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There is tremendous potential for digital literacy in the proposal by Yoram Eshet-Alkalai (Digital Literacy: A Conceptual Framework for Survival Skills in the Digital Era). This proposal calls for a holistic, refined conceptual framework that will include photo-visual literacy; reproduction literacy; branching literacy; information literacy; and socio-emotional literacy. The proposal centers on a fundamental truth that those who consider literacy only in terms of traditional alphabet-based writing: That very form of literacy is grounded in a form of communication that uses symbols.

The reason that form of writing has worked and contributed to the advancement of civilization for thousands of years is in part because societies were able to reach basic agreement/understanding as to meanings associated with use of those symbols. We now live in an age when the use of emojis and other visual, non-alphabet-based elements is exploding. And Eshet-Alkalai’s sparks even more strongly in me the need to develop better agreement/understanding as to meanings associated with use of those visual, non-alphabet-based symbols.

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In many ways, Eshet-Alkalai helps show that the graphic user-interfaces growing widely in use today represent a revival of an extinct form of literacy that was prevalent in the era of the ancient picture alphabet: photo-visual reading (Snyder, 1999).

Eshet-Alkalai suggests that in working with graphic user-interfaces, users employ a unique form of digital literacy – photo-visual literacy – which helps them to “read” intuitively and freely, and to understand the instructions and messages represented visually. People with photo-visual literacy have good visual memory and strong intuitive-associative thinking, which help them decode and understand visual messages easily and fluently (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004, p. 95).

I find great potential in this understanding of literacy. It connects to my research interest in emojis and literacy instruction, and shows that images were used to communicate long ago, in the way that we are familiar with communicating through alphabet-based texts. My research plans involve trying to help students become more conscious of the meanings they associate with use of emojis and other visual elements in ways that can contribute constructively to literacy instructional efforts.

Thinking about how photo-visual literacy helps people to “read” intuitively and freely, and as an aid to understand the messages, is a key in possible development of future curriculum.

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One fascinating insight from Eshet-Alkalai’s proposal is the way software companies invested special effort in planning sophisticated interactive multimedia environments that take advantage of the possibility to represent synchronized text, sound, and motion. That led to identification of a special type of photo-visual learning, referred to by Eshet-Alkalai as “synchronic learning,” because it is based on synchronized stimulation of the learner by means of multimedia.

The nature of synchronic literacy is clearly demonstrated in the “living books” genre, such as Just Grandma and Me ( http:www.thereviewzone.com/grandmame.html ). In this genre of educational computer programs for children, an interactive story is narrated in a digital game environment. The text is displayed on the monitor while the story is heard, with each word high- lighted as it is read. This makes it possible for the learner to match the pronunciation of each word with its visual appearance (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004, pp. 95-96).

That provides support to the discussion earlier of Buckingham’s discussion on advancing media literacy through the use of computer games in education, and my assessment that we must go beyond just “teaching about games in schools.” Examples like those discussed by Eshet-Alkalai support arguments for the development of as many games as possible that actually advance all sorts of media-literacy curricular standards – and are engaging enough to hold students’ attention.

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A very important part of information literacy that Eshet-Alkalai focuses upon is referenced as “the art of skepticism.” With the rapid growth in access to information, the ability of consumers to evaluate and use it wisely has become a key issue in creating educated in- formation consumers (Kerka, 1999; Salomon, 2000).

The need to properly evaluate information is not unique to the digital era, because it has always been central to successful learning, even before the information revolution. However, in the modern era, with the unlimited exposure to digital information, which can be published easily and manipulated without difficulty, the ability to evaluate and assess information properly has become a “survival skill” for scholars and information consumers. The main problems in evaluating information lie in the difficulty of assessing the credibility and originality of information and the professional integrity of its presentation (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004, pp. 100-101).

This was the other element of digital literacy that caught my attention. Because it seems that in all classes I’ve taken regarding anything digital or literacy related, it is a must for educators to teach their students how to identify credible sources. I remember this also from my middle-school teaching days. Giving students certain sites to look up information was crucial to help guard them from searches that could take them to the dark side of the Internet.

Even now, in the UGA undergraduate class I’m teaching with Dr. Kajder, Digital Tools, we are talking about how to decide if a site is a credible site? And there are certain techniques that can help students (or anyone) with that. It will be vital for our teachers to be up to speed in how to help students with this aspect of digital literacy.

That relates to Eshet-Alkalai’s assertion that digital literacy can be defined as a survival skill in the digital era. It constitutes a system of skills and strategies used by learners and users in digital environments. By employing different types of digital literacy, users improve their performance and “survive” a variety of obstacles and stumbling blocks that lie in the way within this special medium (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004, pp. 102-103).

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The Teaching Tolerance Digital Literacy Framework offers seven key areas in which students need support developing digital and civic literacy skills. They provide a useful checklist for thinking through teaching efforts related to digital literacy, related to helping students locate and verify reliable sources, understand how digital information reaches them, learn how to constructively engage digitally, understand privacy and security online, realize they are producers of information, know their role as online customers, and evaluate the value of the Internet relating to civic action.

Lesson plans and student objectives are also included for each of those key areas - VERY beneficial for both students and teachers.

This site also included a video about “fake news” focused on how hundreds of thousands of people retweeted a Twitter post by an individual named Eric – even though it was completely untrue and Eric knew it when he posted it. This provides a classic example of why efforts to advance digital literacy among students is so vital, particularly in regard to learning how to recognize fake news.

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The use of synchronic literacy with digital texts is not limited to young children only, but can also be found in the field of adults training, as Eshet-Alkalai points out. This is demonstrated in the wide range of computer programs for learning typing skills (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004, p. 97).

In fact, that example is something my own experience has confirmed in very rewarding ways. When I was teaching middle school, I began searching for sites like this to help my students learn how to type since there was no set computer class for all students at my middle school that did that. Even though we were a one-to-one computer school, and all students had a laptop, most could not type properly. Before learning to type correctly after I began directing them to those sites, most of my students used the “one finger method” for their typing, which is not efficient at all. So I know from experience the practical and effective benefits in using sites like that to teach typing. You see what you are typing on the screen instead of having to focus your eyes on your fingers.

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Alvermann and Sanders also help illuminate keys to advancing digital literacy in Adolescent Literacy in a Digital World. Growing up in a digital age in which technology is prevalent does not amount to having achieved mastery over the complex skill sets required for full participation in a 21st-century world. The fallacy of referring to adolescents as digital natives is further evidenced by a digital divide that continues to widen for young people living in households whose earnings fall at or below the poverty line.

At the same time, it would not be too much of an overstatement to claim that contemporary youths’ literacies are for the most part digitally inspired, or at least significantly mediated by the Internet.

Because literacies are social practices, they are also closely associated with how people negotiate their identities as readers and writers. An individual can identify with a number of digital literacy practices (or not) at any one time.

Rather than waiting to be a part of society by becoming an adult, adolescents are participating with the world in which they live through their electronic devices.

In the face of contradictions that stem from political and socioeconomic maneuverings, the need for questioning, dissecting, and critically assessing all digital media formats – whether linguistic, visual, aural, or performative – has never been greater.

Bottom line, to ignore the potential of 21st century digital literacy practices and popular media texts is to sabotage young people’s motivation for learning.

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Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: A conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(1), 93-106.

Kerka, S. (1999). Consumer education for the information age. Practice Application Brief, 4, 12-15.

Salomon, G. (2000). Technology and education in the age of information. Tehnologia vehinukh

be’idan hameida. Haifa and Tel Aviv: Haifa University Publishers and Zmora-Bitan.

Alvermann, D.E., & Sanders, R.K. (2019). “Adolescent literacy in a digital world.” In: (Hobbs, R., & Mihailidis, P., Eds.). The international encyclopedia of media literacy. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Teaching Tolerance website on Digital Literacy, https://www.tolerance.org/frameworks/digital-literacy