teacher as meaning-maker. Part 2 discusses critical literacy and active citizenship, literacy and empowerment, language and the new capitalism, varying ways of using computers in and out of school, and the way a low achieving student challenges conventional notions of literacy failure. Part 3 addresses the new literacy studies and the study of new literacies, the theory and practice of attention economics, and early developments in the use of ratings within online communities and social practices. The final part of the book takes up the theme of researching new literacies, discusses practices of digital remix, and provides a case study of becoming research literate within a context of DIY media creation

Introduction: Educational progress and social order

This book brings together a diverse group of collaborating authors from Mexico and the United States, predominantly from the neighboring states of California (United States) and Baja California. This creates very interesting possibilities for addressing the theme of discourses and identities within contexts of educational change within the current conjuncture, in view of such considerations as language and population demographics north of the border, immigration policies and dynamics, economic and wider cultural trends associated with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), histories of academic collaboration (not to mention history itself), and the comparatively high levels of penetration of new (and not so new) technologies and their extension into everyday popular culture on both sides of the fence. These possibilities are amplified by the book's organization around three expansive themes that tap strongly into its focus on educational change: educational practices and identities; literacy, youth cultures and virtual spaces; and educational policies and professional identities. Each theme is addressed by North American and Mexican participants, infusing multiple perspectives into the discussion. The outcome is a nicely integrated discussion of wide-ranging aspects of discourse and identity in relation to engagement in formal education and non-formal learning under contemporary conditions. Within the chapters that follow, we encounter first-hand accounts of the experiences of Mexican adolescents engaging in "team work" at high school and using new technologies under conditions of economic scarcity; of high academic achieving students of color from low socioeconomic status back grounds negotiate challenges posed by the cultural and geographic distance between home and school; of indigenous educators taking up an official discourse of intercultural bilingual education within community settings in Baja California that are far removed and different from their own cultural roots and those of the indigenous groups they have been recruited to serve. We trace the steps of a Mexican academic developing a new discoursal identity-and the implications for his autobiographical identity-as the price for being accepted into membership of an elite discourse community publishing in "high impact" English language scientific journals; explore the impact of changes in California's policies on medium of instruction on opportunities for learning and potential identity construction within one teacher's fifth grade classrooms during 1993-2000; and get a perspective on the relationship between teachers' identities as members of the national teachers' union in Mexico and their identities and performances as pedagogical practitioners. And, we are presented with two complementary perspectives on relationships between discourses, identities and learning, focusing respectively on the role that knowledge-in-action plays within development of "disciplinary identities and disciplinary literacy and discourse skills," and on the potential of "game-like learning" for developing ways of reading, writing, speaking and thinking associated with deep learning. This book could be read in many ways. My way reads it as a text that moves between forms of social research that speaks about questions of meaning, action and social order, on the one hand, and forms of educational inquiry undertaken with a view to contributing towards promoting better quality learning and more equitable academic achievement, on the other. In the final analysis, the book prompts difficult questions about the relationship between how formal learning is socially ordered and the ideal of enhancing learning on an equitable basis

Freedom And education: an application of ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of mind to some of the problems associated with freedom in education.

It is generally acknowledged that educating children entails limiting their social freedom, (or liberty), to some extent. The question is, how far can children's liberty justifiably be limited in education, and on what grounds? One approach to this issue adopted in recent educational philosophy involves the idea that development of 'free' persons constitutes a key educational ideal, if not the educational ideal itself. It is argued that children's liberty should be regulated in accordance with the ideal of developing 'free' persons. After arguing in Chapter One that freedom may be construed both as a relationship obtaining between human beings and as a form of personality development, I examine philosophically the connection between children's liberty in education and the development of 'free' persons. Some educational philosophers identify 'free' persons with rational, (autonomous) persons, and suggest that the development of reason is consistent with - and may actually presuppose - considerable restrictions on children's liberty. In particular, development of 'free' persons may require that children be initiated into the rational disciplines. Given the analysis of "social freedom" which I advance in Chapter Two, this requirement can be seen to constitute a serious curtailment of children's liberty. I argue that there are good reasons for challenging the view that to be a 'free' person consists in being rational, and then advance an alternative account of "free persons". This has quite different implications for the social freedom of children in education from those of the 'rationalist' view. Indeed, I conclude that whereas the 'rationalist' account of "free persons" is well-suited to justifying a considerable degree of unfreedom for children, mine more obviously lends itself to a positive end: namely, suggesting ways in which children may be offered increased social freedom by comparison with much current educational practice