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The new formats and delivery modes or multi-modal resources do not require users to have different literacy skills, but do require extensions of the traditional literacy definitions.
The National Secretariat for the International Year of Literacy (1990) stated the “the goal is an active literacy, which allows people to use language to enhance their capacity to think, create and question, in order to participate effectively in society” (School of Information Studies, 2017, p. 1). I believe this statement could have been written at any stage in history. Literacy has not changed, but society, through technology has. The fundamental skills of reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing and understanding evolve with society. Technology has changed how information is shared, the fundamental skills to interpret, process and use information effectively in this changing complex world essentially have not.
The world we and our students live in is more culturally and ethnically diverse than ever. This does not mean we need different skills, but a deeper understanding of how context affects the way we process information and use it effectively in the various multi-modal methods available to us. Throughout time there has always been variance in how language is used in context to different situations and method of delivery. The expanding nature that technology is playing on methods of information transfer just means that we as a society need to have an understanding of the context we are in. An example of this is having students understand the ‘netiquette’ rules may be different when emailing a teacher compared to a friend and writing your assignment in ‘netlish’ is not an appropriate use of language in that situation.
Our definitions of literacy and the literacy skills that we teach need to be seen as evolving concepts, not static, if they are going to prepare our students for the world of tomorrow.
School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University (2017). Introduction to teacher librarianship, semester 1 Module 5 (ETL401). Wagga Wagga: Charles Sturt University.