Reflect

problems in digital environments (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004). It finds its origins in information and computer literacy (Bawden, 2008, 2001; Snavely & Cooper, 1997; Behrens, 1994; Andretta, 2007; Webber & Johnson, 2000), so much so that the skills and competencies listed by Shapiro and Hughes (1996) in a curriculum they envisioned to promote computer literacy should sound very familiar to readers today: • tool literacy - competence in using hardware and software tools; • resource literacy - understanding forms of and access to information resources;

• social-structural literacy - understanding the production and social significance of information; • research literacy - using IT tools for research and scholarship; • publishing literacy - ability to communicate and publish information; • emerging technologies literacy - understanding of new developments in IT; and

• critical literacy - ability to evaluate the benefits of new technologies (Note that this literacy is not the same as “'critical thinking,” which is often regarded as a component of information literacy).

It should also come as no surprise that digital literacy shares a great deal of overlap with media literacy; so much so that digital literacy can be seen as a subset of media literacy, dealing particularly with media in digital form. The connection should be fairly obvious— if media literacy is “the ability to identify different types of media and understand the messages they are communicating," then digital literacy can be seen as "m edia literacy applied to the digital media,” albeit with a few adjustments.

The term "digital literacy” is not new; Lanham (1995), in one of the earliest examples of a functional definition of the term described the "digitally literate person” as being skilled at deciphering and understanding the meanings of images, sounds, and the subtle uses of words so that he/she could match the medium of communication to the kind of information being presented and to whom the intended audience is. Two years later, Paul Gilster (1997) formally defined digital literacy as “the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers," explaining that not only must a person acquire the skill of finding things, he/she must also acquire the ability to use these things in life.

Bawden (2008) collated the skills and competencies comprising digital literacy from contemporary scholars on the matter into four groups: 1. Underpinnings - This refers to those skills and competencies that “support” or “enable” everything else within digital literacy, namely: traditional literacy and computer/ICT literacy (i.e., the ability to use computers in everyday life).

2. Background Knowledge - This largely refers to knowing where information on a particular subject or topic can be found, how information is kept, and how it is disseminated— a skill taken for granted back in the day when information almost exclusively resided in the form of printed text. 3. Central Competencies - These are the skills and competencies that a majority of scholars agree on as being core to digital literacy today, namely: • reading and understanding digital and non-digital formats; • creating and communicating digital information; evaluation of information;

• knowledge assembly; • information literacy; and • media literacy. 4. Attitudes and Perspectives - Bawden (2008) suggests that it is these attitudes and perspectives that link digital literacy today with traditional literacy, saying “it is not enough to have skills and competencies, they must be grounded in some moral fram ework," specifically: • independent learning - the initiative and ability to learn whatever is needed for a person's specific situation; and • moral / social literacy - an understanding of correct, acceptable, and sensible behavior in a digital environment.

Information Literacy within Digital Literacy

Given the ease with which digital media (as opposed to traditional print media) can be edited and manipulated, the ability to approach it with a healthy amount of skepticism has become a “survival skill” for media consumers. Eshet-Alkalai (2004) draws attention to Information Literacy as a critical component of Digital Literacy as “the cognitive skills that consumers use to evaluate information in an educated and effective manner.” In effect, Information Literacy acts as a filter by which consumers evaluate the veracity of the information being presented to them via digital media and thereupon sort the erroneous, irrelevant, and biased from what is demonstrably factual.

From this perspective, part of the efforts of Digital Literacy Education should be toward developing media consumers who think critically and are ready to doubt the quality of the information they receive, even if said information comes from so-called “authoritative sources." However, a majority of studies on Information Literacy seem to concentrate more on the ability to search for information rather than its cognitive and pedagogical aspects (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004; Zinns, 2000; Burnett & McKinley, 1998).