Today a regarding whether or not basic HTML and CSS should be included in every digital media literacy toolset. That is a mouthful. Having a literacy with two modifiers and and suffix really complicates the question. I could try to address the idea of what it means to be literate, or digital literacy, or media literacy, etc etc, but what really grabbed me was the toolset. I will try to provide a framework for my thinking around this and I hope some of you participate in the discussion. Any literature around it is greatly welcome in the discussion.

Literacy – More Traditionally

In a traditional sense literacy seems to be grounded in coding and decoding information. Lets jump a head to scribes. You could dictate to a scribe and they would convert that information into a series of glyphs (letters) on say a parchment. Then would send it off and if there was a literate person receiving it they could read the glyphs and turn them back into oral speech or understand them internally. Fair enough, Gutenberg comes along and creates a standard set of blocks that had letters on them. These letters had to be arranged in a matrix so that the glyphs would be in a certain order (encoding) and by pressing paper with ink readers could understand what was being communicated (decoding), assuming they were ‘literate’. Jump forward to computers we see a similar trend. There are now keys that are associated to specific glyphs and by depressing them the glyph appears on the screen. I as the author have to arrange them specifically so hopefully you, the reader, can understand each word, sentence, paragraph. I can still wield a pen, a die set and a hammer, a die and press, a computer, a typewriter. Regardless of the tool it still seems that the real literacy is in the encoding and decoding process used, information/communication. I can write in the sand with a stick, or arrange letters with a stone, but my understanding of language transcends the tools.

Literacy – In a more ‘modern’ context 

 I use modern loosely here as language, reading, and writing are still critical today. What I would like to use as an example is video creation. Often when we look at digital or media literacy, or any combination there of, understanding video and creating video seem to be popping up everywhere. Initially I would need a film camera to capture the video, an editing desk to splice film strips together, and then a film player to view the production. This has changed over time to Beta, VHS, miniDV, flash, hard drive cameras. Editing has gone through many different tools as well. Maybe I can use Sony Vegas, Windows Movie Maker, Final Cut, Premiere, etc. But truly understanding what makes a video effective, or understanding what I am viewing I think transcends the mere tools as well. Just like a play you see in a theatre, some are written and performed well others are not. I guess the conclusion I am coming to is that yes tools are used to code information, and sometimes to decode. But I don’t think specific tools are an integral part of literacies, there is something more. Perhaps if it were a ven diagram tools would be one circle, literacies another and there would be something in the overlap.

What do you think?