Learning to be a participant, or new literacies in a world of digital sharing

Colin Lankshear & Michele Knobel don’t let it rust. After having their first edition of New Literacies published in 2003, they have been active in updating it, getting the 3^rd edition to the bookstores last year. The subtitle of the newest edition is Everyday Practices and Social Learning.

Reading New Literacies 3^rd ed. is one of those rewarding learning experiences. It is a well structured and lucidly written book full of interesting examples.

New Literacies is divided into three parts: Concepts and theories, Everyday practices and examples, and finally, building upon these, New literacies and social learning.

I found 'New literacies and social learning' the most valuable part. There’s a lucid chain of reasoning from the change of the global world, from the new requirements in the working life, to the informal participatory digital culture and how these urge the learning and teaching to change.

Learning in the current society has to happen as an active process of the learner, where he/she becomes a full participant in a community of practice. That means that learning is not so much “(educators) pushing decontextualized abstract knowledge” but “(learners) pulling meaningful and contextual skills”. When learning is contextual, authentic, and makes a connection to the life outside school, it can touch emotions, too. As best, that can lead to passion-based learning.

Not only do Lankshear&Knobel theorize about it, but they give us plenty of examples as well. There’s the granny who decided to learn to be a Sims designer. There’s the community building up The Secret Life of Toys. And what is of the most essential, there’s the authors’ own (authentic!) experience with teacher education students and their team-based learning, producing both research and new media.

This quote sounds like a motto of our Learning Solutions team at InnoOmnia: 

“The efficacy of social learning is predicated on the fact that it immerses learners in processes of induction into the ‘ways’ of becoming ‘full practitioners’ and acquiring their appreciative systems, as well as getting hands-on practice with their mental and material tools within authentic contexts in which they are employed by successful practitioners from the outset.” (220)

The strength of part 1 and part 2 lies in the vast array of interesting examples of current digital culture. They range from auctioning one’s soul in Amazon.com, to the shoe throwing meme, to writing fanfiction, and to producing machinima video at school.  

The writers have organized their book to serve as a course text book by providing questions and topics for discussion in the end of the chapters. Chapter 7 is also available online at the writers’ site. 

In Facebook terms, I ‘like’ this book. “This [liking on Facebook] creates text, makes meaning, does identity work, expresses solidarity, sends signals, instantiates one’s sense of ‘cool’ or insiderliness, and so on. It is writing by clicking.” (196) 

So, if you liked this review, share it and ignite your own social network of meanings.