Iveth Rodrguez Universidad del Valle Escuela de Ciencias del Lenguaje

Multiliteracies in the construction of our current educational context

Nowadays, incorporating new technologies to educational settings has become a trend; as a consequence teachers and students face a challenge to understand the functional, social and cultural implications of technology in order to become multiliterate in this multimedia, multilingual and multicultural society.
Key words: New literacies, multiliteracies, technology, traditional educational practices.

Technology has been so integrated in our daily lives that it has also become a necessity in our classrooms. As a matter of fact, the use of computers, mp3 players, calculators, phone cameras, flash drives and other electronic devices, has had a revolutionary impact in our practices as teachers and students, to the extent that most of our classes rely on the use of those instruments. This trend has changed our traditional way of approaching education; we all are learning how to master different tools, using more than pencils and paper, to access knowledge. With those new tools society has also changed, the sense of ubiquity given by the internet has increased the possibilities of exchanging experiences with others all over the world and has allowed us to cross borders and to be in contact with different cultures and social perspectives. All the transformations produced by globalization have brought to education new perspectives of approaching teaching and learning processes. Taking into account all of the technology and social networks around us, we cannot consider education outside them. We should reflect on how the new dynamics have contributed to the development of different skills that teachers and students did not have when those tools were not an extension of the educational environment. Many papers have been written about this issue with different perspectives; I will discuss in this essay why I believe that education is shaped by society. The main purpose of this text is to provide an idea about the changes that technology has introduced to society and how this fact imply reforms in the educational contexts, theories and practices. One of the recent theories that respond to the new demands in education includes the term new literacies or multiliteracies. In order to understand what multiliteracy is, we have to go first to the definition of literacy from different perspectives. According to Ong (1982), literacy is defined in opposition to orality. It is referred to writing and is considered artificial in the sense that is a technological development because of the use of tools. This definition is made in contrast to oral speech, which is considered natural to human beings. Ongs definition also alleges that writing has shaped and powered the intellectual activity of modern man1. Another assertion to the word literacy is one that still remains in the minds of people today, which also includes the thoughts of traditional schools,
1 Ong W, (1982), Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge.

defines being literate as having the ability to read and write. In my view this is a very primitive definition because it disregards that there are many additional abilities that a person can develop beyond reading and writing; for example, the mastery of new technological tools and other languages, the understanding of different cultures, as well as the ability to think critically in a globalized world. Although reading and writing are social practices useful to access knowledge they are not enough to understand the modern changes introduced through technology. Yet, limiting literacy to basic reading and writing skills that enable us to receive or transmit information denies many additional factors that help create meaning in discourse. Such a simplistic characterization further assumes that the ability to read and write is a binary concept that is, either you are literate or illiterate (Glonglewsky & DuBravac, 2006:43)2 In this regard, the concept of new literacies has been presented from many different standpoints by authors that have reflected on the pluralism in these present days; and today we talk about Multiliteracies. As I said before many authors have talked about this issue, and the position I prefer the most is the one by Selber S. (2004), who proposes multiliteracies from the perspective of the development of education in a digital age. In his book Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, Selber presents the definition of digital literacy in terms of three concepts: functional, critical and rhetorical literacy. Those three concepts shape the main notion of multiliteracies, establishing the relationships between the instrumental and the pedagogical view of technology. Functional literacy refers to the mastery of computers as tools that engage students only as users of technology, critical literacy refers to computers as cultural artifacts that engage students as questioners of technology and rhetorical literacy refers to computers as hypertextual media that stresses in students as producers of technology. According to Selber, students who are not adequately exposed to all three literacy categories will find it difficult to participate fully and meaningfully in technological activities3. In our context, at least from my perspective, all the three angles of multiliteracy presented by Selber have been implemented in some sort in many of our classes of Foreign Language (English or French), Linguistics and Spanish. Nevertheless we are still far from the portrait of the ideal multiliterate student proposed by the author; this is because in some cases we (I include myself as a student), do not even have the basic skills to use the technological tools. Not every student knows how to download files, burn CDs or convert file formats. This fact makes us fail in the functional literacy. Other students, on the other hand, can easily operate these tools; however they do not know how to find reliable information on the internet or they are just surrendered to the use of the social networks, video games and information searchers in a senseless and non-critical way, without questioning the sociopolitical and sociocultural impacts of technology in their lives. They are not using but abusing the tools and have become just consumers of communication technologies. So even if they are functionally literate they lack critical literacy. There are other students that on the contrary, are able to discern
Glonglewsky, M & DuBravac, S / Ducate, L & Arnold, N (2006). Multiliteracy: Second Language Literacy in the Multimedia Environment. Calling on CALL: From Theory and Research to New directions in Foreign Language Teaching, Vol. 5, p 43 - 68.
2

Selber, Stuart A. (2004) Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press (2004).

reliable information and sources among all the data on the internet, and use it from a critical position saying whether what they found is relevant or not. But sometimes students fail in the process of becoming a rhetorical literate, because they are not used to designing interfaces, quoting others words, or create different viewpoints from somebody elses position to reflect about their own assumptions values and beliefs. Being rhetorical literate requires the integration of functional and critical abilities in the design and evaluation of computer interfaces, and we definitely are failing in the process because we have not been instructed to do that. I would say that there are no formulas to create a multiliterate student, yet teachers sometimes lack any of the literacies explained above. The big challenge in current education is not to teach or to learn how to become literate; but to be conscious of the evolution of new technologies, particularly computers. I propose then, bringing awareness to new literacies development. In order to do that, the traditional ways of teaching, assessing and evaluating should be adapted to the current changes and teachers need to start doing so, to be able to guide their students to effectively face the new educational practices. That is why I stated that education has been shaped by society, traditional practices have been modified and adapted to the sociocultural transformations; we do not process or gather information the way we used to five or ten years ago. For that reason those innovations cannot be disregarded or put aside, so it is time to shift paradigms in education. Thinking critically and producing our own knowledge based on our reality and present situations, would prepare us for the next generation of technological creations and hopefully technology wont be counterproductive for us: students and teachers. About the Author: Iveth Patricia Rodrguez is an IX semester student of Foreign Languages at Universidad del Valle. Her research interests lie in the study of phonetics for languages learning, language learning through virtual environments, applied linguistics and academic writing processes at a tertiary level. E-mail address: ivethp_rodriguez@yahoo.com.co