What is a literacy??Gee states that literacy is a "control over a second language." Completion of this task cannot be done within a classroom because "literacy is mastered through acquisition and not learning" (Gee 542). Gee goes onto explain that the learner must immerse themselves within the culture of that literacy in order to truly develop that skill set as well.
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My Literacies.Merriam Webster:
Visual Literacy is "the ability to recognize and understand ideas conveyed through visible actions or images (as pictures)" U of Illinois, Urbana: Digital Literacy is: "A person’s ability to perform tasks effectively in a digital environment... Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media, to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments" |
I believe that my digital visual literacy challenges Gee's definition because digital visual literacy requires teaching. You can immerse yourself in the culture of digital and visual literacy, but you can not acquire it solely through that practice. Through lectures, I have been given walk-throughs of basic concepts on the digital interface that would have not been optimal if I just tried to go through it alone. Though I believe that some elements of literacy can be learned by exploration, but there must be teaching involved as well to adapt to some literacies.
Source: Gee, James Paul. "Literacy Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction and What Is Literacy." Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, edited by Ellen Cushman, Euguene R. Kintgen,Barry M.Kroll and Mike Rose, Bedford/St.Martin's, 2001, 525-544