Before we connected, I was thinking about how we, the group members from all around the world, would be able to get together in zoom meetings. I was worrying about the logistics, the people I didn’t know, the unknown tasks in front of us. Then our facilitator appeared, in fact, she was there from the very beginning, and like the good fairy, she took care of all the practical matters, and guided the group into the first tasks and topic. Thank you for that, Hafizah! We ended up in more than one meta-discussion about the course, about group dynamics, and good communication. After a few meetings, we seemed to find our way into it, and we found some rhythm, alone and collectively. 

Digital Literacy 

While I explored the main topic of digital literacy on my own, especially after David White’s webinar, I thought of my experience with computers in comparison to my kids’. When I wrote a B.A. paper in the nineties, I rented a computer at the university. In the same decade, a friend brought a computer (obviously to do some work) on a trip to France, and the rest of us, used it to play Tetris. I remember black screens with green text. I remember backpacking in India and Southeast Asia and waiting for news from home at the GPO (General Post Office); for “real” letters from home. It took a week before I knew the Berlin Wall had fallen!! 

Today, my laptop and my cell phone are my extended arms, hands and fingers. I write, read, watch, and listen. I make purchases, bookings; do my tax return, pay my bills, upload my photos, and communicate with students and colleagues. Still, I prefer reading printed books, walk into a bookstore to browse and feel the concrete books, and I write a great deal of my notes by hand. Who am I in the digital world? 

Marc Prensky (Prensky 2001) discusses our level of digital literacy in terms of his typology “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” and this is challenged (rightly, in my opinion) in the article by White and Le Cornu who propose an alternative, termed “Visitors and Residents” which fulfil a similar purpose in mapping individuals’ engagement with the Web (White & Le Cornu 2011). The different ways when using technology depend on motivation and context, without categorizing users to age or background. However, I am convinced that some of this literacy comes more naturally for those who grew up without knowing anything else. My kids were not born with an Ipad in their hands, but close enough. They are digital residents because it is their world and part of their lifestyle. Also, I would definitely call them digital residents, in many aspects. At an early age, they learned how to handle a computer, and one of them was about six when he taught his  primary school teacher and classmates how to use the school computer as a beneficial tool in the classroom. But digital literacy is clearly more than one thing.

According to JISC, digital literacy could be defined as “those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society” (JISC 2014). But even if we can agree that these capabilities should be there, and define what they are, it is a bit more complicated to reach them, and easier said than done. We must take some things into consideration: 

• What discipline are you in? 
• What tools are available? You need the right tools for the right purposes.
• What is / what feels safe and comfortable is individual.
• It is a process, and we need to take it by and by. 

References

JISC (2014). The seven elements of digital literacy.http://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/, accessed 03/22/21.

Prensky, Marc (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants.  On the Horizon, volume 9, number 5, at http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf, accessed 03/22/21.

Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement
by David S. White and Alison Le Cornu.
First Monday, Volume 16, Number 9 – 5 September 2011
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049 , accessed 03/22/21.