It’s true every time I hear the term digital literacy, I want to cringe and here is why.
It’s not that I am saying its the wrong term – it is that I think we might need to expand our thoughts around this idea. Here is why…
First let’s take a step back to define literacy.
Literacy is competence or knowledge of something – it’s the part of learning that requires one to make meaning.
Kids today can easily make meaning of an iPhone or Chromebook and the apps. They can use them, choose them, and even abuse them. With relative ease they can make and create meaning and share ubiquitously with the world through the use of technology – and often without any instruction from adults – often better than adults. This is how one should understand the term literacy. Literacy is defined as competence or knowledge in a specified area. Those students who were born into a household with technology, develop an almost innate competence with technology, with some exceptions of course, and their literacy can stem from their lack of fear in using the devices. Don’t believe me? Watch a fourth grader be introduced to a new app or tool. They touch, tap and/or click all of the buttons and dive head first into using the new app and almost always emerge able to use and produce with it – with relative ease.
So here is why I want to cringe. What students don’t possess most often is a not digital literacy, but rather digital fluency. As educators if we spend our time talking about literacy – and what feels like ONLY literacy – and we leave out the more educationally important idea of fluency we might be doing students an injustice. Fluency is the term that SHOULD be at the heart of everything we are talking about. It is where the transfer of knowledge happens, where kids apply that literacy they developed without our help, and get past the making meaning stage to a place where they are transferring knowledge on their way to becoming effective digital citizens and learners.
To better understand why I cringe lets take a closer look at fluency.
Fluency is defined as the ability to express oneself easily, and in very simple terms, having fluency allows you to be able to get to an end result – to have your message received and understood. Fluency is where we need to shift our rhetoric around students and their use of technology for learning. Fluency is different than literacy because the former is simply making meaning of something and the latter is the important concept of transfer of knowledge – it’s where digital savviness begins to grow from a seedling to a beautiful blossoming tree.
For many years, I have come back to this definition posted on Socialens Blog that states:
“A literate person is perfectly capable of using the tools. They know how to use them and what to do with them, but the outcome is less likely to match their intention. It is not until that person reaches a level of fluency, however, that they are comfortable with when to use the tools to achieve the desired outcome, and even why the tools they are using are likely to have the desired outcome at all.”
This definition really encompasses this shift we need to make. We need to reframe our idea of digital knowledge. While we SHOULD pay attention to digital literacies, when there are gaps, the deep and important learning happens when we turn our focus to digital fluency.
Here is an important example from the classroom:
Take online searching: students are literate enough to search on Google. The question we should be asking as educators is – are they fluent in search? Do they know how to craft a search that will deliver to them a page of really meaningful and purposeful results – results that come from mostly credible sources? Do they have the fluency to evaluate the information the search produces. I promise you the answer is no in 98% of cases. There is a fluency to search, to knowing what happens when you add quotes, or the minus symbol, or keywords and how this all affects the end result. This is the digital fluency of understanding the intended message (or query) you are delivering to Google.
Students need to understand how to effectively communicate – to be digitally fluent enough to pick the right app for the right outcome, or even app-smash some tools together to get the biggest and most optimal effect. As teachers we need to be digitally fluent enough to know which tools will garner the best information about students as learners, and when technology can offer us real amplification opportunities for learning.
So, I cringe because it’s the wrong term that is our center of attention…I believe that it’s not literacy, but fluency that should be our focus. As we grow stronger in our understanding of technology and learning, it will become important for us to shift our focus from digital literacy to fluency. As educators in the 21st Century, we need to be able to differentiate between the two, to understand the difference, and to understand why one may be even more important in school than the other. In the end because digital fluency is where we have the transfer of knowledge – it stands out in importance and causes me to cringe when we deny its importance by our sometimes myopic focus on digital literacy.
Help me by changing the conversation at your school or district. Do it for the kids!