Digital Literacy Level

After thinking about my level of digital literacy for a while and reflecting about the article regarding digital literacy online, I would have to say I am a digital immigrant in the process of applying for "digital citizenship." I say this, because I feel as though I am comfortable with many different types of technologies such as Facebook, e-mail, Microsoft Office programs, and texting. At the same time, I think that my knowledge of other areas of technologies such as blogs, wikis, and website design is developing, but, after looking at the options for our New Literacies Project, I realize that there are many other types of technologies that I have yet to discover and master. So, there are some types of technology where I feel comfortable, and others I feel completely incompetent. I also thought it was interesting that Culligan's online article makes reference to the fact that my generation, since we have been exposed to Nintendo games, are technologically proficient. I think that some video games may help hand-eye coordination when using "computer-screen-like" technology, but with others games, such as "Call of Duty," I fail to see the technological connections. I think it's a huge leap to connecting mastery of video games to mastery of technology in general.

To answer the second part of the blog prompt, I do see definite connections between emerging technological literacy and basic literacy for children. Tompkins discusses the three stages of literacy learning. The first stage is emergent, then beginning, and finally fluent. In the emergent stage, however, Tompkins mentions that students learn many different concepts of print and the alphabetic principle to move them toward beginning literacy. Similarly, there are concepts of technology and alphabetic principles, such as keyboarding skills, that students of technology must learn before they move onto the beginning stage.

Therefore, the emergent stage of basic literacy and digital literacy includes the basic understandings of communication and technology. On page 91 of Tompkins, there is a list of traits that characterize all of the three levels of literacy learning. The emergent stage includes aspects such as noticing, showing interest, and pretending to read, or in the digital literacy this would mean pretending to use a computer or technological device. For this reason, I think that I would be past the basic emergent stage of digital literacy, because I do possess a functional level of technology. This would place me into the beginning level of digital literacy. The beginning stage is characterized by ideas of being able to identify basic concepts, applying prior knowledge, and decoding. I do hope one day to be in the fluent stage of my digital literacy, but I think there is one major challenge to this goal. With book and language literacy, there are some variations, but words, letters, and sounds generally remain constant. With technology, on the other hand, one can never be completely proficient, because there are always new programs or ideas on the horizon that need to be mastered. Therefore, digital literacy is more of a lifelong process to acquiring even a basic temporary level of fluency, because one must continually be aware of new updates to digital systems.