Digital Literacy

I feel that sponsors in digital literacy function in much the same way that they function for print-based literacy. As Franklin remarks in her blog, you still need support from your sponsors in order to understand the tricks and techniques of digital literacy. For example, I was just having a conversation in class about how I don’t understand Instagram, and Brie took it upon herself to explain the basics (even though I don’t really plan on using Instagram, it functions as a good example of digital literacy sponsorship).

I don’t really know the last time I really had to learn a new literacy, but I think the fact that I don’t shows something else that’s interesting about digital literacy. It seems to me that it is pretty easy for someone to function in our digital age without fully mastering almost any of the new literacies. I can use Facebook pretty well, and I know enough to browse and read io9 and Reddit. I have a basic internet literacy, which allows me to figure out the basics of most new sites, and I am an adept Googler, which lets me solve problems I can’t figure out by myself. It just seems to me that it is pretty easy to gain a functional understanding of digital literacy, without putting in as much learning effort as print-based literacy takes.