The concept of literacy is notoriously elusive and hard to define. Aside from the shallow and intellectually-impaired definition that sums up literacy in reading and writing printed text, any serious and profound investigation of literacy does, by implication, entail an analysis of the new ways of learning and meaning-making afforded by digitality. New digital media have provided learners with novel and revolutionary ways of producing, discussing, sharing and interacting with text.
These ways, to say the least about them, are multimodally complex and call for an integrated set of skills that go beyond the mere ability to code and decode meaning. In this sense, to be literate in such a multimodal environment requires understanding and using a wide range of interconnected literacies. We are no longer talking about a single literacy as was the case since the invention of writing some 6000 year ago, we are, instead, in front of multiple new emerging and interdependent literacies. Today's students are asked to have a working knowledge of these literacies in order to be able to thrive in a globalized knowledge economy. Katchy Schrock has this wonderful resource where she features some awesome mini-posters defining the key literacies making up today's Literacy (with capital letter) landscape. These visuals are ideal for classroom inclusion. I invite you to check them out and share with your colleagues.
Here is a quick round-up of the major literacies included in these posters:
- Information literacy
- Visual literacy
- Critical literacy
- Media literacy
- Tool literacy
- Digital literacy
- Data literacy
- Global literacy
- Economic literacy
- Civic literacy
- Health literacy
- Historical literacy
- Traditional literacy
Here is an example of Kathy's posters. Check out the rest of these posters from this link.
