Digital Literacy is Contextualized: Residents in Facebook/twitter does not equal resident in Canvas/Zoom

I am skeptical about the term “digital native.” The relationship between young generation and technology requires more nuanced understanding. In my opinion, it is risky if the educators take students’ digital literacy for granted and downplay the necessity of the support system that helps young generation adapting to the digital literacy in the educational context. So the key question for the students is that how educators can transfer students’ digital literacy from their comfort zone to some areas that they are not familiar with?

For example, for “I” in the first week’s scenario, he/she may be confident in his/her literacy in the personal arena (e.g., Facebook), but is not confident about the digital literacy in the online teaching environment. It is more obvious during the Covid-19, when most teaching activities all around the world suddenly changed into the online environment. Most discussion and focus is on the course development and teaching style. We tend to take for granted that our students would adapt to the teaching environments swiftly and smoothly. To my experience, there are many workshop and training for the teachers and course directors but these supports for students are rarely seen. In my own course during the summer, students in the summer course had various difficulties in adapting to not only new teaching platforms but only many basic educational digital literacy such as finding resources in the library. At the end of Belshaw’s talk (2012), he mentioned that we need to keep enhancing our digital literacy even the young generation.

Digital Literacy is more about Willingness and Motivation

I agree with White (2012) that digital literacy is not only related to age. Digital literacy is not only a generation thing but rather a willingness or motivation. What is often discussed is that old generation are more reluctant to gain more digital literacy because they think they are not as good as their peers or young generations. I think in this aspect, the question is how we can motive ourselves to keep gaining digital literacy when we are getting “old.”

I am Generation Y. I am not Generation N but I am not that worry about my digital literacy. But rather I need the digital tool (maybe not tool) or not. My own experience is that before the summer I was not familiar with any online teaching tools such as zoom, canvas, and iMovie. Not because I am afraid of learning new tools but rather I did not need them at that time while I am focusing on finishing my dissertation. In this regard, I agree with White (2012) that digital literacy is not only related to age but rather willingness and motivation. WhenI have motivated as White (2014) mentioned in his video, it is possible to catch up quickly. In my case, I need to coordinate a online summer course. I think two elements are crucial in supporting one’s motivation in enhancing digital literacy.

First, as illustrated in the ASTI model (Figure 1), support and help is crucial. In developing my summer online course, I have a mentor, a senior lecturer, and an assistant, from Canvas, that were available for answering questions. I think the support and help from technician and senior staff is valuable.

Second, the ASTI model also highlights the importance of activities. I think it is also important for using the resources from the institution. I attended several workshop and training programmes. They are also useful in developing digital literacy in the context that you are not quite familiar with.

Reference:

White D (2014) Visitors and residents (part 1). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI&feature=youtu.be.

Belshaw D (2012) The essential elements of digital literacies. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78.

Developing digital literacies (2014) JISC guide. Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/.