Tori White

English 111
Professor Shae Long-Kish
13 November 2015
New Literacy
Digital literacy is increasingly important in today's environment. It is so important that
today's definition of literacy is naturally assumed to include aspects of computer and
technological literacy. These literacies should garnish at least as much attention in classrooms as
the more traditional literacies of reading and writing. Integrating teaching of reading and writing
with more day to day online tools is an asset to both educators and students.

The rapid advancement and expansion of our society into new ages of Information and
Technology is one well noted and explored by today's scholars. When society's tools--both
commonplace as well as scholarly--evolve, so too must the knowledge base of it's people and
students expand and evolve in order to remain proficient and literate. Many scholars have begun
to facilitate and further this evolution into the digital world by attempting to clarify these
advancements and explain what they mean for the individual. One such scholarly publication that
does a excellent job of this is Expanding the Concept of Literacy by Elizabeth Daly. In the
article Mrs. Daly perfectly sums up what the furthering of the Technological Age means for
students and individuals by modernizing the classical definition of literacy to better fit the
realities of the world today. According to Expanding the Concept of Literacy the definition of
literacy no longer pertains only to the ability to read and write. In today's information and
technology age students must be proficient in more than the analysis of the written word they

must also be able to efficiently traverse and analyze visuals and technologies to considered
themselves to be literate in the 21st century. These digital medias are nothing new to students,
surely near all own a television and a computer, but little to no time is given in most classrooms
aimed at training students in how to properly analyze meaning in these media's nor the tools used
to properly execute them.

From the moment one becomes a student reading and writing are the constant classroom
agenda. Students learn letters and words, then sentences, similes, metaphors, verse, proper
format, how to introduce a paper, how to define a thesis etc. etc. Yet it seems almost no time is
ever spent on new age medias like television, blogs, forums. While most students would not
consider any of these medias new or foreign to them perhaps many of them would find the idea
of them being classroom tools or a type of literacy a new idea. The fact may be that while most
students consider themselves familiar with these medias most cannot consider themselves to be
entirely proficient or literate in them. Very few have had any formal classroom time devoted to
learning the specific tools one needs to become as literate in them as they would be in reading
and writing. These literacies are not so very different from old definitions of reading and writing
however they do require their own unique sets of tools and understanding of these tools for a
student to have the ability to properly analyze and execute them.

In order to know what tools we need to be new literate we must first know what exactly
it means. So what is it be new literate? Well if we take a look at a dictionary definition of
literacy it means: 1.The ability to read and write 2. having or showing knowledge of literature,
writing. So then to compare a definition, by the American Library Association, of Digital

Literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate,
create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills. So by these
definitions we could say we must learn to read the screen as we would read a book. We must
learn how to create digital media just as we were taught to create an essay or article. The basic
concept of these are very much the same as basic literacy you still need to be able read, evaluate,
analyze, and understand material. But the mediums used are different from those of original
literacies therefore they need their own specific classroom guidance for students to be able to
properly execute them.

One of the differences between classic literacy and new literacy that I believe needs more
classroom dedication is research tools. Most students have spent class time being schooled on
how to properly use and find academic sources using materials such as dictionaries,
encyclopedias, and library periodicals. Researching various topics is, again, one of the things
most people are well experienced in within their daily lives. What would we do these days if we
could not immediately Google who sings this, what else that actor is in, and how much those
cost. But the idea of academic Googling might be one of those things very few people have
considered and even less have had any type of classroom experience with. The University of
Maryland in collaboration with The University of Dallas, recently made an attempt to address
these differences in the report Web vs. Library Database - A Comparison. The report is a
digital learning tool meant to help students familiar with classical library
research tools to recognize different ways to apply these known skills to
newer digital research techniques. It addresses possible pitfalls of digital
literacy such as website authority vs anonymous authorship, quality of

information over quantity of information, and relevance of information. When

it comes to using a library database for research finding exactly what you are
looking for might reveal only a few results but once you have these results
you can be pretty confident on the factual basis and authority behind the
information. The Authority of items found in library databases is Easy to
determine. Most databases have scholarly/peer-reviewed filter or contain
only scholarly literature. Authority and trustworthiness are virtually
guaranteed. When using an online database the exact opposite can be true.
All it takes is 2 or 3 keywords in a search bar and you are presented with
thousands and thousands of webpages, podcasts, pdfs, etc, all of which may
or may not have anything to do with the topic you are researching. While
using library research tool is often a part of a student's education, classroom
instruction on the way to properly navigate and narrow down online search
engines as well as how to verify any information found there, have
historically received little to no classroom attention. Lack of subject focus
can result in numerous irrelevant hits or junk to wade through. Much
Web information is opinionated and biased. Unless you are using a subjectspecific search engine, expect everything and the kitchen sink in the
results. Quantity Quality. After one has located these results the next step
comes to sorting through this information. With the differences between a
library database giving only a few relevant results and the web search
engine listing thousands of possible useful results a student must be able to
use a different type of reading just to traverse these thousands of pages.

This is where even the seemingly simple definition of reading can be altered
to be entirely new forms of literacy better suited for the technological age.

Reading is reading one would assume but this simple definition appears to be one
receiving the highest impact in our new technologically literate age. According to Maija
MacLeod in her article Types of Reading, there are two different classifications of reading;
Intensive reading and Extensive reading. To start you might say intensive reading is like learning
to read. Intensive reading is used to teach or practice specific reading strategies or skills. The
text is treated as an end in itself. Intensive reading would be most closely match what we see
and do as classroom reading with its focus on things such as sentence structure, grammar,
rhetoric and such. Intensive reading calls attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers,
and other surface structure details for the purpose of understanding literal meaning, implications,
rhetorical relationships, and the like. So then for our new digital literacies the focus must
transfer to the other type of reading, Extensive Reading. Extensive reading on the other hand,
involves reading of large quantities of material, directly and fluently. It is treated as a means to
an end. Extensive reading then would be what one does most often when reading digitally. One
specific form of extensive reading mentioned by Maija MacLeod, that includes both extensive
and intensive reading properties, is Skimming or Scanning. This is the type of reading would
match nearly identically to the new form of reading mentioned by Nicholas Carr in Is Google
Making Us Stupid. In Is Google Making Us Stupid Carr asserts, similar to Daly and Mcleod, that
not only does the new technological environment we live in change what we define as literacy, it
actually changes how our brains work all together. We are so accustomed to online reading where
one does not read every word of a text but scans quickly for major concepts and keywords to get

a general idea of what if being presented without reading it word for word that the deeper form
of reading is nearly impossible anymore. This Skimming way of reading would be the form of
reading needed when using search engines like Google where you need to sort through vast
amounts of information and therefore is much prefered for most digital uses. However our brain
becomes so accustomed to it that it becomes difficult when we need to accomplish tastes that
require Intensive reading where we must remain more deeply focused on the text. Mastery of
each of these distinct classifications, both Extensive and Intensive reading, is necessary for one
to be considered literate in today's world yet the different forms, or even that there is a distinction
between them receives little or no formal instruction for most students.

Technology has become an almost indistinguishable part of 21st century life and
therefore it has become a necessary for the definition of literacy to encompass aspects of these
new digital and technological tools while still keeping with the classic literacies of reading and
writing. Scholars like Elizabeth Daly, Mijia Macleod, and Nicholas Carr would certainly all
agree that today's literacy is evolving and adapting into new concepts influenced highly by
today's technological and informational society. These new literacies have become so naturally
ingrained in our daily lives that they have even altered seemingly simple concepts of reading,
writing, and research. In order for students to fully master these new literacies it requires that
ideas and tools of technology take a more prominent role in the classroom. Some schools and
academic have begun to help clarify and guide students through this shift in literacy concepts
such as The University of Maryland has attempted to do with their comparison of digital vs
library research tools and hopefully many other classrooms follow their initiative in the future.

Works Cited

Daly, Elizabeth. "Expanding the Concept of Literacy." Exploring Relationships Mid Michigan
Community College Edition (2013): 173-82. Print.
"Digital Literacy Definition." ALAConnect. American Library Association, 2012. Web.
Web vs. Library Database - A Comparison. The University of Maryland, and The University of
Dallas. N.p.: The University of Maryland, n.d. PDF.
Macleod, Maija. Types of Reading. n.d. PDF.
Carr, Nicholas. Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Exploring Relationships Mid Michigan
Community College Edition (2013): 173-82. Print.