I was discussing an unpublished draft of a working paper on digital literacy at Oxford Brookes. It struck me that a communication theory model might be useful when looking at the tools we might use. The four dimensions I recognised in the paper were:
- n-0: solitary reflection
- 1-n: broadcasting ones self: blogging, writing for publication
- n-1: using a library, searching the web
- n-n: participation in discussion forums, teams.
It seemed that if one were aware of the different kinds of communication one could suggest that some tools were better for some things and some for others.
Interestingly, about a week later I was doing a bit of a lit search for Digital Literacy in Academic Search Complete and came upon Guy Merchant’s (2007) article: Writing the future in the digital age. Literacy, 41(3), 118-128. There I found the same approach used as a typology for digilit.
- One-to-one Messaging Inter-personal email
- One-to-many Broadcast messaging Blogging Webpages
- Many-to-many Chatrooms, 3D Virtual Worlds, Online gaming, Discussion boards, Wikis, Photo-sharing (123)
rWorld2 