The Understanding of Digital Literacy
Prior to taking this class I had never heard of the term digital literacy before. From my initial understanding of the term, I thought digital literacy meant how much technological information a person understands. In Eyman’s text he explained that digital literacy is much more complex than we would think. He states this because being literate in the digital world requires users the ability to write and read using sign systems. For example using codes, animations, audios, or images. So being able to communicate using these sign systems is a form of digital literacy.
To better grasp what digital literacy is, let’s try by understanding literary and digital separately. According to Kress, the term literacy refers to the knowledge of or the use of the resource of writing. Digital literacy goes beyond computer based text. Rather, according to Eyeman it is the effective use of symbolic systems, visual representations or language, and digital object manipulation.
Determining what Digital literacy Is
Throughout the text, there were various authors mentioned when trying to decide on what seemed to me, a term or phrase other than digital literacy to describe digital literacy. For example, Selfe and Hwaisher use the term “literacies of technology.” A phrase that includes connecting social practices, people, technology, values, and literate activity. Eyman sees that as a parallel to “rhetoric’s of technology” because it implies the technology taking the credit of literacy for itself. However that’s not what it’s meant to be viewed as. Instead it captures the ways users communicate with one another within digital spaces.
It’s hard to put digital literacy in one bubble or sentence. It’s something complex to understand so it’s even harder to explain it. It’s not something you really speak about either because if it weren’t for this class I probably still wouldn’t have known what the term was or meant.
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