Further Defining Digital Literacies: Explore and Engage

Defining Digital Literacies NCTE explore

I’m slowly reading and digesting, and appreciating, the National Council of Teachers of English revised definition of Literacy in a Digital Age, and reflecting on the ideas within it.

One of the first topics of the definition could be summed up as Explore and Engage, and the definition ponders a series of questions to consider, framed within the concept of what literacy is when the texts are multi-modal.

Officially, it says: “Explore and engage critically, thoughtfully, and across a wide variety of inclusive texts and tools/modalities”

As a teacher, I think of these concepts quite often when planning learning experiences for my students. I contemplate often about how I can expand my notions of what writing is to include the use of different modalities — from video, to image, to code, to hyperlinks, to video game design, to screen writing (technology as well as plays, I would add), and beyond.

In the definition by NCTE, I particularly like the reference to learners understanding and pushing against the “limitations” of technology they use, to understand or at least acknowledge that a developer might have one idea for a tool, or app, or site but that we, as composers and creators, can also explore workarounds, pushing something into something else.

Often, the only time you can find the limits is by pushing the limits in directions one might not think about. How do we teach this to our students?

For teachers, who need control of the learning environment, this is an uncomfortable place to be in. But if we want to engage our students in meaningful work, it is a shift that has to happen, even if slowly.

There’s no one way but keeping an open mind, as a teacher, about creative, independent students, and sharing our own digital writing experiences — where things failed, where we found a way out, where we found success — seems ever more important.

Peace (along the edges),
Kevin

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