Function literacy
“understanding what computers are generally good at” (46), which also means understanding the computers limitations and where human intervention is needed. Functional literacy also includes knowing what do to when the technology malfunctions or the user is met with unfamiliar technological circumstances and situations. Functionally literate students have the following qualities: “uses computers effectively in achieving educational goals”; “understands the social conventions that help determine computer use”; “ makes use of the specialized discourses associated with computers”; “manages his or her online world”; and “resolves technological impasses confidently and strategically” (45).
Critical Literacy
“a critical approach to literacy first recognizes and then challenges the values of the status quo,” which “might lead to the production of positive social change” (81). A critically literate students “scrutinizes the dominant perspectives that shape the computer design cultures and their artifacts” [design cultures are “the practices and perspectives of the people who are responsible for designing and maintaining a computing infrastructure. These people include those who design hardware devices, local and wide-area networks, software programs, desktop configurations, physical spaces, policies and procedures, pedagogical activities, and more” (106)]; “sees use contexts as an inseparable aspect of computers that helps to contextualize and constitute them”; “understands the institutional forces that shape computer use”; and “scrutinizes representations of computers in the public imagination” (96).
Critical literacy is important because “culture, politics, economics, and social institutions have all become inexorably intertwined with technology, producing an overdetermined milieu win which its directions, uses, and representations can potentially be shaped by a wide range of factors” (99).
Rhetorical Literacy
Rhetorical literacy “insists upon praxis – the thoughtful integration of functional and critical abilities in the design and evaluation of computer interfaces” (145). The rhetorically literate student “understands that persuasion permeates interface design contexts in both implicit and explicit ways and that is always involves larger structures and forces; understands that design problems are ill-defined problems whose solutions are representational arguments that have been arrived at through various deliberative activities [through choices that honor one or another value above others (152)]; articulates his or her interface design knowledge at a conscious level and subjects their actions and practices to critical assessment; sees interface design as a form of social versus technical action” (147)
Selber frequently decries the myth that computers are neutral and that computers can, alone, change (read: improve) education and society; he emphases that computers are not neutral as there are social expectations, practices, and exploitations of technology use. More, computers do not act independently, so their use is affected by the user, by the designer and by those who implement/require their use. Also, computers are only one part of educational change; this idea is a systematic perspective. Selber explains that “a systematic perspective reminds teachers that any change initiative requires an attention to many different aspects of an educational system, not just one (if important) piece of it. Moreover, a systemic perspective stresses that there is no final end point at which change is fully and finally realized. Rather, because change is a function of numerous interrelated forces – some stable, some not – it is fragile and requires ongoing consideration and commitment” (184). He includes the following in his systematic perspective heuristic: technical (material and infrastructural, pedagogical, circular, departmental, and institutional (professional development for faculty and training for graduate students).
Key Terms
- The computer as tool: “As a human extension, the computer is not self-determining in design or operation. The computer, as tool, depends upon the user, who if skilled enough can use and manipulate its (non-neutral) affordances to reshape the world in potentially positive ways” (40). This means that the user is given agency in the tool metaphor because he/she can control and utilize the technology in his/her chosen ways. On the other hand, this view also puts the blame on the user if he/she does not know how to use the technology and/or if the technology malfunctions; the user is viewed as deficient.
- Interface: “the place where different agents and contexts are connected to each other. It is where the communicative process is centered, spreading out from that contact point between texts and users” (141)