Why is the understanding of the new literacies important?

Until recently, I believed ‘literacy’ was the understanding of language through reading and writing and students learnt these skills using traditional resources and techniques. However, with the electronic age, students are faced with a whole new medium of information to navigate their way through and understand. Educators and students need to be able to critically analyse this information on websites and learning software to determine its ‘authenticity, applicability, authorship, bias and useability (Schrock, K 2002).

Since there is not a single body which ensures that all sites are relevant, unbiased and whether they are trying to sell something, students (as well as educators) need to adopt a series of techniques to help them find what they are looking for.

The web is still so young and it is rapidly changing and growing everyday. With change, the design of web sites and learning software is being updated all the time with the idea of being more enjoyable and engaging to the reader. The information may be presented in various ways such as digital images, fonts, size, colour etc. to make it more appealing. We need to teach our students new literacy skills to scan through all the ‘bells and whistles’ and make informed judgements based upon validity.