Writing Journal 9/20: Multiliteracies for a Digital Age
Selber (2004), in the book Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, continuously calls to action for teachers and educators to create a a program to teach others how to communicate better in the terms of computer literacy. He does this by revealing the three categories needed to make someone technologically literate. These three categories are to be literate functionally, critically, and rhetorically. To be functionally literate is to have the ability to effectively be capable of using and understanding how the computer works so you can use it to its full potential. This means having a deep understanding of the capabilities and the limiting factors of a computer and understanding that they are not equipped to complete any task imaginable (Selber, 2004).
The second category, critical literacy, builds upon the idea of functional literacy were once a student understands how to use the computer they can then begin to ask questions and not just become a consumer of the technology that developers force on to them. Selber (2004) also presents four parameters of a critically literate student which are, design cultures, use contexts, institutional forces, and popular representations. These parameters allow students to draw conclusions and to properly examine aspects of each category to better understand the technology they are using. (Selber, 2004)
The third and final aspect of Selber’s call to action to make technologically literate students is to make them rhetorically literate. In order to be rhetorically literate, on the other hand, the student must also be literate both critically and functionally. With the skills acquired through critical and functional literacy a student can then become more then a consumer of technology but a producer as well. By becoming rhetorically literate a student will be able to improve upon technology through social action and to also reflect on what they have created to further improve it. Rhetorically literate students can also solve the ill-defined and wicked problems, that Selber(2004) suggests in this book, by taking an active role and coordinating with others through many types of interfaces to tackle the arising problem. (Selber, 2004)
The idea of being computer literate is in fact a very crucial part of being a computer science and security major. You need all three categories that Selber proposes to be effective in this carrier. It is not sufficient enough to just understand how a computer works but it is also important to raise questions about the technology being created and to improve on it as a society to be more accessible to others. By being computer literate you can help society grow as a whole by being able to communicate effectively through technological means and to produce technology that is beneficial to all. I completely agree with Selber when he calls for change and to introduce these computer literacy programs to students.
I chose a linguistic strategy to thoroughly explain the message that Selber conveys. I also used the meme i generated above to show how each literacy build on one another and that that being computer literate is a major goal to achieve especially in today's society.
Writing Journal 9/6: The Primary Care Clinic as Writing Space
The research presented by Opel and Hart-Davidson, in The Primary Care Clinic as Writing Space, really shocked me. I always thought that healthcare professionals were experts at communication and at getting their work done efficiently. On the other hand Opel and Hart-Davidson (2019) presented that many of these professionals were often behind in their work and communicated poorly, for example MAs were often found incapable of finishing their tasks due to providers work load. The main problem presented by Opel and Hart-Davidson (2019) was that the writing inside the clinic was unevenly distributed due to the use of EMRs, or electronic medical records, which caused an unevenly divided workload.
The solution to this would be to equally distribute the writings in the clinic ,so the providers are not overwhelmed with paper work, this would allow members of the clinic to work more as a team and to better communicate with each other allowing their work to be completed more efficiently ( Opel, Hart-Davidson, 2019).
In my major of Cyber Security and Computer Science effective communication and teamwork is key. For example many computer scientist work together on a project to finish it efficiently. They do this because often some projects have a heavy work load and need a team of people to complete them as fast as possible so not just one person is getting behind in their work.
In this post I used the linguistic rhetorical strategy to communicate the main concepts of Opel and Hart-Davidson. I also used the visual rhetorical strategy by using a gif to show that work distributed to one person opposed to a team can pile up quickly and become unmanageable
