When I was in middle school or high school, I didn’t hear much about digital literacy. Schools in China still mainly followed the traditional textbook format. With black boards and white chalks, students just sat there with their notebooks open. In high school, for those who had digital devices like the phone or Gameboys, these items were prohibited to use during school and could be punished for it. I remember the many times in high school that my phones were being taken away by the teachers and I’ve gotten several detentions. However, much of this classroom situation has changed, even in Chinese schools. Today, schools especially in the urban cities are required to have technologies integrated into classroom. Digital literacy as a new twenty-first century concept is quickly growing its roots in all cosmopolitan societies. Twenty years ago, it was a luxury to own a digital device.
Twenty years later, digital devices have become commodities, even a necessity. From Troy Hicks and Kristen Hawley Turner’s (2013) article from the English Journal, digital literacy can’t wait no more. This makes a lot of sense, especially because everything that we do in our daily lives, digital technology is all around us. Digital literacy serves students “both in school and beyond” (Hicks & Turner, 2013, p. 59). The reality is that students will need to have digital literacy in school. For example, taking both online and physical classes, we are required to know how to use Google Search Engine, PowerPoint, Google Share, Microsoft Word, Zoom, and Canvas where we learn how to navigate our way from doing research on an assignment, to creating the content, to submitting the assignment online. With everything “online,” I can also imagine that graduating from school also requires digital literacy. For example, with the Covid-19 pandemic, digital literacy has really shown its importance as people work from home. Therefore, this shows that the engagement in digital literacy is not only limited in school, but it extends far beyond the walls into work and social life. Digital literacy is not a luxury, but a necessity.
Since technology became a major part of the contemporary life, I recall taking many classes that asked students to consider the advantages and disadvantages of digital technology. From Antero Garcia (2019), the article from Research in the Teaching of English discusses about finding the balance between the good and bad. Digital literacy faces a dichotomy. It is supposed to be a virtual platform for the freedom of speech and expression; yet, at the same time, technology is used as a tool to emotionally manipulate, create propaganda, and framing that leads to digitally mediated oppression (Garcia, 2019, p. 192). There is a lot of political discussion where digital technology has been accused of being the medium for “fake news” and click baits that offer inaccurate, yet emotionally stirring information. I believe that digital literacy is the ability to differentiate between real and fake, right and wrong, and subjective and objective.
References
Hicks, T., & Turner, K.H. (2013). No longer a luxury: Digital literacy can’t wait. English
Journal, 102(6).
Garcia, A. (2019). Centering analog literacies in a era of digital harm. Research in the
Teaching of English, 54(2). 192–194.