Digital Texts in and Out of School

Digital Texts

"Children and young people walking through the school gates each morning are required to leave behind an entire suite of competencies, practices and knowledge about digital technologies and digital text."

This was a quote from the Introduction of the book Digital Literacies Social Learning and Classroom Practices that I've thought a bit more about after reading it. It is true the students spend a LOT of time with digital text outside of the classroom.  I think they tend to compartmentalize those skills and put them away when they walk into the classroom, because they know the texts they encounter will not be the same.  It's just a learned behavior that they now have. When teachers pull out activities and assignments using technology and digital text, many of the students can simply navigate without thinking too much about it. I've learned a lot from my own students, in that respect, by walking around and seeing what they're doing and how they're doing it. They love to teach me new things.

Game Play

"Learning through game play is active, meaningful, multimodal, scaffolded, entails participation in social networks, encourages learners to take risks and allows for self-reflection."

This is the quote I chose from Chapter 1 for my illuminated text, because it made me think of the young man I interviewed for my case study (who just happens to be my son). There are so many things about game play that I think older adults misunderstand simply because they've never participated. On occasion, I've stood by him on his computer and asked him what he's doing.  Some of the steps and processed he explains to me about the game, or program he's working with are extremely complicated! Not only that, but there is constant conversation going on, either in a chat, or on Skype, or through the headphones and mic. Many of the games our students play today are multi-leveled, multi-faceted, multi-layered, and multi-player, and require some strategic and social skills that are quite extensive. It's something educators need to understand, appreciate, and try to tap in to, if possible.

Literacy Levels

"While there are many young people involved in complex and sophisticated practices, there are many who are uninvolved, or who have problems in access and usage, and still others who could be offered further challenges to extend or reflect upon their experiences."

This quote is from Chapter 2, and, until reading some of this book, I hadn't really spent much time thinking about the huge differences between digital text and print text. It is a different world, and requires an entirely different set of skills and thinking. I have seen this demonstrated in my own life when trying to show things to my parents online. They get confused by the hypertext, the web links, the menus, and navigating around on a web site. I run into students every year who are the same way. They just don't have access, for one reason or another, and they have to be taught how to navigate digital text. This disparity among students is something I can't really deal with all by myself when teaching 25 kids, so I like to find those students in my class with very high skill levels and have them help lower skilled students, or put them in groups together. Occasionally, the more skilled student gets frustrated with, or doesn't want to spend time with, the unskilled student, so I have to choose carefully.

Social Navigation

"Tom and Sam have a clear sense that texts are made powerful by what is left out, as well as what is included."

This is a short quote from Chapter 3, and specific to the boys in the study, but it's something that many adults, especially politicians, have learned how to do. It is a pretty complex way of communicating, trying to create an image by being selective about what information you release and don't release.  Students do this constantly on social media, and in some ways it carries over into their day to day social lives in school.  It certainly would complicate and make things confusing for them. I've seen many adults do the same thing with Facebook. I know a person well, and know that things in their life are complicated and less than perfect, but then will see the problem-free, almost perfect image they project on social media, and I find that confusing myself.  I know from my own children that the conflict of this image-projecting can create a very complex range of feelings. I wouldn't have wanted to deal with it when I was a teenager, and thankfully I'm old enough that I didn't!

Carrington, Victoria, and Muriel Robinson. Digital Literacies: Social Learning and Classroom          Practices. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, 2009. Print.

The Complexities of Gaming

This is an illuminated text created using a quote taken from Chapter 1 of the book Digital Literacies: Social Learning and Classroom Practice, cited above.