Reading TWO: “Becoming Literate in the Information Age” by Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe
This second reading for digital writing and publishing focuses on a study conducted by interviewing multiple students. The study itself is parsed down to (what the authors note) are two participants to follow, but they also weave in the answers of others to support their respondents of choice. The problem in this is that the full depth and breadth of their study is not materialized in the article itself. With that said, the authors do note at the end of the article that their research can be obtained outside of the study and they indicate where to find it.
Two women are followed throughout the study—a black woman who grew up in the 80’s and went on to a career. This woman was in the military life as a child (with her father being active duty), and later enlisted herself. Eventually she too became a military wife and sought a career outside of the armed forces while her husband continued on in his career.
The first woman talked about literacy as if it were tied to the conventional thinking associated with the term, and recalled the times that her mother and father read while she was a child. Specifically, she recounted her father reading manuals to understand processes that were necessary for his job. This process of intaking information and then learning hands on later came to serve her well as she entered the civilian workforce. She wrote that she had different computer literacies in her applications, and when she was hired she took the manuals and learned the systems on her own—fooling her colleagues. Eventually she rose through the ranks at work, and found herself back in college pursuing a higher education. Ultimately she became an instructor at the university level, of technology literacy.
The second woman in the study was significantly younger than the first, and she grew up—a white woman—in the upper peninsula of Michigan. This woman had extensive access to technology, but discussed at length how that technology was not embraced by her teachers in the classroom—so she confirmed to the classic expectations of educators while pursuing her interests outside of the classroom.
Some factors not discussed in the paper that are important would be things such as the racial makeup of the areas where they lived, cultural expectations, etc. further—while one woman was black, she did not come from a low socioeconomic area. The study also didn’t address the racial make up in the areas where each woman lived. These are significant considerations when examining technology access in relation to classroom applications because the funding, the culture, and the attitudes of technology are all inter related when looking at technology literacy through a critical lens.
I am left thinking about the access my students have to technology in their homes and communities. I am also considering what would happen to the technological literacies of students if their parents’ technological literacy gaps were addressed. Further, I am pondering, in this 21st century world, the human right to internet access. No one owns the internet, so why do we pay for access to it in addition to being inundated with advertisements to support individual websites or to being required to pay for a subscription to use services. It seems as though the gatekeeper to technological literacy is funding, and in a world where people must be technologically savvy to survive, what is the implication of that restricted access?
