Responses to Doug Belshaw's presentation at his Invited Speaker Literacy Research Conference session, Marco Island, Florida, December, 2014.

1. Web literacies
Richard Beach

2. Belshaw book, The Essential
Elements of Digital Literacies
 Skills are not learned in isolation but
rather developed within a context.
 Literacies are plural and not neutral
when it comes to power, social identity
and political ideology.
 There is a continuum of skills, through
competencies up to literacies.
 Literacies are best taught when the
learner can see the whole picture of what
they are learning and where they are
going (‘progressive encoding’).

3. Belshaw: 8 Essential Digital
Literacies
1. Cultural
2. Cognitive
3. Constructive
4. Communicative
5. Confident
6. Creative
7. Critical
8. Civic

5. Strengths: Web Literacy
Framework
 Codifies a range of different practices
 People lack ability to employ practices
 Need to provide online support for use
of these practices
 Effective online searches (Leu et al.,
2012)

6. Limitations: Web Literacy
Framework: Pedagogical
translation?
 Literacy practices are social
 Literary practices are cultural
 Use of practices depends on contexts
 Example: Collaboration
 Example: Digital video
production/remix

7. Problem: Lack of
collaboration
 79% of teachers: digital tools
“encourage greater collaboration
among students”(Purcell, Buchanan, & Freidrich,
2013, p. 3).
 But, only one-third of students
engaged in collaborative work in the
classroom
 3% reported using video conferencing,
discussion boards, Skype (2013
Gallup survey)

8. Mozilla: “Teaching Kits”: Remix:
Gendered ads

9. boyd (2014): “context
collapse”
Contextualizing different
invisible potential audiences
Competing audience agendas
Comments/responses: by
whom?

10. Critical: Digital identities:
Facebook
 encourages an identity that is
extroverted, outgoing and even
sometimes narcissistic; most
importantly, one that would be
approved by their peer group. The
pursuit of such an identity made it
difficult for the participants to critically
engage with the site, as they become
immersed in the social reality of
Facebook (Pangrazio, 2013, p. 39).

11. Web Apps
Apps: Affordances
• Affordances not “in” app
• App Activity
• Affordances created by teachers
• Activity App

13. Transaction: Experiential
learning and tool use (McLain,
2014)
 “Replicant” apps
◦ replicate or reify ways of learning made
possible by other tools such as flash-
cards or calculators.
 “Extender” apps “
◦ “extend the learning experience in ways
not otherwise possible except through
app technology” (p. 196), fostering
alternative learning experiences made
possible through app affordances.

14. Recontextualization (Van
Leeuwen, 2008)
 Learning “memes”: Connectivism
(Stephen Downes):
 “Knowledge is a network
phenomenon, to “know” something is
to be organized in a certain way, to
exhibit patterns of connectivity. To
“learn” is to acquire certain patterns.
This is as true for a community as it is
for an individual.”

15. Steps in recontextualizing (Blommaert,
2005)
● Decontextualizing: removed from
context
● Recontextualizing:
● place in new context
● Entextualizing:
● analyze as new text

17. Nexus analysis: Meaning of
memes

21. VoiceThread: Multiple audiences
share responses to images

22. “Instructional Chain”
Mapping: contrasting concepts
Diigo: analyzing formulated arguments
VoiceThread: building arguments using
images based on carbon chains
Google Docs: drawing on all of what
they have learned

24. Voyant: www.voyeurtools.org Analysis
of Moby Dick

25. Use of data to inform
interpretation
whale
Ahab

26. Readers’ connections

27. Reviewers’ connections on Amazon:
Infinite Jest

28. Web 2.0 (Aghaei, Nematbakhsh.
& Farsani, IJWesTn, 2012)

29. Web 3.0 (Aghaei, Nematbakhsh.
& Farsani, IJWesTn, 2012)