Class 6: February 11, 2010

The Strick Encyclopedia

First published in the month of Kygryo of the round-about 11597.238, The Strick Encyclopedia was the first comprehensive information source written in the language Hhiubep. Hhiubep was a language developed by the Monks of Creationium, inhabitants of a satellite colony of Old Earth during the round-about cycle 10000.100 - 12967.920. Every known copy of the encyclopedia was destroyed by the despised Muejiqs in the round-about 12844.331 because it contained references to what was considered true statements of the Muejiq oppresive regime. The Muejiqs had conquered all the people of Old Earth's inhabited life-sustaining soil plantations and implanted in them a technological device that allowed the Muejiqs to control the Old Earthlings. The regime of the Muejiqs continued until the energy source that powered their technology was exhausted.

Ok, I'll quit here. What have I said? Well, really, nothing. But, it could be true, sometime, somewhere.

Tonight's class really emphasized for me the relativeness of truth. When Denis said that he isn't fond of the term Digital Native, I listened carefully to his following remarks. When he said that the youth of today lack context and then related to us the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series, Trudeaumania, mainframe computers that needed entire floors of office buildings but had much less power than one of today's laptops, and all the other things that I right now don't recall, it struck a chord. Of course today's youth can't relate to our context, our personal histories; they weren't around. In the same way, I see pictures of the homestead of my great-great-grandparents on Henderson Highway, but I can't really relate to their way of life; I have no living context for that.

In a similar way, we experienced during Denis's workshop a song written in Latin. How many in the room had a context for that one? And hence follows the question about literacy. What is it? To come to a satisfactory answer, I traced the etymology of the word literacy at the Online Etymology Dictionary (OED). Since literacy is derivative of literate, I found what I wanted there. To be literate apparently means to be "educated, learned; one who knows the letters" (OED). The word also goes back to the 15th century, when, print was invented by Gutenberg. Any coincidence there? Don't think so. To be "one who knows letters" implies an understanding of what one sees and the knowledge of sounds associated with such letters. ABCs anyone?

In the context related in the paragraph above, literacy is about actual letters of text that we read, but it has evolved into more that just the understanding of text. Being literate does mean being educated/learned, as the definition says, but not necessarily in the art of letters. There is music, there is art, there is film, there is math, there is culture... there is technology. In general, there are different languages, modes of expression, codes... different ways. And these ways speak to what we know, or perhaps better said, what we have come to know.

To me, becoming educated has as much to do with incidental experience, if not more, as does being trained to understand a way of knowing. Sit on a hot stove and burn thy butt and one will soon not forget it. How one comes to know, which implies remembrance of something experienced - learned - is also dependent on the individual frame of mind, or maybe better said, the frame of reference, one's orientation to the world. Can one be literate if one doesn't remember? I think one can only proclaim literacy if one has context, that is, a memory about something, which I'll say may or may not include a deep understanding (consider what Paul said in his Heidegger entry about kids not being tech experts). This suggests that there are degrees of literacy, which we know, from perhaps really knowing what one is doing or talking about (as in a mechanic or doctor) to recognizing a picture once before seen. In a nutshell, there are many variables that make up the literacy equation. It is a relative (relative as a noun, for a thing that has relativeness, like truth). I'm literate in hockey not only because I know the rules and something about who is playing in the NHL these days, but because I know how to skate (and I'll add not too badly) and have a reasonably good idea how to play the game.

When it comes to literacy with technology, based on what I have already said, the relative is context dependent (like everything else). How can I be literate with technology, to any degree, if I don't have access to it or do not practice using it? What I didn't say yet but which is significant is the critical thinking involved in literacy, the amount of time spent reading, playing or using tools. This is very pertinent to teachers. If teachers don't practice using technology, if they don't critically think about how the tools can be used in the classroom, how effective will their application of technology be? I'll leave that for you to answer.

All this talk is bringing me to knowledge construction and constructivism, but I won't go there this week. Let it suffice that I constructed the first paragraph, in the spirit of My Winnipeg, borrowing from Star Trek and "the old country."