Digital Literacies

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COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
HAND OUT: PROF EDUC 10| Building and Enhancing Literacy Across the Curriculum
SUBJECT CODE: PROF EDUC 10

TOPIC OR LESSON: Media and Cyber or Digital Literacies
WEEK: 4
PERIOD: (PRE-FINAL)
SUB-TOPIC(S):
a. Media Literacy
b. Digital Literacy
c. Information Literacy within Digital Literacy
OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC
Of all the 21st century literacies presented in this book, none of them embodies the "newness" of
these literacies quite like those needed to make sense of the absolute deluge of information brought to
us by the Internet. With the vast number of websites, web forums, and social media applications now
available for us, never before has there been so much information-in nearly every form imaginable,
from nearly every source imaginable-available to us twenty-four hours a day, no matter our location.
Where once we had librarians-"information custodians," as you will-to curate the information we
regularly ingest, now there is nothing standing between the individual and the wellspring of
information represented by the Internet.
However, as we will soon discover, it is the so-called old literacies that will serve us just as faithfully
in the new contexts we find ourselves today as they have done in the past. To begin our investigation,
we must first understand the relationship between Media Literacy and Cyber/Digital Literacy.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
A. Identify and evaluate different types of media, including traditional and digital media, and
recognize bias, propaganda, and misinformation.
B. appreciate the importance of developing Media and Cyber/ Digital Literacy both in ourselves and
one another in the information age.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
a. Define media literacy and identify its importance in today's society.
b. Use digital tools and platforms effectively for information gathering, communication, and
collaboration.
c. Develop responsible digital citizenship practices, including ethical behavior, online safety, and
responsible online engagement.
ENGAGEMENT:
The class will have an activity called FACT or BLUFF. The teacher will provide 2 printed
materials that will serve as the students' choices in identifying actions that are often mistaken for
being representative of media literacy.
These printed copies contain the letters F which stands for FACT and B for
BLUFF. Correct answers will also be discussed interactively throughout the
activity.
DISCUSSION PROPER (Content):
Like all the literacies discussed in this book, media literacy can be defined in several ways.
Aufderheide (1993) defines it as "the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages
in a wide variety of forms," while Christ and Potter (1998) define it as "the ability to access, analyze,
evaluate, and create messages across a variety of contexts." Hobbs (1998) posits that it is a term used
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by modern scholars to refer to the process of critically analyzing and learning to create one's own
messages in print, audio, video, and multimedia.
Perhaps in its simplest sense, media literacy can thus be defined as "the ability to identify different
types of media and understand the messages they are communicating" (Common Sense Media, n.d.).
The exact type of media varies - television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, handouts, flyers,
etc. - but what they all have in common is that they were all created by someone, and
that someone had a reason for creating them.
According to Boyd 2014 media literacy education began in the United States and United Kingdom as
a direct result of war propaganda in the 1930s and the rise of advertising in the 1960s. In both cases,
media was being used to manipulate the perspective (and subsequent actions) of those exposed to it,
thereby giving rise to the need to educate people on how to detect the biases, falsehoods and halt-
truths depicted in print, radio, and television.
Because media communication lends itself so easily and so well to the purpose of manipulating
consumers perceptions on issues both political and commercial. being able to understand "why"
behind
media communication is the absolute heart of media literacy today.
Despite the relatively simple and clear definition of media literacy, it should come as no surprise that
scholars and educators have been debating for quite some time on how media literacy should be both
defined and taught. Aufderheide (1993) and Hobbs (1998) reported, " At the 1993 Media Literacy
National Leadership Conference, U.S. educators could not agree on the range of appropriate goals for
media education or the scope of appropriate instructional techniques. "The conference did, however,
identify five essential concepts necessary or any analysis of media messages:
1. Media messages and constructed

2. Media messages are produced within economic, social, political, historical, and aesthetic
3. The interpretative meaning-making processes involved in message reception consist of an
interaction between the reader. the text. and the culture
4. Media has unique "languages," characteristics which typify various forms, genres, and
symbol systems of communication
5. Media representations play a role in people's understanding of social reality.
What these five concepts boil down to is that while the producer of a particular media has an intended
meaning behind the communication, what actually gets communicated to the consumers depends not
only on the media itself out a so on the consumers themselves and on their respective cultures. The
consumers perceived meaning is what then develops into how people understand social reality.
An immediate example of this is the media portrayal of Mindanao. Because so little good news
coming from the island is communicated by the news networks, the average Filipino who might never
have been to Mindanao-comes to believe that the entire island is involved in armed conflict, that
anyone from Mindanao is somehow involved in the conflict, and therefore understandably refuses to
go there, nor allow any of his or her relatives to do so. If is unlikely that this was the news media's
intention, but it is the viewer’s interpretation that ultimately determined his or her beliefs and
behavior.
What Media Literacy is Not
Given the broad and somewhat nebulous nature of media literacy, its implied definition can
be gleaned by understanding what media literacy is not. The following is a list of actions that are often
mistaken for being representative of media literacy (Center for Media Literacy, n.d.):
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 Criticizing the media is not, in and of itself, media literacy. However, being media literate
sometimes requires that one indeed criticize what one sees and hears.
 Merely producing media is not media literacy although part of being media literate is the
ability to produce media.
 Teaching with media (videos, presentations, etc.) does not equal media literacy. An education
in media literacy must also include teaching about media.
 Viewing media and analyzing it from a single perspective is not media literacy. True media
literacy requires both the ability and willingness to view and analyze media from multiple
positions and perspectives.
 Media literacy does not simply mean knowing what and what not to watch: it does mean
"watch carefully, think critically
Challenges to Media Literacy Education
One glaring challenge to teaching Media Literacy is, "how do we teach it?"
Teaching it as a subject in itself might not be feasible given how overburdened the curriculum is at the
moment, while integrating it into the subjects that are currently being taught might not be enough to
teach what are essentially media consumption habits-skills and attitudes that are learned by doing and
repetition rather than by mere classroom discussion (Koltay, 2011).
Livingstone and Van Der Graaf (2010) identified "how to measure Media Literacy and evaluate the
success of media literacy initiatives” as being one of the more pernicious challenges facing educators
in the 21st century, for the simple reason that if we cannot somehow measure the presence of media
literacy in our students, how do we know we have actually taught them ?
Finally, a more fundamental challenge to Media Literacy Education is one of purpose. As Chris &
Potter (1998) put it, "Is media literacy best understood as a means of inoculating children against the
potential harms of the media or as a means of enhancing their appreciation of the literary merits of the
media?"
Digital Literacy
In the first chapter of this book, we read how Gee, Hull, and Lankshear (1996) noted how literacy
always has something to do with reading a text with understanding, and that there are many kinds of
texts, and each one requires a specific set of skills to understand and make meaning out of them.
Digital Literacy (also called e-literacy, cyber literacy, and even information literacy by some authors)
is no different although now the "text" can actually be images, sound, video, music, or a combination
thereof.
Digital Literacy can be defined as the ability to locate, evaluate, create, and communicate information
on various digital platforms. Put more broadly, it is the technical, cognitive, and sociological skills
needed to perform tasks and solve problems in digital environments (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004), It finds its
origins in information and computer literacy (Bowden, 2008, 2001: Snavely & Cooper. 1997;
Behrens1994: and Andretta, 2007; Webber & Johnson, 2000), so much so that the skills and
competencies listed by Shapiro and Hughes (1996) in a curriculum they envisioned la promote
computer literacy should sound very familiar to readers today:
 fool literacy - competence in using hardware and software tools; resource literacy -
understanding forms of and access to information resources;
 social-structural literacy - understanding the production and social significance of
information;
 research literacy - using IT tools for research and scholarship;
 publishing literacy - ability to communicate and publish information;
 emerging technologies literacy - understanding of new developments in IT; and
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 critical literacy - ability to evaluate the benefits of new technologies (Note that this literacy is
not the same as "critical thinking," which is often regarded as a component of information
literacy).
It should also come as no surprise that digital literacy shares a great deal of overlap with media
literacy; so much so that digital literacy can be seen as a subset of media literacy, dealing particularly
with media in digital form. The connection should be fairly obvious--if media literacy is "the ability to
identify different types of media and understand the messages they are communicating," then digital
literacy can be seen as "media literacy applied to the digital media," albeit with a few adjustments.
The term "digital literacy" is not new; Lanham (1995), in one of the earliest examples of a functional
definition of the term described the "digitally literate person" as being skilled at deciphering and
understanding the meanings of images, sounds, and the subtle uses of words so that he/she could
match the medium of communication to the kind of information being presented and to whom the
intended audience is. Two years later, Paul Gilster (1997) formally defined digital literacy as "the
ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is
presented via computers," explaining that not only must a person acquire the skill of finding things,
he/she must also acquire the ability to use these things in life.
Bawden (2008) collated the skills and competencies comprising digital literacy from contemporary
scholars on the matter into four groups:
1. Underpinnings - This refers to those skills and competencies that "support" or "enable"
everything else within digital literacy, namely. traditional literacy and computer/ICT literacy
(i.e., the ability to use computers in everyday life).
2. Background Knowledge - This largely refers to knowing where information on a particular
subject or topic can be found, how information is kept, and how it is disseminated- a skill
taken for granted back in the day when information almost exclusively resided in the form of
printed text.
3. Central Competencies - These are the skills and competencies that a majority of scholars
agree on as being core to digital literacy today. namely:
 reading and understanding digital and non-digital formats;
 creating and communicating digital information;
 evaluation of information;
 knowledge assembly;
 information literacy; and
 media literacy.
4. Attitudes and Perspectives - Bawden (2008) suggests that it is these attitudes and perspectives
that link digital literacy today with traditional literacy, saying "it is not enough to have skills
and competencies, they must be grounded in some moral framework," specifically:
 independent learning - the initiative and ability to learn whatever is needed for a person's
specific situation; and
 moral / social literacy - an understanding of correct, acceptable, and sensible behavior in a
digital environment.
Information Literacy within Digital Literacy
Given the ease with which digital media (as opposed to traditional print media) can be edited and
manipulated, the ability to approach it with a healthy amount of skepticism has become a "survival
skill for media consumers. Eshet-Alkalai (2004) draws attention to Information Literacy as a critical
component of Digital Literacy as "the cognitive skills that consumers use to evaluate information in
an educated and effective manner." In effect, Information Literacy acts as a filter by which consumers
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evaluate the veracity of the information being presented to them via digital media and thereupon sort
the erroneous, irrelevant, and biased from what is demonstrably factual.
From this perspective, part of the efforts of Digital Literacy Education should be toward developing
media consumers who think critically and are ready to doubt the quality of the information they
receive, even if said information comes from so-called "authoritative sources." However, a majority
of studies On Information Literacy seem to concentrate more on the ability to search for information
rather than its cognitive and pedagogical aspects (Eshet-Alkalai.2004; Zinns. 2000: Burnett &
McKinley, 1998).
Socio-Emotional Literacy within Digital Literacy

Alongside information Literacy, Eshet-Alkalai (2004) highlights a kind of socio-Emotional literacy
needed to navigate the internet, raising questions such as, "How do I know if another user in a
chatroom is who he says he is? Or "How do I know it a call for blood donations on the internet is real
or a hoax?
Such questions should make us realize that there are no hard and fast rules for determining the
answers, Instead, there is a necessary familiarity with the unwritten rules of Cyberspace; an
understanding that while the internet is a global village of sorts. it is also a global jungle of human
communication, embracing everything from truth to falsehoods, honesty and deceit, and ultimately.
good and evil. According Eshet-Alkalai (2004), This Socio-Emotional literacy requires users to be
"very critical, analytical, and mature"- implying a kind of richness of experience that the literate
transfers from real life to their dealings online. Curiously, while research shows that the older a user
is, the less likely they are to behave naively online, this does not exempt them from the occasional
lapse: They might not believe that a Nigerian prince is bequeathing 100 million dollars in gold bullion
to them in exchange for their bank details, but they might be willing to believe that someone really is
giving away 1000 units of the latest smartphone in exchange for their contact information.
Digitally literate users know how to avoid the "traps" of cyberspace mainly because they are familiar
with the social and emotional patterns of working in cyberspace that it is really just an outworking of
human nature.
Digital Natives
The term digital native has become something of a buzzword in the education sector over the past
decade. This was popularized by Prensky (2001) in reference to the generation that was born during
the information age (as opposed to digital immigrants-the generation prior that acquired familiarity
with digital systems only as adults) and who has not known a world without computers, the Internet,
and connectivity.
Despite the fact that Prensky's original paper was not an academic one and had no empirical evidence
to support its claims, educators and parents alike latched onto the term, spawning a school of thought
wherein the decline of modern education is explained by educators* lack of understanding of how
digital natives learn and make decisions.
However, a popular misconception borne out of the term digital natives and the educational ideas it
spawned is that the generation in question is born digitally literate. If this is the case, then the
question, "How can digital immigrants teach digital natives a literacy they already have?" is a valid
one. to which the answer would be, correctly, "they cannot."
But the problem here is that "digitally literate" is popularly defined as the ability to use computers or
use the internet, which as we have seen earlier.
forms only one part of the crucial skills and competencies required to be digitally literate. Our
expanded view of the term "literate" allows us to see that while the digital natives in our classrooms
are most certainly familiar with digital systems perhaps even more so than their instructors- this does
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not mean they automatically know how to read, write, process, and communicate information on these
systems in ways that are both meaningful and ethical, especially when the information involved does
not involve technology's most common use: personal entertainment. That is to say, when the task at
hand gaps in their literacy begin to show.
does not involve what the digital natives consider to be entertainment, the
A good example of this is the difficulty many Senior High School instructors have in teaching
research: Students who are otherwise quite familiar with using the Internet for entertainment are
suddenly at a loss in locating, accessing, and understanding information from research journals and
websites, mainly because they are looking for information on topics they are either unfamiliar with,
Uninterested in, or both.
Another problem concerning digital natives is the misconception that everyone belonging to the
generation is on more or less equal footing in regard to digital literacy. Although the drawing of such
a conclusion is understandable [given the near-ubiquity of digital technology and the Internet), it is
nonetheless mistaken, as no one is truly "born digital." Instead, the determining factor is access to
education and experience: children born to poorer families will naturally seem less digitally literate
for lack of access to technology and an education in said technologies, while those born to privileged
families will display more of the literacies discussed earlier.
Challenges to Digital Literacy Education
Digital Literacy Education shares many of the same challenges to Media Literacy For example: How
should it be taught? How can it be measured and evaluated? Should it be taught for the protection of
students in their consumption of information or should it be to develop their appreciation for digital
media?
Brown (2017) also noted that despite the global acknowledgement that Digital Literacy Education is a
need, there is as of yet no overarching model or framework for addressing all of the skills deemed
necessary. Put simply, there is no single and comprehensive plan anywhere for teaching digital
literacy the way it should be taught. Accordingly, he asked, "What assumptions, theories, and research
evidence underpin specific frameworks? Whose interests are being served when particular
frameworks are being promoted? Beyond efforts to produce flashy and visually attractive models how
might we reimagine digital literacies to promote critical mindsets and active citizenry in order to
reshape our societies for new ways of living, learning, and working for a better future for all?"
Despite the challenges posed by the broad and fluid nature of media (and therefore digital) literacy,
educators in the Philippines can spearhead literacy efforts by doubling-down on those concepts and
principles of Media Literacy that are of utmost importance, namely, critical thinking and the
grounding of critical thought in a moral framework.
 Teach media and digital literacy integrally. Any attempt to teach these principles must first
realize that they cannot be separated from context-meaning, they cannot be taught separately
from other topics. Critical Thinking requires something other than itself to think critically
about, and thus cannot develop in a vacuum. Similarly. developing a moral framework within
students cannot be taught via merely talking about it. This moral framework develops by
practicing it, that is, basing our decisions on it, in the context of everything else we do in our
day-to-day lives. We therefore agree with Koltay (2011) that the teaching of the fundamental
principles of these and other literacies should be done integratively with other subjects in
school, however difficult the process might be. In other words, teach them in mathematics,
sciences, language arts, social studies, and so on. Make them part of the school curriculum
and in the everyday life of the students. Anything else will be as misguided as merely telling a
plant to grow and expecting it to do so by the power of your words.
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 Master your subject matter. Whatever it is you teach, you must not only possess a thorough
understanding of your subject matter, you must also understand why you are teaching it, and
why it is important to learn. As educators, we must not shy away from a student genuinely
asking us to explain why something we are teaching is important. After all, teaching is in
itself a kind of media the students are obliged to consume; it is only fair they know why.
 Think "multi-disciplinary." How can educators integrate media and digital literacy in a
subject as abstract as Mathematics, for example? The answer lies in stepping-out of the "pure
mathematics" mindset and embracing communication as being just as important to math as
computation. Once communication is accepted as important, this opens-up new venues where
the new literacies can be exercised. For example, have students create a webpage detailing
what systems of linear equations are, why they are important, and the techniques for solving
them. Alternatively, they can create poster infographics that explain the same things. The
exact same strategies can be applied to nearly any subject and any topic. It is just a matter of
believing, as educators, that how we communicate is as important as what we communicate.
 Explore motivations, not just messages. While it is very important that students learn what
is the message being communicated by any media text. it is also important to develop in them
a habit for asking why is the message being communicated in the first place. In the case of an
information pamphlet warning against some infectious disease for example, is there an
outbreak we are being warned of? If not, could this then be an attempt to sow panic and
discord in the target populace? Why? Who stands to gain from doing such things? The
objective here is not so much to find the correct answers, but rather to develop the habit of
asking these questions.
 Leverage skills that students already have. It is always surprising how much a person can
do when they are personally and affectively motivated to do so-in other words, a person can
do amazing things when they really want to. Students can produce remarkably well
researched output for things they are deeply interested in, even without instruction.
Harnessing this natural desire to explore whatever interests them will go a long way in
improving media and digital literacy education in your classroom.
ELABORATION:
1. How do you communicate with your friends or relatives who are in the other part of the world?
2. Where do you find information on local, national news, politics and events?
EVALUATION:
Quiz
1. Explain how media literacy and digital literacy are related.
2. Explain how critical thinking is important to both media and digital literacy.
Prepared by:
ROVELYN R. CAPOY
IVY JANE M. CAPOY
CRIZALYN G. BAIZA
KRIZZA MAY RILE
NINA MARIE RIGON

MISSION VISION
NIKA MARIE ANDAYA
Discussant

Digital Literacies

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Digital Literacies

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MISSION VISION

OLLCF is committed to provide dynamic,

SUBJECT CODE: PROF EDUC 10

OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC

DISCUSSION PROPER (Content):

1. Media messages and constructed

What Media Literacy is Not

Challenges to Media Literacy Education

Information Literacy within Digital Literacy

Socio-Emotional Literacy within Digital Literacy

Challenges to Digital Literacy Education

IVY JANE M. CAPOY

KRIZZA MAY RILE

NINA MARIE RIGON

NIKA MARIE ANDAYA

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