Critical Literacy in the Digital Age
The main question that future educators need to tackle is how should adolescents critically use digital media? Students in the modern world are surrounded by multiple sources of digital literacy whether it is social media or other sites online. However, getting students to critically analyze and use texts is crucial to them getting correct information to expand their learning. They do not always need to just read the information and accept it. They need to understand why the author wrote this piece, the author’s credential, and why should they accept this reading. Critically using digital media will be a key concept to gaining the best information whether it be in school or in real life.
We are now living in an age that relies on technology more than ever before. According to Julie Warner, “Youth spend more time on mobile phones than ever before and as marketers move into the spaces that youth inhabit, digital literacies education in an age of ubiquitous mobile phone-based literacy practice must be engaged from a critical perspective in order to uncover such underlying power structures” (Warner 145). The importance of critical literacy goes even beyond the classroom. As educators, we need to teach our students what is important information, and what is information to steer clear of. Being able to critically analyze any texts well will help them succeed as adults.
One of the main goals as an educator is to make sure our students know how to evaluate the information that they find through digital literacy. According to Buckingham, “The key concern is with locating, using, evaluating and producing information” (Buckingham 45). There is a lot more information that is easily accessible today. Just a few years ago it would take a few hours before a news story would be heard about, but now we almost hear about the news in real-time. However, with this advancement in technology, there are higher possibilities of accessing the wrong information. A lot of this is seen on social media, and some fake news sites. For example, when we hear a rumor about the death of some famous actor/actress, we tend to question the source that it comes from. However, for most people they will believe this information until they hear that it is false. There are a lot of false information that is floating around today, but teaching students to locate, use, and evaluate the sources of information is crucial to them increasing their critical digital literacy.
In the Youtube video by David Foster Wallace, he introduces the term blind certainty. Blind certainty means a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up. This is mostly how society is when it comes to criticizing digital literacy. They mainly look at the story, and they gather all the information from that source, but they do not understand that a majority of this information is completely false. Being able to teach our students to steer clear of this concept is going to be key as a future educator.
In conclusion, as future educators, we need to make sure that our students understand what it means to criticize digital literacy, and expand our knowledge in critical digital literacy.
