What is ‘digital literacy’?

As I began to post on my blog more and more frequently about my explorations into digital and new literacies I began to receive more comments and feedback. Those shorter blog posts that were written in a style more conversational than academic unsurprisingly gained more traction.⁶³ Those that were mainly for my own benefit, such as writing-up Skype conversations with my supervisor, were less popular, although they did begin to interest academics. For example,Joan Vinall-Cox, a Canadian academic, commented on one such post:

‘Really enjoyed reading your description of meeting with your supervisor. I received my Ph.D. in education in 2004 with a thesis describing my change from technophobia to technophilia - http://www.scribd.com/doc/2063617/Following-the..... - I have a couple of suggestions, but you may already be aware of them. One is the idea of networked literacies as described > http://www.thethinkingstick.com/digital-literac..... - just to add more to your literacies complexities ;-> The other, tied in with Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, is Steve Rubel's lifestreaming idea >http://www.socialsquared.com/2009/07/17/the-blo.....

In August 2009, buoyed by the comments (some helpful, some encouraging, some self-serving) I was now receiving on almost everything I posted online to do with my thesis, I decided to share the writing of it in real-time.⁶⁶ I had already begun to do this, posting my introduction in October 2008.⁶⁷ As I used a single Google Doc at this time to write my thesis, anybody could see what I was writing literally as I wrote it. As Ryan Bretag commented on the blog post where I explained what I was doing,

Although there was no obvious way to give feedback on the Google Doc itself, several people got in touch with me via email with advice and useful connections. For example, Bill Lord, a specialist on literacy in Primary schools got in touch via my Google profile suggesting a connection with another doctoral student:

To prompt people to focus and comment upon specific parts of the thesis as I was writing it, I took sections and blogged about them, adding a disclaimer to the top of each post.⁶⁸ Not only was my writing available for public scrutiny, but my research (in the form of quotations from books/articles) was also available at my personal wiki.⁶⁹ Beginning to gain a reputation for writing my thesis in an innovative way and remaining productive whilst having a young family, I blogged about the digital tools I have used to research, organize and write this thesis.⁷⁰

By February 2010 I had realised, especially through conversations with Steve Higgins, my supervisor, that not only should I be talking of digital literacies rather than ‘digital literacy’ but that these were extremely ambiguous terms. This was prompted through a chance purchase of a remaindered book, Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson, reprinted from an original 1930 version. I became fascinated at the potential application of these seven ambiguities to new literacies.⁷¹ I set about mapping different types of new literacies onto Empson’s seven types of ambiguities.⁷² Ultimately, this led to my first journal article, co-authored with my supervisor, and Chapter 5 of this thesis.

In April 2010 I moved from working in schools to working in Further and Higher Education with JISC infoNet.⁷³ Whereas my previous readership had been predominantly teachers and those who worked in or with schools, suddenly I was interacting with those in universities. They not only had more time to explore these ideas, but more interest in the ideas themselves. I had a book review published in a journal⁷⁴ (I eventually sent this book on to Stephen Downes, who was interested in it) and continued to get increasingly-useful feedback upon the sections of my thesis that I wrote blog posts about.

The launch of the Apple iPad changed my thinking about digital literacies as it seemed that a certain amount of what was being included under its banner was procedural. I began to wonder how much poor design contributed to the need for ‘digital literacy’.⁷⁵ It was also in summer 2010 that I began to feel the strain of using Google Docs as the place to write (as opposed to share) my thesis. Seeing software called Scrivener coming highly recommended by various authors and academics, I decided to invest in it.⁷⁶ This made it a lot more easy to manage the tens of thousands of words that now constituted my thesis.

I had a major breakthrough in November 2010 in terms of understanding the reasons for the lack of debate about digital literacies in the UK and in terms of increasing numbers of people becoming aware of my research. A blog post I wrote entitled ‘Media Literacy: the biggest enemy of UK ‘digital literacy’ initiatives?’⁷⁷ (which eventually formed part of Chapter 2) was tweeted and re-tweeted on Twitter many times. By December 2010, however, I was feeling the strain of juggling a new job, writing in various places, my thesis, a three year-old son and a pregnant wife. I took three weeks off almost everything digital.⁷⁸

In early 2011, aware that I was likely to complete my thesis and submit my thesis this year, I began to think about again separating out my work on digital and new literacies from my personal blog. I registered the domain http://literaci.es and began to post updates and thoughts at this address. However, practicalities and distractions such as my newborn daughter’s allergies, launching Purpos/ed⁷⁹ and setting up a consultancy business has meant that I have written less blog posts focusing instead on adding words towards this thesis.