Personal Conceptual Framework

Personal Conceptual Framework

Jacquie Heller
George Mason University
June 2017
Personal Conceptual Framework

Conceptual Framework: Literacy in the 21st Century in Light of Digital Technology

My mother is 88 years old. She has 6 children and 16 grandchildren and she sends the

most hilarious texts. She doesn’t know how to backspace if she makes an error, can’t change out

of all caps, and has never found the key with the period on it so all her thoughts run together.

Although I am so impressed that she learned to text in order to stay connected to her

grandchildren, I have to admit she is the image that immediately comes to mind when I think of

what it means to be (il)literate in light of digital technology. She was a college educated, fully

literate adult through her sixties but since the turn of the century she has become less literate, not

because her mind is deteriorating in any way, but because the definition of what it means to be

literate is expanding to encompass new literacies faster than she can keep up.

Just as those who were not print literate last century were at a disadvantage and missed

out on opportunities available to the more literate, my mother suffers a huge disadvantage due to

her lack of digital literacy. Just filling up her car with gas is a real challenge because she doesn’t

know which way to insert her credit card even though there is an image, then is unsure whether

to hit enter or # after entering the zip code, and has difficulty reading the directions as they scroll

across the small screen on the gas pump. As I think of all the other daily things that have become

a challenge for this healthy elderly woman, the list transforms into a list of what it means to be

literate in the 21st century. It is hard to specifically define it, because by its very nature 21st

century literacy is quickly evolving, changing, and expanding so one must develop skills that

allow you to evolve, change and expand how you communicate, obtain and use information and

messages.

In 2001 Elizabeth Baker published a study (Baker, Pearson & Rozendal, 2010) that

looked at technology rich classrooms through a sociocultural perspective and found there to be
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four characteristics of literacy in light of digital technology. First, literacy was semiotic rather

than purely focused on alphabetic text. It was public over private, meaning students read and

discussed each other’s work so they were no longer limited to just teacher feedback. Literacy

was also transitory because the products the students read and wrote were situated and constantly

changing since a website they access one day may be different or nonexistent the next. Finally,

literacy was product oriented as a means to communicate to a specific audience or learn a certain

concept. This sociocultural context is a big part of what it means to be digitally literate since

literacy is both a cognitive and cultural practice and as my mother has discovered

communicating within the norms of popular culture is a vital part of being literate in the 21st

century.

Explanation of Visual Representation of Conceptual Framework

Since ancient times we have been solving problems and communicating thoughts and

information using tools. The abacus was used to solve early math problems and ancient scrolls

allowed one person to record written text and another person to read that text. As our society

evolved so did our tools. The quantity, complexity and speed with which we problem solved and

communicated increased with the invention of tools such as the calculator and printing press and

more and more people were able to become literate in what was referred to as the 3R’s of

schooling – reading, (w)riting and (a)rithmetic. In the 21st century being able to read printed text

is just one aspect of literacy and the two separate domains of literacy and numeracy are uniting

under the umbrella of problem solving and being a creative and critical thinker who can

communicate and collaborate in many modalities, using many devices for many purposes in a

variety of situations.
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To be digitally literate in the 21st century is to have one foot on a solid foundation of

traditional literacy but equal footing in digital space with a firm grasp on the tools necessary to

adapt to what comes up next on the digital horizon that allows you to navigate, communicate and

collaborate with the world. I chose to use an image that could be female for my visual

representation after thinking about girls’ perception of their digital skills in comparison to boys.

She holds a sextant in her hand which was the key nautical navigation tool in the Age of

Exploration from the 15th to 17th centuries when ships traveled around the world to search for

new trade routes and partners. This represents the tools she will use in the digital age that take

her on the same quest, traveling the world to trade information and ideas and find new partners

with whom to communicate and collaborate. She is balancing the many modes through which

she can read, write and communicate and has the ability to reach out and grab any tool in the

digital space that will help her enhance that literacy.

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Evaluating or Critiquing the Use(s) of Technology for Learning

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) considers not just the

technological knowledge (TK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and content knowledge (CK)

necessary in order for teachers to successfully integrate technology into instruction, but how the

three areas intersect and interact in context to affect instruction. It offers a visually simple Venn

diagram of three overlapping circles to represent a multifaceted idea. It encourages teachers to

evaluate technology by keeping in mind “its relationship to disciplinary content (TCK), or how

to help students meet particular curriculum content standards while using technology

appropriately (TPACK) in their learning” (Harris, Mishra & Koehler, 2009, p. 402).

In my experience as a teacher who was unfamiliar with TPACK, when I evaluated

technology for learning one area I considered was ease of use and reliability of the tool. If the

tool is supposed to enhance the learning but actually gets in the way of learning because it is not

user friendly or has technical difficulties then it is not effective. The second area I’ve considered

when evaluating technology is the type of learning it provides. Dr. Benjamin Bloom created a

scale of learning from low level skills such as being able to remember and understand things to

higher level skills such as evaluating and creating. The more opportunities a piece of hardware or

software provides for higher level thinking, the higher I would evaluate it. We hear a great deal

about kids spending too much of their day on “screen time” but much of that concern is because

they are being passive consumers of technology when we could be reaching for higher levels on

Bloom’s Taxonomy.

I have been fortunate to teach in a new school but many teachers have limited resources

and have to make do with what technology is available. The Technology Integration Planning

Cycle for Literacy and Language Arts (TIPCLLA) would help teachers evaluate the uses of
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technology for learning by identifying an instructional goal, determining an instructional

approach then then identifying the digital tools that help meet the instructional goal using the

selected approach, which happen to be the first three steps (goal, approach, tool selection) in

TIPCLLA (Hutchison & Colwell, 2015, p. 37).

New Literacies

According to Gee (2010, p. 172) new literacies are “literacy beyond print literacy” and

seem to incorporate anything other than what can be produced on a printing press. Lankshear and

Knobel (2009) get a little more specific and use very complicated official terms to describe the

two categories necessary in order to constitute a new literacy: technical stuff and ethos stuff.

Technical stuff means they have an element that contributes to the shift away from typographic

text production and analogue sound and images. This could include software, hardware,

applications, multimodal text, internet, animation, remixing, voice recording, and so many other

things that change the very concept of “text” as we have traditionally understood it in terms of

conventional print. This new technical stuff alone is not enough for something to be considered a

new literacy. It must also have new ethos stuff that moves us farther away from the “sage on the

stage” mindset of Socrates’ day to literacy which is more participatory, collaborative, and

distributed. New literacies “expand the concept of literacy” (Hobbs, 2006, p. 16).

New Literacy Studies (NLS) is the study of literacy in a new way and new literacies

(plural and lower case) is the study of new types of literacy. This includes having the knowledge,

skills and dispositions to continually adapt to new ways of producing and receiving information

and messages. Fairfax County Public Schools has created a Portrait of a Graduate which paints a

picture of a student leaving K-12 education embracing new literacies and using them to be a
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communicator, collaborator, global citizen, creative and critical thinker and goal directed and

resilient individual.

Media Literacy

When I think of media literacy I think of the ability to navigate and understand messages

in traditional media such as books, television, newspaper, and radio as well as social media such

as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, but that is just the beginning. Navigating social media is an

inroad to understanding pop culture, which we may not validate as a skill by teaching it in

schools, but Hobbs (2006, p. 18) said media literacy involves “critically analyzing mass media

messages and popular culture.” In some schools the school librarian is referred to as the Media

Specialist, not because she is the keeper of the books, computers and outdated audio-visual
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equipment, but because she helps students develop media literacy according to Gee’s (2010, p.

173) definition which is to “give and get meaning from media.”

Digital Literacy

I think many teachers still see digital literacy skills as icing on the cake, rather than part

of the meal necessary to sustain young readers and writers. They believe it’s hard enough just to

teach kids to learn to read and write so if there happens to be time and resources left over they

may let students publish on the computers or listen to a story being read online but that’s not the

meat and potatoes of their literacy instruction. We need to take an active stance in teaching

digital literacy as a component of overall literacy and as a means by which to improve reading

and writing skills rather than as something extra. Glister (1998) coined the term digital literacy as

the “ability to understand, evaluate, and integrate information in multiple formats” (Hobbs, 2006,

p. 18) and Hutchison and Colwell (2015, p. 2) say digital literacy is when we teach or learn

literacy through digital technology. Note that nowhere in those definitions does it distinguish

digital literacy from traditional print literacy, so we need to get rid of the old view that kids need

to learn to read and write then teach them to be digitally literate in order to navigate the world.

Rather, we can teach just about any aspect of literacy either with or without technology and if we

choose to purposefully incorporate technology we are teaching digital literacy. In order to be

digitally literate you not only need to be able to read, write and communicate with printed text,

but also with signs, symbols, and technology in many modalities, using many devices for many

purposes in a variety of situations.

Critical Literacy

Gee’s (2010) idea that our situated sociocultural view determines how we read print has

broadened my understanding of critical literacy. My previous understanding was that in critical

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literacy one takes a critical perspective and analyzes text or media for underlying messages that

may portray the dominant cultural view over other possible views. The reader questions and

challenges not only what is stated but also what was left out and why. For example, looking at a

conservative news website and a liberal news website, each would choose to emphasize different

stories of the day and if readers view the information with a critical literacy lens, they would not

only read the content critically, but also notice the font size and placement of the headlines,

question the photo choices that accompany some articles and beware of the language used within

the text and how that language affects their understanding. Hobbs (2006, p. 18) says “visual and

electronic messages are constructed texts that present particular, distinctive points of view as a

result of the economic, political and social contexts in which they circulate” and sees “literacy as

a form of social power which enables fuller control over the circulation of messages and

meanings in society” (Hobbs, 2006, p. 20)