Thank you to Helene Blower of LibraryBytes for pointing me to this thought-provoking video of social media educator Howard Rheingold talking about 21st century literacies. My past couple of blog posts talked about the challengethat people who don't have basic computer skills face in navigating our increasingly digital world. Mr. Rheingold talks about how the challenge goes beyond skills to literacies, which he defines as the coupling of skills with using them in a meaningful way within a community.
The video iteself is about 45 minutes long, but for those who are interested in this subject it is a worthwhile investment of time. In the library realm we have tended to focus on what we call "information literacy", and what Mr. Rheingold calls critical consumption or "crap detection", as the key 21st century literacy. This is certainly important, but I was intrigued by the other literacies identified in the video -
- Attention - in a world of multitasking and myriad distractions, how do we make judgements about what to pay attention to?
- Participation - how do we use technology and social media to participate in the wider community
- Cooperation - how do we use technology and social media to engage others?
- Network awareness - how do we identify/build/participate in networks and recognize how our social media actions are transmitted via networks?
With regard to the "attention" literacy I was particularly struck by Mr. Rheingold's comment that the world of social media is "not a queue, it's a flow" - that unlike the world of email and other "point to point" messages which can be processed serially and need to be managed, the world of social media demands that we accept that we will not view or receive every message, and that we need to learn how to "sample" and perform a form of triage so that we get a feel for what is happening and respond to the important stuff without getting bogged down. This is definitely an area where I am only semi-literate!
Mr. Rheingold questions whether the traditional educational environment is, or even can be, the place for developing these literacies...which of course made me wonder whether/if libraries could play a role. Given that we struggle to be recognized even as a resource for the information literacy/critical consumption literacy that we see as core to our mission and have not yet come to grips with how to effectively help people build even basic computer skillsand comfort levels I'm not sure how - but its something I want to spend some time thinking about. It seems to me that starting with encouraging/helping our staff to gain these literacies is a starting point, though.
Anyway - here's the video (if it doesn't display click here for a link)
(and if you want to dive a little deeper into how to become an effective "crap detector" I recommend this article)
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