Digital Literacy 2.0 and Media Collage
Integrating Multiple Forms of Sound, Graphics, and Images
Mar 1, 2009
Digital literacy is the term used to refer to being able to understand and interpret the many forms of technology encountered every day. Being literate means to be able to use the modern forms of media. As they evolve into new forms, those forms demand new literacies. This is the meaning of being digitally literate.
New Media is Participatory
Years ago, being literate meant being able to read and write. Reading was largely a passive activity, sometimes enhanced by a discussion of the material, or a letter to the author or editor. Both of those responses took hours if the participants were in close proximity, days if they were not.
Today’s media allows instantaneous and socially based interaction. As soon as a webpage or blog goes online, readers begin commenting, adding thoughts, pictures, music, and links to other sites in their responses. All of these responses, blended together, become part of an online media collage.
Carefully reading and considering the responses to the media can help the creators gauge whether the audience received the message they intended. It might be that a completely unexpected interpretation is discovered in the group process of commenting and responding.
Creating New Media Leads to Understanding
People also create media collages by making mashups, a combination of sound, graphics, words and images drawn from different places. The resulting effect may be quite disparate from the intentions of the authors of the original pieces. Creating these types of presentations lends a better understanding to the effects of editing and the media process.
Art as a Form of Media Literacy
Digital technology has made it possible to create and manipulate art never imagined by the masters of old. Rather than blending and mixing paint, textures, and colors, the new media allows people to combine entire images and enhance them with sound and motion. Visual literacy is integrated with the written online, and requires a knowledge of art principles to be most effective, both in presentation and interpretation.
Reading and Writing Are Still Important in Media Literacy
The ability to respond so quickly and widely to media demands clarity, brevity, and organization. Social media and blogs require a different type of writing than essays or creative writing. Being able to move between the different types of writing shows a certain level of literacy.
Critical reading skills are invaluable in determining what is reliable and what is not online. When a collage of information is presented in so many different ways, it is essential to be able to sift the truth from what is read, seen, or experienced. Effective research skills and the ability to find primary documents are an important part of media literacy.
No longer does being literate mean a person simply knows how to read and write. Future literacy demands that people have knowledge of art, music, and technology, in addition to several very different forms of reading and writing. This digital literacy is creating a renaissance; a cultural and intellectual rebirth in the ways people communicate today.
Further discussion of the topic of digital visual literacy is in the article Visual Communication Literacy Development.
 |
