Digital Literacy in a Visual Arts Class

• In Event: Critical Digital Literacies as Social Praxis: Intersections and Challenges

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to discuss different literacies among high school students in computer rich classroom environments. In Norway, laptops are systematically introduced as a mandatory tool for every high school student. This makes the classroom an interesting arena for studying a variety of literacy practices, values and attitudes towards knowledge and literacy.
This paper is part of a larger study of digital literacy among high school students (in the age group of 15-18) from two different schools. As well as drawing on the approaches of new literacy studies (Street 1984; Barton 1994; Knobel and Lankshear 2007; Heath and Street 2008; Gee 2011), the study is based on ethnographic observations of classroom activities and focus group interviews with all the students involved in the observed classes, as well as close interviews with a select few (Street 1984; Denzin and Lincoln 2005; Heath and Street 2008). In addition, I have gathered textual artifacts from one of the classes for further analysis.
The present paper focuses on the observations and interviews from one of the two classes in the larger study; a photography and visual arts class with students in the age group of 17-18. In this class, the students use their own blog as a hub for all the activities that took place in class, openly reflecting upon, documenting, discussing and commenting their own and their peers' activities and learning outcomes. Through their blogs the students draw attention from a far wider group of readers than just their classmates, friends or family, exposing their work as well as their way of working to students and teachers from other schools, even from other countries. Both data from the observations and the interviews suggests that the students experience their school efforts significantly different from the traditional approaches of written assignments and hand-in exercises, and that they participate in what they seem to perceive as real discourses involving choices, responsibilities, concerns and possibilities that are different from the literacy practices that they are accustomed to in school.

Author

• Arne Olav Nygard, University of Stavanger