What are digital literacies?
There are many definitions of digital literacies, many approaches to their integration in the curriculum across all sectors of education systems worldwide. The Digilanguages team has adopted the framework developed by Gavin Dudeney, Nicky Hockly and Mark Pegrum in their 2013 book Digital Literacies. The overarching definition that thus underpins all the content and tasks in this section of the site is reproduced below:
Digital literacies: the individual and social skills needed to effectively interpret, manage, share and create meaning in the growing range of digital communication channels (Dudeney, Hockly, & Pegrum, 2013: 2).
In the videoclip below, Nicky Hockly gives a concise overview of what digital literacies are, why it is important to equip our language students with the skills that will enable to develop both their digital and language skills, and how we can achieve this.
Why should we integrate digital literacies into the language curriculum?
To learn more about digital literacies for language teaching
The table below gives an outline of the different literacies that are covered in this site, following Dudeney’s, Hockly’s and Pegrum’s (2013) taxonomy and definitions. This taxonomy is by no means fixed. It is very likely that new literacies will emerge in the near future!
To learn more about a specific digital literacy or set of literacies, click on the appropriate link. If you want to access the corresponding materials aiming at students, click here.
| Main focus | Literacy | Definition | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Print literacy | Ability to understand and create a variety of written texts | FR IT |
| Texting literacy | Ability to communicate in "textspeak" | FR IT | |
| Hypertext literacy | Ability to process and to use hyperlinks in a digital artefact | EN ES FR IT | |
| Visual and Multimedia Literacy | Ability to interpret and create multimodal texts (i.e., using text, images, sounds, and/or video) | FR IT | |
| Gaming Literacy | Ability to navigate, interact with and achieve goals in a gaming environment | 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. | 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 | FR IT | |
| Information | Search literacy | Ability to critically use a variety of search engines and services | ES FR GA IT |
| Information Literacy | Ability to evaluate documents and artefacts and to assessing their credibility | FR IT | |
| Tagging Literacy | Ability to interpret and create folksonomies | FR IT | |
| Filtering Literacy | Ability to reduce information overload by using online networks as screening mechanisms | FR IT | |
| Connections | Personal Literacy | Ability to use digital tools to shape and project a desired online identity | 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 | 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 | 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 | FR | |
| (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 | FR |
