Digital Literacy

Digital Literacy
As video and computer gaming has started occupy a considerable place and time in our college classrooms, Literacy and Composition instructors can make use of them in order to develop students’ reading skills and critical thinking. In her article Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some possibilities for Transformation, Alexander contends that “ incorporating a strong consideration of gaming into composition course may not only enliven writing instruction for many of our students, but also transform our approach to literacy” (37). She also argues that by analyzing and dissecting students’ attitudes towards gaming, teachers can design teaching materials that concentrate on topics such as gender, sexuality, sexism, and stereotyping and their relation to literacy.
I totally support the use of technologies in the teaching and learning process especially if they attract students. And this is what we lack in our traditional literacy. Psychologists believe that lack of motivation is one of the factors that hinder learning. This is because without motivation processes such as concentration and curiosity, which I consider key factors in operating memory, will be absent. Thus, any means that pushes our literacy forward is welcomed. However, we need to be mindful of some issues these games may bring to the educational classrooms: racism and stereotyping, for example. As we know almost most of these games create an imaginable war between a hero and rogues who should be from different races. The hero is always the winner, and the rogues the defeated. Now let us imagine this scenario. A heterogeneous X classroom consists of students of different races some of whom are Arabs. They are watching a game called Delta Force: Land Warriors, which project Arabs as enemies for the US. It also represents them as savage, barbarian, hateful, and rogues. Now the question is how these students will feel and react. There is no doubt that they will feel degraded and discriminated. They will resist all that and even may turn into “ difficult students”.
The conclusion that we can draw from this discussion is that games available now may work perfectly in homogeneous classrooms which consists of the same race. And here is the limitation of these games as audiovisual aids. We all realize that games are originally designed for entertainment. Thus, teachers should carefully choose the ones they want to use and see if a student will be hurt. Practically this is difficult because it is not only a matter of race, but also of gender, sexuality, and class. What is the solution, then? We should design games for pedagogical purposes.

Rural Liteacy

In his article Rhetoric and Realities: The History and Effects of Stereotypes about Rural Literacies, Kim Donehower states that culture plays a very important role “in shaping public notions of literacy in rural communities”(37). Kim believes that this culture may appear in others’ eyes as something strange and then it turns into stereotypes or stigmas. And in his article, he gives Appalachia as a region that suffers a lot from such stigmatization. One of the stereotypes associated with Appalachian natives is that “they are either barbarians or paragons of the pioneer spirit or, somehow, simultaneously, both”(39).
What struck me the most in the article is the suggestions that Shapiro made to remove these stigmas. The most destructive suggestion is relocating Appalachians to cities and their suburbs. In my point of view, this is an unreasonable solution. First, these people have the right to live in the place they were born into. Second, the country needs farmers and cattlemen. And if they are evacuated, who will take their place? I find his suggestion that these people be modernized is very logical. It is the role of the government to provide them with all modern life conveniences such as technologies and economical systems.
I am coming from a rural area in the Green Mountain, Libya where people farm and raise cattles. In 1950s and 60s, 98% of the population were illiterate because they were cut off from the urban life with all its systems including cultural and educational ones. So, people in that region were stigmatized with ignorance and barbarism. In 1970, the government began its project of developing all rural areas in Libya and one of them was ours. The government spent generously to turn these areas into small modern towns with telecommunication systems and well-equipped institutions. If you wander these towns now, you will see a small model of big cities. In spite of what the government did so far in the region, it could not wipe out the stigmas associated with “mountaineers” (as we are called in big cities). We are still ignorant and barbarian.
I do support Kim in his claim that stereotypes are cultural. I can say that all stereotypes about mountaineers in Libya are projected in jokes, comedic serials, and films. They are part of our popular culture and have become fossilized concepts. For me as a mountaineer who studied in a big city, I did not feel embarrassed when I heard these stigma though some of them were insulting. The reason was that I led the same life as they did and I spoke and learned the same accent. I was completely assimilated into the city. The problem was with those mountaineers who showed little difference, especially different accent or behavior. Once they were recognized, they were peppered with jokes and criticism. I know many who left the city and their academic study and came back to the region. And this is the most destructive part in this issue.

Academic Discourse vs. Home Discourse

Barbara’s article Plateau Indian Ways with Words shows how the indigenous rhetoric affect Plateau Indian students’ writing and brings us back to our discussion of home discourse vs. academic discourse, but in a broader way. Reading the previous articles and the current ones, I can confirm one fact: the person who speaks is the person who writes. However when we write, we always put on a different identity with scientific characteristics. We try to use different expressions and different syntactical structures as well as we exert efforts to explain every point mentioned since we do not expect that our readers know our context or our subject. But in oral discourse the case is different. When we speak, we use different registers and depend largely on stress, rhythm and intonation. The difference between the two discourses, then, is fait accompli; but the most important questions that we should ask are “ is there anything bad with either discourse?” and “can we combine both discourses in a piece of composition?”
And to answer the two questions, we need first to discuss the issue of identity. It is a truism that one’s identity is a complex structure. It is shaped and carved by our social practices ( economical, political and cultural) as well as by our social forces (gender, race, and sexuality), all of which differ from one place to another, from one time to another and from one society to another. It is also a truism that our behavior including language is a projection of this identity. The way we eat , the way we walk and the way we speak and write will tell you who we are. It is impossible to find two people who share all these social elements. They may have some in common, but not all of them. In other words, our identities are like our fingerprints. They characterizes us. So, Ali ( a male, heterosexual Arab who came from a working class family, subjected to dictatorship and lived in an Islamic culture) will be different from any other person in our 597 cohort.
We come back to our point. As I said above, our language reflects our identity. Thus, all our social practices and forces will form our language and give it a different flavor. Since this is the case, we should not blame our students for writing such and such or for using a particular expression. In addition, we should not distinguish between them based on the way they write. Our students coming from middle class families, for example, will write better than those coming from poor families, as a general rule. As teachers, then, we should take all this into consideration. We should appreciate what our students compose and understand that their productions are a result of different factors, many of which are not controllable. The challenge for teachers, in my point of view, is how to make academic discourse be part of our students’ identities and how to push them to combine the two discourses in a distinctive and interesting way.
I remember when I was a high school student, I could not differentiate between the two discourses though I wrote very well. The only thing that I considered while I was writing was inserting as many formal expressions as possible. I do not remember I was aware of the other elements of academic discourse. This humble experience confirms the fact that academic discourse should be not be learned but acquired. The hard question is” how do we lead our students to reach this stage”.