Multiple Literacies
Last week’s topic of literacy is a big one. To me, literacy is more than just being able to read and write to communicate. Today, there are multiple types of literacies including digital/media literacy, physical literacy, financial literacy, mathematical literacy, and even spatial literacy. I connected with Bart, Leah T, Patricia and Christine B’s video presentation and readings this week. They touched on the importance of media literacy and the imperative we have as educators in teaching students the skills to be media literate like critical thinking, navigating fake news and even emotional literacy as it relates to creating content.
Physical Literacy
A couple of years ago I participated in a University of Regina study titled Preparing for Physical Literacy: Exploring Post-Internship Students’ Understanding of Physical Literacy and its Role in the Saskatchewan Physical Education Curriculum. Prior to participating in this study, I truly hadn’t thought about literacy as it related to physical education. The study wanted to know if recent teachers who had just finished internship felt confident in teaching physical literacy through the Saskatchewan Physical Education Curriculum. At the time, I didn’t recognize physical literacy as being separate from physical education. According to Physical and Health Education Canada, physical literacy is a journey upon which children and youth, and everyone, develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to enable them to participate in a wide variety of activities. This is a life skill that can have immensely positive effects on students and people around them. Source: https://phecanada.ca/activate/physical-literacy. Thus, being physically literate, one is able to move and participate in a wide variety of physical ways and settings to enhance their overall well-being.
Just like simply being physically active does not make one physically literate, I recognize that conventional reading and writing does not make one literate and being active with or on digital platforms, does not make one digitally literate. Today, literacy extends in many directions and languages to address the diversity of our population. Students need to be literate in multiple spheres like I mentioned above in order to adapt to life’s changes and be prepared for a life of learning, gaining knowledge and skills and to essentially keep up with the demands of our world.
Why does literacy matter?
Bart’s article “What is media literacy and why does it matter?” states that media’s accessibility and popularity has American’s spending an average of 473 minutes each day consuming media including streaming content. And the daily social media usage worldwide is 145 minutes per day. I would be interested to know how this metric changes in each category including elementary students, middle years students and high school students? This reiterates the importance of needing to teach our students to critically evaluate the content they are consuming.
Algorithmic Literacy
I also found the information on algorithmic literacy an important one worth mentioning. Algorithmic literacy is a new concept stemming from the algorithms that websites and apps use to provide you with media that is specific to you and based on your previous activities and habits. I was thinking about this recently, as my journey with social media has continued over this course. I have been consuming content on Instagram and one day noticed a rather disturbing video of snakes being dropped on a stove in a commercial kitchen. It creeped me out and I wondered why on earth is Instagram showing me this!? I never watch creepy videos – all of the content being shown to me is educational content and parenting content. I wondered… How can I remove this video? I don’t want to see more of these types of videos. I Googled it. Google told me that I can’t remove it from the content feed, but that I need to skip over the undesired content and eventually more content that you do want will fill its place.
As educators, we need to acknowledge algorithmic literacy and teach students to critically evaluate the content being presented to them as these algorithms get smarter and target us with more and more content. Source: https://www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/what-is-media-literacy.
Let me know what you think about this topic:
- Have you ever been caught off guard by algorithmic content targeting you?
- Do you talk to your students about algorithmic content as it pertains to specific applications?
Great post! Kelly and I were talking about how Literacy means the ability to read and write but that is not enough in a digital world. It comes down to critical thought and the ability to understand and synthesize information now! During the covid shut down, I had my students watch the Social Dilemma and we talked about how cookies and history tracks our data. Tricky conversation to have, but the more you relate things to TikTok, the more they seem to understand lol.
Difficult world we and our students have to navigate!
Thx for the post!
Thanks for the comment, Dalton! Yes, I actually turned on the Social Dilemma the other night just to re-watch it as I was working away. It really makes you think about the data being gathered and tracked on each person.
Isn’t the Social Dilemma scary to think about? How often do you really stop and think about what data is being collected, stored, shared, used, etc.? I often don’t think of it at all, and absent-mindedly hit the accept button to continue on my way. After watching the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, I didn’t really realize how client lists can be bought and sold, and how data is shared, transmitted, etc. It’s actually quite scary to think about.
One of the reasons I have not explored TikTok more is because I am bombarded with content that I do not want to view. Even when I started to follow certain people, I still felt overwhelmed by the amount of content I really didn’t want to view. I completely agree with you that developing algorithmic literacy is an important skill for all people. Being able to recognize and manage (in some form) the content that is being selected for you is essential.