Extended explanation of digital literacies besides classroom implications for teachers.

1. INS. ECEM EKINCI

2. CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION
• DIGITAL LITERACIES
• LANGUAGE-BASED LITERACIES
• INFORMATION-BASED LITERACIES
• CONNECTION-BASED LITERACIES
• (RE)DESIGN-BASED LITERACIES
• 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
• TEACHERS AND CLASSROOM IMPLICATIONS

3. 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION

5. DIGITAL LITERACIES
• Digital literacies – the technical skills and social practices needed to
effectively interact with digital technologies – are key 21st-century
skills, and are increasingly important in educational curricula.
• Key skills such as the ability to evaluate online sources, to filter and
manage information, or to synthesize information found online, need
to be explicitly taught if educators are to prepare learners for the
twenty-first century workplace.

6. Initiatives such as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, which aims to effect
curriculum change to support broad skill areas:
• creativity and innovation
• communication and collaboration
• research and information fluency
• critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making
• digital citizenship
• technology operation and concepts.
(National Educational Technology Standards for Students, ISTE 2007, quoted
in Brooks-Young 2010: 6)

7. A number of ways of conceptualizing digital literacies have been
put forward. Dudeney et. al (2012) suggests a set of four
overlapping skill sets corresponding to four main areas:
1 language
2 information
3 connections
4 (re-)design.

8. 1. LANGUAGE-BASED LITERACIES
• PRINT LITERACY: the ability to read and produce online text, such as blog
entries, tweets, emails, etc. This is clearly related to traditional print literacy,
but includes an awareness of online text genres.
• TEXTING LITERACY: an awareness of the conventions of texting language or
‘txtspk’ (text speak, that is, the use of abbreviations, acronyms, symbols,
etc.), and of knowing in what contexts to use or not use it. Research (Crystal
2008; 2011) has shown that, far from having a detrimental effect on
language standards and literacy, text speak can in fact aid literacy.
• HYPERTEXT LITERACY: understanding how hyperlinks in online text work,
and being able to produce texts with effective use of hyperlinking. Here we
could include knowing how many hyperlinks to include in a text and why,
what to link to, understanding the effects of over- (or under-) linking in a
text, and so on.

9. • VISUAL, MEDIA AND MULTIMEDIA LITERACY: the Internet is a
multimedia medium par excellence, and we need to understand how
images and multimedia (audio, video) can be used to supplement,
enhance, subvert or even replace text communication. We also need
to know how to produce multimodal messages ourselves, from
sharing our photos on Facebook to creating video clips for YouTube.
In the age of Web 2.0 we are no longer passive consumers who need
to learn how to sit back and critique mass media (although this is still
a key skill). We are now ‘prosumers’ (producers and consumers) of
multimedia artefacts.

10. • GAMING LITERACY: a macroliteracy involving kinaesthetic and
spatial skills, and the ability to navigate online worlds (such as
Second Life) or use gaming consoles such as the XBox.
Although this may seem like a literacy unconnected to
education, there is a growing interest in serious games for
education.
• MOBILE LITERACY: an understanding of how mobile technology
is transforming our world, from issues of hyperconnectivity
(always being connected to the Internet), to understanding how
to use geolocation and augmented reality.

11. • CODE AND TECHNOLOGICAL LITERACY: apart from basic technical
skills (such as knowing how to use a word processing program or
how to send an attachment by email), a basic knowledge of html
coding can help us understand how online tools and products are put
together – and more importantly, enable us to make changes to these
to overcome limitations. As Rushkoff (2010) puts it ‘If we don’t learn
to program, we risk being programmed ourselves’.
• We are not talking here about becoming fully fledged computer
programmers, but rather about developing an awareness of the
basics. Very basic coding skills can help one customise the elements
in one’s blog for example, or route around censorship (for good or
bad).

12. 2. INFORMATION-BASED LITERACIES
• SEARCH LITERACY: the ability to search for information effectively
online. This includes an awareness of search engines beyond Google!
• TAGGING LITERACY: knowing how to tag (or label) online content,
how to create tag clouds and to contribute to ‘folksonomies’ (user-
created banks of tags).
• INFORMATION LITERACY: the ability to evaluate online sources of
information for veracity and credibility. In this age of information
overload, we also need to develop filtering and attention literacy so
as to know what to pay attention to and what not – and when.

13. 3. CONNECTION-BASED LITERACIES
• PERSONAL LITERACY: knowing how to create, project and curate
your online identity. This includes an awareness of issues such
as online safety or identity theft.
• NETWORK LITERACY: the ability to take part in online networks
and to leverage these to help you filter and find information.
For teachers, their PLN (Personal Learning Network) – online
professional contacts – can be useful as a means of tapping
into ongoing professional development.

14. • PARTICIPATORY LITERACY: closely aligned to network literacy,
participatory literacy involves contributing to and participating in
online networks. So not just reading professional development tweets
on Twitter, but contributing your own tweets. Not just reading blog
posts, but leaving comments – or even writing your own blog.
• CULTURAL AND INTERCULTURAL LITERACY: understanding digital
artefacts from other cultures, and interacting effectively and
constructively with people from other cultures take on even more
importance in our global world, where intercultural contact via digital
communication is increasingly possible and increasingly likely.

15. 4. (RE)DESIGN-BASED LITERACIES
• REMIX LITERACY: the ability to repurpose or change already-
made content in order to create something new.

16. 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
Cu
Cultural
Cg
Cognitive
Cn
Constructive
Co
Communicative
Cf
Confident
Cr
Creative
Ct
Critical
Ci
Civic

17. 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
Cu
Cultural
The nature of literacy in a culture is repeatedly redefined as the result of
technological changes (Hannon, 2000) the need to understand different
online contexts and how to interact appropriately in them. For example,
interaction in an online gaming environment such as ‘World of Warcraft’ is
very different to interaction in a formal online course environment.

18. 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
Cg
Cognitive
Functional internet literacy is not the ability to use a set of
technical tools; rather, it is the ability to use a set of cognitive
tools (Johnson, 2008). We need to expose learners to ‘various
ways of conceptualising digital spaces and interactions within
them.

19. 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
Cn
Constructive
Digital literacy is the awareness, attitude and ability of
individuals to appropriately use digital tools in order to enable
constructive social action.” (DigEuLit Project, 2006) this includes
the ability to create remixes and also to take part effectively in
online networks.

20. 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
Co
Communicative
Digital literacy must therefore involve a systematic
awareness of how digital media are constructed and of the
unique rhetorics of interactive communication (Buckingham,
2007). This is understanding how communications media work.
It is, basically, the nuts and bolts of how to communicate in
digital environments.

21. 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
Cf
Confident
Modern society is increasingly looking to [people] who can
confidently solve problems and manage their own learning
throughout their lives, the very qualities which ICT supremely is
able to promote (OECD, 2001) We need to be confident users of
technology and have enough technical expertise to be able to
use technology for our own ends, rather than to be manipulated
by it.

22. 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
Cr
Creative
The creative adoption of new technology requires teachers
who are willing to take risks a prescriptive curriculum, routine
practices and a tight target-setting regime, is unlikely to be
helpful (Conlon and Simpson, 2003). It is the ability to find new
ways to do new things with new tools (in short, to be creative
with new technologies).

23. 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
Ct
Critical
Once we see that online texts are not exactly written or
spoken, we begin to understand that cyber literacy requires a
special form of critical thinking. Communication in the online
world is not quite like anything else (Gurak, 2001). We need to
learn to ‘curate’ and critically understand the resources that we
find, not just superficially skim over oceans of information.

24. 8 ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL LITERACIES
Ci
Civic
The ability to understand and make use of digital literacy
is proving essential to employment success, civic participation,
accessing entertainment, and education (Mehlman, 2007). It is
knowing how to use technology to increase civic engagement
and social action.

25. TEACHERS AND DIGITAL LITERACIES

26. TEACHERS AND CLASSROOM IMPLICATIONS
Our younger learners may appear to be more at ease with new
technologies, but we as educators still have a responsibility to
help them develop some of the more sophisticated digital skills
they lack (Dudeney,Hockly, and Pegrum2012).
We should not expect all of our younger learners to be digitally
literate, and conversely, we should not assume our older learners
are digitally illiterate.
We should adapt our classroom practices according to this digital

27. BLENDED LEARNING
Blended learning is a term increasingly used to describe the way
e-learning is being combined with traditional classroom methods
and independent study to create a new, hybrid teaching
methodology.
It represents a much greater change in basic technique than
simply adding computers to classrooms; it represents, in many
cases, a fundamental change in the way teachers and students
approach the learning experience.
It has already produced an offshoot – the flipped classroom –
that has quickly become a distinct approach of its own.

28. BLENDED LEARNING

29. MOBILE LEARNING
The increasing ubiquity of mobile devices, especially smartphones, has
led to a plethora of mobile apps that claim to support language
learning. Several of the best known of these apps, such as Duolingo,
VoScreen, and Busuu, use adaptive learning to take learners though
pre-packaged content, often in the form of dictation, multiple choice,
and translation exercises, and primarily aimed at memorization.
Adaptive learning uses computer-generated algorithms to identify
individual learner ‘needs’ and, consequently, to serve up individually
focused content. For example, if a language learner struggles to recall
certain third person singular verbs or vocabulary items in an exercise,
the app will identify this, and provide the learner with more practice on
that particular language area.

32. (Ekinci and Ekinci, 2017)

33. MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES
(MOOCS)
A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at
unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to
traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and
problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user
forums to support community interactions among students,
professors, and teaching assistants, as well as immediate feedback to
quick quizzes and assignments.
MOOCs are a recent and widely researched development in distance
education, first introduced in 2006 and emerged as a popular mode of
learning in 2012.

34. MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES
(MOOCS)

35. AUGMENTED REALITY (AR)
Immersive tools like Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality and
Mixed Reality, allows students to experience abstract concept in
three-dimensional space; find meaning of words and links
between concepts. It transforms the passive learning into
technology-assisted immersive learning that gives students an
opportunity to explore and navigate their subjects, and live
inside them like never before.
In education, this provides the opportunity for learners to
integrate language and learning into the experience of everyday
objects and places, and several projects are already underway to
develop learning materials for this.

36. AUGMENTED REALITY (AR)

37. GAME-BASED LEARNING
Game-based learning (GBL) is a type of game play that has
defined learning outcomes. Generally, game-based learning is
designed to balance subject matter with gameplay and the ability
of the player to retain, and apply said subject matter to the real
world.
Children tend to spend hours playing hide and seek, learning the
steps of digital games, such as chess, and engaging in creative
games. Therefore, it can be said that play and learning are
synonymous, leading to cognitive and emotional development
inside a social and cultural context.

38. GAME-BASED LEARNING

40. REFERENCES
Brooks-Young, S. 2010. Teaching with the Tools Kids Really Use. ThousandOaks, CA: Corwin.
Buckingham, D. (2007) Beyond Technology: Children's Learning in the Age of Digital Culture Cambridge: Malden
Conlon, T. & Simpson, M. (2003) 'Silicon Valley versus Silicon Glen: the impact of computers upon teaching and learning: a comparative
study‘ British Journal of Educational Technology 34(2) pp.137-150
Crystal, D. (2008) Txtng: The gr8 db8. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crystal, D. (2011) Internet Linguistics: A student guide. London: Routledge.
Dudeney, G., N. Hockly, and M. Pegrum. 2012. Digital Literacies. Harlow: Pearson.
E Ekinci, M Ekinci (2017). Perceptions Of Efl Learners About Using Mobile Applications For English Language Learning: A Case Study,
International Journal of Language Academy, 5 (5), 175- 193
Hannon, P. (2000) Reflecting on Literacy in Education London: Routledge Falmer
Hockly, N. (2012). Digital literacies. ELT journal, 66(1), 108-112.
Hockly, N., Dudeney, G., & Pegrum, M. (2014). Digital literacies. Routledge.
http://purposefultechnology.weebly.com/how-can-we-embed-digital-literacy-in-the-classroom.html
Gurak, L.J. (2001) Cyberliteracy: navigating the Internet with awareness New Haven: Yale University Press
Johnson, G.M. (2008) 'Functional Internet Literacy: required cognitive skills with implications for instruction' in C. Lankshear, M. Knobel
(2008c) Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices New York: Peter Lang
OECD (2001) Learning to Change: ICT in Schools Paris: OECD
Rushkoff, D. (2010) Program or Be Programmed: Ten commands for a digital age. New York: OR Books.