e-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates

Essential update #3: Multiliteracies

Technological developments related to the production, transfer, and consumption of information have caused the concept of text in its classical sense to undergo a radical transformation. The fact that the Internet, which is added as a new media medium alongside traditional mass media such as newspapers, radio, and television, has become one of the indispensable elements of social life and the multi-form structure of the new media reveals that individuals must have new communication skills in order not to fall behind the times.

The multi-form and interactive structure of media texts, which carry their evolution to a new dimension with the opportunities provided by modern technology, brings a new understanding of literacy beyond the traditional single-source learning style. The new media makes the individual not only a consumer of information but also a producer and transmitter of it. The change from a passive system of information retrieval on the Internet to a dynamic and interactive system in which users are active participants in the processes of writing, editing, evaluating, and distributing content has completely changed the way people share their thoughts, the way communities of work connect and their collaboration on thought generation, changed (1). It can be said that in today's modern societies, people can interact with multi-form texts in almost every moment of life, and the importance of studies on understanding these texts that contain multiple literacy practices emerges once again in this context.

The concept of Multiliteracy, which is also associated with multi-form texts that have become widespread on the Internet, was first put forward in the article "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures" published by the New London Group in 1996. The New London Group refers to two different elements in this article with the word multi-literacy. Firstly, multi-literacy was used to describe the change that technology and multimedia create on people's communication dynamics, and it was stated that traditional literacy skills were insufficient in multimedia and the Internet, where texts exist interactively with audio, video, and images, and the perception of literacy should also change with technology (2).

Analyzing the meaning production processes of multi-form messages and identifying the new communication skills needed to use these structures has been one of the primary areas of concern for modern societies. Studies on this subject have led to the emergence of new concepts such as multi-literacy and to find a place for itself in daily life. Social media networks and other online environments, shaped within the framework of multiple literacy dynamics, make it compulsory for modern individuals surrounded by this structure to acquire the communication skills required by various literacy.

For more information you can watch the video.

Media embedded September 15, 2021

 

1- Shrader, P.G., Lawless, K.A. (2010). The Hidden Literacies of Massively Multiplayer Online Games, Pullen, D. L., Gitsaki, C. & Baguley, M. (Ed.) Technoliteracy Discourse and Social Practice: Framework and Applications in the Digital Age (s. 200-219) içinde. New York: Information Science Reference.

2- Lawless, K. A. , Schrader, P. G. & Mayall, H. J. (2007). Acquisition of Information Online: Knowledge, Navigation and Learning Outcames. Journal of Literacy Research, 39(3), 289-306