Book Description Multiliteracies for a Digital Age serves as a guide for composition teachers to develop effective, full-scale computer literacy programs that are also professionally responsible by emphasizing different kinds of literacies. Stuart A. Selber also proposes methods for helping students move among these literacies in strategic ways.
Defining computer literacy as a domain of writing and communication, Selber addresses the questions that few authors of other computer literacy texts consider: What should a computer literate student be able to do? What is required of literacy teachers to educate such a student? How can functional computer literacy fit within the values of teaching writing and communication as a profession? Reimagining functional literacy in ways that speak to teachers of writing and communication, he builds a framework for computer literacy instruction that blends functional, critical, and rhetorical concerns in the interest of social action and change.
Multiliteracies for a Digital Age reviews the extensive literature on computer literacy and critiques it from a humanistic perspective. This approach, which will remain useful as new versions of computer hardware and software inevitably replace old versions, helps to usher students into an understanding of the biases, belief systems, and politics inherent in technological contexts. Selber redefines rhetoric at the nexus of technology and literacy and argues that students should be prepared as authors of twenty-first-century texts that defy the established purview of English departments. The result is a rich portrait of the ideal multiliterate student in a digital age and a social approach to computer literacy envisioned with the requirements for systemic change in mind.
DISCUSSION
I just finished reading Selber: 1/Reimagining Computer Literacy. Rather then wait to come together in class and discuss this issue, I thought I’d use a little technology to generate discussion about the reading now that it’s fresh in my mind. J
Initially, I was going to save this reading for last but as I started looking over the chapter I became intrigued with Selber’s ideas about technology literacy and practice, the next thing I know I was finished with the chapter. As I recall, we were not reading beyond chapter 1 this week, which Ann will be facilitating in the discussion on Thursday.
What I found most interesting about the first chapter was his discussion about myths of technology. Just because we invest in our technology infrastructure dose not necessary mean that students or instructors will be able to use it use the technology in a meaningful way. Just this week, I had an adjunct professor tell me that one of her students was unable to cut and paste in MS Word. I found it surprising that a master’s level student did not have basic computer skills. In my own class, I have seen a number of students wrestle with posting assignments on blackboard via the digital box. I’m also in the process of grading papers on the “Who am I?” assignment and feel irritated at the superficial level that most students answer the questions (and this is an advance standing class). In some cases, there is poor sentence and paragraph structure and most use terms without connecting them to meaning. So they will throw in the word “culture” a few times as if that answers the question, but don’t provide a definition or other information that indicates they understand the concept. For that reason, this chapter was particularly interesting.
As I read the chapter, I also found myself thinking back about my work at MetLife as a teleservice representative in their pensions department. Each morning, we arrived at 7:45 (to accommodate EST) and become a Borg. I would put in my ear phone and mike to take phone calls. I would boot my computer and bring up the required programs as well as enter secured databases with my appropriate passwords. At precisely 7:45 the calls were released to a pool of 15 representatives and each of would average 120 calls per day. In our department meetings, I recall conversations about average time per call, how long clients were on hold, number of key stroke made by the representative and time away from our cubes. As we walked through the building, we would enter codes to access copy machines or send faxes, some doors were secured so we had to swipe them with our id badges, not to mention the video cameras that monitored the floor and the supervisor who walked around trouble shooting and making sure we were available. At the time, I had just finished reading 1984 by George Orwell and could not help but feel that I was under constant surveillance. I developed a deep resentment toward the technology and shared the opinion that “computers are evil, tools of the devil” (p. 11) at the same time, I was reading Kaczynski’s (a.k.a. Unabomber) manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future, about the consequences of technology on the human race. I became aware that I needed use technology so that technology is not always using me. So I worked hard to understand new technological advances (I believe I would score pretty high on the computer literacy student evaluations as described in the book) but I still hold deep resentment for the intrusiveness of technology. By the way, I left MetLife because I could not tolerate Snoopy always breathing down my back. Corporations align themselves with a warm fuzzy mascot to camouflage their corporate fascism.
While at Boston College, I had the honor of studying policy with John McNutt who has done a great deal of writing about Social Work and technology. As a profession he claimed that we lagged in our ability to effectively use technology to assist in our work (e.g. PDA, Laptops, Nonprofit infrastructures, access to current research, etc). Consequently, we lack the ability to organize and engage in community practice. He would discuss the demonstrations against the G-7 meetings in Seattle and Washington and how the internet and other forms of technology helped to organize those activities and how Social Work was noticeably absent. We as a profession also suffer from being on the wrong side of the digital divide, like people of color, the poor, and other marginalized groups, feeling that we do not need to incorporate technology in practice. But as Selber discusses, we need to be “users of technology’ as well as “questioners of technology” as well as “producers of technology” which is part of reflective praxis.
I was particularly impressed with the way he structured his argument with principals of critical realism. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book.
I started thinking about the use Borg, a Star Trek reference of organic beings that are also made up of technological mechanisms that create a collective consciousness, where individuality is obsolete and assimilation into the collective is the comfort of belonging to the group. I recall Walter suggesting we do some quick research on Cyborgs, and so I came back and found this link to a chapter by Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, which offers a nice introduction to these ideas. I just finished reading it and recall an early class in SW Theory where I was told that I had commited blasphemy. I suppose I am a cyborg…so I think I’ll need to do more reading on this so I can find a way to resist and become more fully human.
I also thought of Maureen, with some of your comments about feminism and animal rights. It will be interesting to hear what you have to say about this artile. ;)
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