On Safari Looking for Lions; What we do not see is the Roar of Digital Literacy Behind Us

What we all must come to grips with is how our learning culture is changing.  It is believed we're living at the instant of the greatest change in human communication in human history. We now have the capability of communicating instantly globally. This is the time to be engaged in the work of digital literacy. In this article I am going to address some incremental changes before I introduce what I believe to be a fundamental change in learning. The incremental change isn't about how students learn, or about the pencils, papers, and textbooks. It is about how people are working. People today work with laptops and word processing tools. It is not so much about going to the library or reading a textbook. It is about the workspaces. The work spaces that are changing as it becomes  possible on media devices to research, not at the school library, but how individuals can research the riches of the world as they're stored on the web. The work spaces are not like the library anymore. Libraries that hold a certain number of books when a student requests the title may have already been checked out. This is about the new libraries of consumable text. It is about the new workspaces that have created the possibility of sharing knowledge infinitely.

The second  incremental change is how it has become possible to collaborate using networking technology to compose not simply with text but also to compose with images, film, and whatever individuals find archived on the web. You can now compose media in forms of sound documents, visual documents and text documents composed out of information on the web. It is now possible to collect together an experience and weave them into a coherent document. Nor are the materials we work with just inclusive of the past.  Media is now moving to real time where individuals move in and out of print base to image base  content. Real time material becomes reusable content instantaneously as networks and composition tools provide faster collections of reusable redistributed media. These are all incremental changes made in incremental steps that are making an impact on literacy. Digital literacy has made its way from pencil, paper, text driven classrooms, and visits to the library. These are the new spaces of web found knowledge where digital media is remixed into text and visual compilations.

As we work in this new digital environment we work with a new kind of material; material that changes before our eyes. This is the information that is hyperlinked, aggregated and curated. As our workspaces change  we are also experiencing higher levels of creativity emerging on the fore front of the production of digital media. These productions are being created by individuals using tools that are assisting them in media curation;  media that is reproduced in visual form supported by text and sound. These are the curators who share knowledge through networks of other individuals who believe that ideas do not belong to us individually. These are the creators of curated knowledge that understand knowledge belongs to us as a culture. This is the fundamental change that educators must embrace; that ideas are interactive and are shared freely.

Many forms of knowledge sharing is available, through productions, and online artifacts. In the creation of digital compilations is a study of digital literacy within itself. Every time a story is produced the curator of digital media can recreate alternative stories, using the theme and storyline of the one created before it.  The limits and restrictions are of remixed media and are largely the ones we place on ourselves. If we are to make an argument for the humanities schools, we will need to make compositions that are attractive, and compelling; ones where individuals pay attention to the auditory details of the experience. The ideas of fundamental change is not incased in the increments of change, it is in the availability of resources.  To create the new culture of literacy, schools need the fundamental resources; the resources of inspiring principals and teachers embracing the ideas of teaching visual literacy. We currently do not have a curriculum that supports the ideas behind the curation and creation of digital content. It needs to be invented. Schools will need to reinvent inspiring work spaces that inspire students to learn through the use of tools that allow them to aggregate, curate and create digital media. What needs to be created are idea driven documents that can be shared and resourced for others to learn. In this new world of digital spaces schools should show the world its purpose and that is the sharing of ideas.