The Uses of (Digital) Literacy.

Abstract

This article shares research facilitated by a multinational technology provider, converging mobile networked technology (tablets) used across school and home, a technology enhanced community ‘third space’ providing workshops for students aged 6-9 with their parents / carers. The approach taken avoids the instrumental measurement of functional digital literacy competences, but instead seeks to negotiate, with participants and the various stakeholders, a more nuanced and complex understanding of the ‘uses of literacy’ (from Hoggart, 1957) in digital contexts and in a deeply situated, specific local setting. Working with our findings, we later put Amartya Sen’s concept of capability (2005, 2008) to work on our data in order to provide a discussion on how the digital literacy community might distinguish digital competences as functionings from the ‘uses’ of such competences for a broader range of capabilities. Findings demonstrate initial successes in using networked mobile technology in bridging the school-family-community triad as a third space. However, the outcomes reveal the complexity and specificity of factors which restrict the potential for mobile technology in education to lead on to further reaching capabilities – delimiting the uses of digital literacy.