Michelle’s Weblog

10/14/08

Eshet-Alkali, Y., & Amichai-Hamburger, . (2004, August). Experiments in digital literacy. Cyberpsychology and Behavior,7 (4), 421-429.

Purpose:

This article discussed the different aspects of digital literacy, and the article discussed a study that they performed to see if digital literacy is spread through out different age groups.

Question:

Is digital literacy spread equally through out the different age groups, or is it focused mainly on the younger population?

Information:

It defines digital literacy as a combination of skill that are used in performing tasks in digital environments. It also goes over and states the different types of literacy that are included and gives examples. It includes the photo-visual literacy is the ability to read and understand instructions and messages that are present in visual – graphic form. Reproduction literacy is the ability to create or edit new information in all forms of media, and branching is the ability to learn how to navigate through something like information in a non-linear way. Finding your way through a program or website.  Information literacy is being aware of the quality of information and being able to sort out subjective, biased, or even false information. The last catagory is the newest and hardest to truly define and it is socio-emotional literacy. This is learning through social groups, edge sharing groups, chat rooms, and other collaborative learning tools. The study had 60 volunteers that included a a similar demographic background and they randomly volunteered. They also were spread equally when considering male and female and there were 20 in each of the age ranges. The age ranges included high school, 3rd year college students, and 30-40 year-olds. They were then given five tasks that covered the different areas of digital literacy.

Inferences/ Conclusions:

They found that when looking at the photo-visual literacy and the branching literacy that there was no significant difference between the high school and college aged participants, but the adults scored lower than the two other groups. In the reproduction and the Information literacy they found that the high school was the lowest and that the adults were the highest. The college then fell in the middle. And they also found that when looking at the socio-emotional literacy the adults were actually the lowest and the college was the highest. Showing that the different digital lieracies are not spread across the different age groups.

Assumptions:

The authors assuemed when doing this study that you did not know what digital literacy was and the differnet catagories that were within it. And that if you did a study after this the age gourps would perfom the same way indicating that these results are reliable.

Implications:

If they read and see that there is a need for digital literacy to be spread across different age groups and they do something about it then everyone would aquire digital literacy to a higher degree. If they do not, then digital literacy will not expand holding some back.

Point of View:

THis article was done py peple woho wanted to show how digital literacy is not spread through our the different ages. Their really was not a stong pull one way or the other, but you could tell that they thought that digital literacy was important and should be know in its entirety.