Selfe & Hawisher, "Becoming Literate in the Information Age"

Subtitle: Cultural Ecologies and the Literacies of Technology


This article uses the case studies of two women and traces their developing technological literacies. They represent different generations-- one born in 1966, one in 1986-- races, and areas of the country; both were raised in "middle class" families.

Some interesting ideas: Cultural ecology: the idea that the culture in which you are educated in an eco-system, not a stable, static thing; it is composed of many social factors, etc. I like that.

The article also lets us see how much of their technological literacies were learned outside of school. It doesn't quite say it, but you can see here that school's almost hamper the development of tech lit's. The authors discuss the field of English comp and how it is still generally "alphabetic" (new word) and traditional, using only very basic technology. They suggest that this is because of the ways in which most of us were taught; and perhaps reflects hiring practices of institutions who are slow to see the value in people who teach in new ways.

A theme I really like here is the notion that teachers need to use the literacies that students bring into the classroom; we need to build on them, not negate them. I see this all the time, all around me. Even in the way teachers talk about students. They have so many strengths that don't fit into what we consider academic abilities, and our response is usually to have them leave these elements at the door. What a tragic mistake.

Smaller but interesting points: The authors mention research about young black women being less bound by certain gender roles than their white counterparts, and how can be less discouraged from developing interests in computers. ("exempt from some racially dominant expectations of white female behavior, behavior that excluded, for instance, expertise with machinery." citing Hortense Spillers from Cornell.)

Another salient point is about the family learning process flowing "upstream" as well as "downstream," citing that in 1999 33% of parents asked their kids for tech help, while 55% of kids asked their parents. I wonder what the numbers would be today.

Oh, and, the idea that literacies have lives, that they don't compile, but that they live and die, newer ones replacing older ones. the example used was about how email is the dominant means for people to keep in touch over long distances, not the handwritten letter, and how schools in former times used to emphasize penmanship because that was the primary means of comm. But no more, alas...

All in all, some interesting stuff here; nothing mind blowing or super exciting. Nothing too surprising: kids learn more about tech outside of school than in it. Teachers are blind to students' strengths because they may not appear in forms that _used_ to be considered proper or academic; hence, we need to be more open to these issues. There are tons of race, gender, and class issues involved when it comes to tech literacies, mainly in terms of access. But the article didn't do too much with that. In fact, I might argue that while the two participants were of different races, the artilce might not be much different if they weren't.