Ashley Pence
November 8, 2007
The branch of literacy that deals with socio-emotional characteristics is one that I find to be the most interesting. Who would have ever thought that in order to gain information you have to know how to handle other people’s misinformation or trickery? At the same time you are required to share helpful information appropriately with others in digital spaces. Eshet-Alkali (2004; 2005) describes socio-emotional literacy as the highest level and most complex skill to obtain of the 5 branches of literacy. This branch requires us to be extremely cautious of the information we use as well as being mature about the information we share. Another reason for being so complex is that we must have a good control over the other branches of literacy to acquire success with socio-emotional literacy.
Socio-emotional literacy requires the digital user to be comfortable with what they contribute to cyberspace. Eshet-Alkali (2004; 2005) tell me that I must be willing to share my knowledge with other people. This knowledge could range anywhere from how I interpret data, my individual thoughts on certain subjects and collaborating with others to share knowledge.
In the study performed by Eshet-Alkalai and Amichai-Hamburger (2004) all of the branches of literacy were tested to obtain information on what age groups perform better in certain branches of literacy. Each of the branches of literacy had one group performing better than the other however for socio-emotional literacy there was not a clear determining score that showed one group out performing the other.
The fact that there are skills such as socio-emotional literacy does not surprise me. What does surprise me is that someone has identified it. I feel like everyone is aware of the fact that we must be careful and mature about what we view and share in cyberspace, but it never crossed my mind that someone could be good or bad at it. When I log into things such as this blog and express my opinions or knowledge about something I am always careful to only include what I feel is appropriate. Throughout this class we have also learned ways in which to have proper “netiquette” that will allow us to monitor what should and should not be included in things that are being seen by the public eye. However I am also aware of the fact that there are times when people may have not been taught such “netiquette” skills and publish very inappropriate things. This relates to me because I am viewing those innapropriate things, but not on purpose. This leads to the importance of teaching these skills to our students to help them become appropriate not only when publishing but also when viewing or interacting. This literacy has to do with protecting oneself from the dangers of the digital, highly- connected world. (2007) We have all heard the news that tells us about pedophiles who lurk in chat rooms waiting for their next victims. If there were a way to educate children as well as adults of the dangers of cyberspace we could perhaps decrease the occurrence of such horrific events.
Resources:
Aphek, E. (2007). Digital, highly connected children: Implications for education. Retrieved November 8, 2007, from http://www.phil-inst.hu/mobil/2005/Aphek.pdf
Aviram, A., Gurion, B., & Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2006). Towards a theory of digital literacy: Three scenarios for the next steps. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. Retrieved November 8, 2007 from the Directory of Open Access Journals.
Eshet-Alkalai & Amichai-Hamburger (2004, August). Experiments with digital literacy. Cyber Psychology, 7(4), 425-434.
