Chapter 2 "New Literacies" Reflection

Trudging through Chapter 2 I really had to focus. Lankshear and Knobel do a painstaking job of explaining each concept. I am not an academic, nor do I really need that level of detail to understand that as humans we want to belong and we create our sense of belonging through communication. So, for the sake of argument lets call this communication literacy practice.

Lankshear and Knobel make the very salient point about diversity, variation, and the dynamic nature of these practices we engage in. The social practices we engage in create a social structure or social order.

What is Literacy Practice?

Literacy is described as practice. Add a heaping tablespoon of technology and via a coordinated set of actions, which they call skills; abracadabra you have literacy practice. The what, where, how, and context of some purposeful engagement or larger social practice shape the way the literacies play out. That would be the diverse, dynamic piece.

Encoding

The chapter defined the difference between encoded and unencoded text. Many cultures rely on oral storytelling to transmit their history; an example of unencoded text. The literacies discussed in this book relate to encoded text; anything you can retrieve later.

Meaning and Text

One of the more interesting sections to me was meaning and text. I believe the receiver not the transmitter determines meaning. Ever wonder why someone did the exact opposite of what you told them? Lankshear and Knobel makes the point that almost anything available online becomes a resource for diverse kinds of meaning-making. They also make the point that a lot of the content and discourse online is only meaningful to like-minded individuals. Is this human nature’s way to try and avoid cognitive dissonance?

Summary

That's my story and I am sticking to it.