Jules News

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LITERACY

Information technology literacy is a syncretic mix of print and media literacies. Some elements of each type of literacy translate well to the web and others do not.

Print Literacy

What translates to ITL:

·Critical reading, writing and analytical skills
·Research methods and discernment (editing) skills
·Grammar, academic standards, discipline

What does not translate:

·Sequential narration and analysis – In print, the writer determines the order of sustained arguments and the reader is passive. On the computer, the navigational logic is up to the reader.

Media Literacy

What translates to ITL:
·Decoding and deconstruction of sources
·Critical reading and analysis of media content

What does not translate:
·Writing goes undefined in media literacy – Students are not expected to produce film or television content, only to read and interpret it.

Media literacy standards have imported the undefined writer into ITL.

·ACRL Standards

·Determine the extent of information needed
·Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
·Evaluate information and its sources critically
·Incorporate selected information into one's knowledge base
·Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
·Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally

What the ACRL standards lack:

·They are about reading only.
·Like the media writer, the IT writer goes undefined.

·But no genuine literacy teaches reading without writing.
·Let’s go back to a basic schoolhouse lesson.

Three R's of Information Technology Literacy

·Reading -- access, edit, integrate information (ACRL Standards)
·Writing -- caption text; navigate logic, build information architecture
·Resolution – manipulate images, construct and manage files, design and publish pages

Information Technology Literacy

·Access and critical analysis of sources with research methods
·Decoding and deconstruction of sources with editing and discernment
·Online composition -- non-linear narrative and analysis
·Grammar, academic standards and discipline of the Three R's

Soph proficiencies -- ACRL (Reading) Standards plus the other two R's

Senior proficiencies -- same academic standards for critical reading, writing and analytical thinking skills for print, digital media and online information, advanced web environment writing skills.

Posted by Jules at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was thinking about Stallman's example of the operation of the law as an analogy for free software. And also about the privatization of the broadcast spectrum as an analogy of software becoming unfree. Unfree as in colonized.

Like law, I think the fields of science and math are instructive comparisons. Proprietary software is like Euclid trying to patent geometry. Or Maxwell trying to keep secret his theorems.

If those symbolic compositions had been made proprietary, everybody would still be paying a nickle to Euclid every time they made a calculation. Euclid would be as rich as Bill Gates by now and all of us that much poorer.

The industry of photography is an interesting historical example. The English fell behind the French in few industries in the nineteenth century, but photography was one of them.

That happened in part because the English tried to make equipment and technique designs proprietary and the French made theirs public domain. English innovation was stifled by secrecy and their techniques fell out of use. Hence Daguerrotype and Lumiere.

It's interesting to me that photography works as an analogy because computers and cameras are both about images and facsimile. Their use is about controlling information.

Posted by Jules at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)