What are digital literacies?
As a language learner, you may wonder why you should concern yourself with becoming digitally literate while studying for your language courses. After all, you are learning a language, not computing!
Well, this is true, but digital literacies are not just about computer skills. They are a set of individual and social skills that will allow you to interpret, manage, share and create meaning in a wide range of digital spaces and communication channels. As a language learner, you will have to access and evaluate information in your target language. You will have to interact, communicate, and collaborate with people from different cultural backgrounds, either socially, academically, or professionally. If you are just starting a university course, it is very likely that your language lecturers will interact with you not only in the classroom but via email, forums, and of course your university Learning Management System. If you are about to embark on a period of residence abroad, you will have to learn how to navigate the digital spaces inhabited by your hosts.
Digital literacies matter…
Literacy in the 21st century is no longer about reading and writing using paper and a pen (which are also technologies…), although these are still extremely important. Communication is increasingly multimodal (i.e., using text, audio, sounds, images, video), and being digitally literate is essential for a successful academic or professional career.
A literacy narrative
So how do we become literate in a second language? And what can we do when we are digitally literate? Some students from Purdue University have created and shared digital artefacts telling their story, such as the one below. Will you be able to do this after engaging with the activities that are proposed on this site?
To learn more about digital literacies for language learning
The table below gives you a list of the digital literacies that are covered on this site. They are based on the work of Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum (2013). To learn more about a specific literacy, and to get an overview of activities available in your target language, click on the appropriate link.
| Main focus | Literacy | Definition | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Print Literacy | Ability to understand and create a variety of written texts | EN FR IT |
| Texting Literacy | Ability to communicate in "textspeak" | EN FR IT | |
| Hypertext literacy | Ability to process and to use hyperlinks in a digital artefact | EN FR IT | |
| Visual media and multimedia literacy | Ability to interpret and create multimodal texts (i.e., using text, images, sounds, and/or video) | EN ES FR GA IT | |
| Gaming literacy | Ability to navigate, interact with and achieve goals in a gaming environment | EN FR IT | |
| Mobile literacy | Ability to navigate, interpret information from, contribute information to, and communicate through the mobile internet, and to orient oneself in the space of the internet of things and augmented reality. | EN FR IT | |
| Code and technological literacy | Ability to read, write, critique and modify computer code in order to create or tailor software and media channels | EN FR IT | |
| Information | Search literacy | Ability to critically use a variety of search engines and services | EN FR IT |
| Information literacy | Ability to evaluate documents and artefacts and to assessing their credibility | EN FR IT | |
| Tagging literacy | Ability to interpret and create folksonomies | EN FR IT | |
| Filtering literacy | Ability to reduce information overload by using online networks as screening mechanisms | EN FR IT | |
| Connections | Personal literacy | Ability to use digital tools to shape and project a desired online identity | EN FR IT |
| Network literacy | Ability to connect with relevant networks to filter and obtain information, to communicate with and inform others; to identify collaborators, and to spread influence | EN FR IT | |
| Participatory literacy | Ability to interpret documents and artefacts from a range of cultural contexts, as well as interact with Ability to be 'produser' (producer-user) of digital content in the service of personal and/or collective goals | EN FR IT | |
| Cultural and intercultural literacy | Ability to interpret documents and artefacts from a range of cultural contexts, as well as interact with interlocutors across different cultural contexts | EN FR IT | |
| (re-) Design | Remix literacy | Ability to create and share new meanings by sampling, modifying and/or combining pre-existing texts and artefacts, and by responding to and building on others’ remixes within digital networks | EN FR IT |
