Software Literacy as a Vital Digital Literacy in a Software-Saturated World

2021 ◽  
pp. 1648-1661
Author(s):  
Craig Hight ◽  
Elaine Khoo
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Digital Literacies ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
The Way

Software mediates almost every aspect of everyday life. None of these tools are ‘neutral'. They embody social and cultural assumptions about their use and all have particular values embedded in their interfaces and affordances. This article proposes the notion of ‘software literacy' to highlight a neglected aspect of digital literacies, and a key means of conceptualising the skills and understandings needed for people to be critical and creative users of software in today's software saturated culture. This contribution argues for the relevancy of software literacy as deeply intertwined with people's engagement with software and how it influences the way people come to understand, represent, generate, and critique knowledge.

Digital Literacy Instruction in Afghanistan

2017 ◽  
pp. 1453-1469
Author(s):  
Mike Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Literacy Instruction ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Rhetoric And Composition ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Digital Literacies ◽  
Military Academy ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Laptop Computers ◽  
Recent Scholarship

This chapter uses the American military's purchase of a $5.6 million contract to supply the National Military Academy of Afghanistan with laptop computers as the occasion to investigate the complex and overdetermined intersections of digital, administrative, and literacy technologies. These intersections and the challenges they produced for the author as a Western mentor working with Afghan postsecondary instructors in ESL and digital literacies reveal the problematic homogenizing Western economic and cultural assumptions and the intense naturalization of administrative technologies that accompany the denaturalized use of digital and textual technologies in global contexts. The connections of those challenges to recent scholarship in rhetoric and composition highlight the limitations of that scholarship's conception of political economy in a global digital context and also offers new possibilities for imagining hybrid multilingual digital literacies on a global scale.

Digital Literacy Instruction in Afghanistan

2014 ◽  
pp. 209-225
Author(s):  
Mike Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Literacy Instruction ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Rhetoric And Composition ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Digital Literacies ◽  
Military Academy ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Laptop Computers ◽  
Recent Scholarship

This chapter uses the American military's purchase of a $5.6 million contract to supply the National Military Academy of Afghanistan with laptop computers as the occasion to investigate the complex and overdetermined intersections of digital, administrative, and literacy technologies. These intersections and the challenges they produced for the author as a Western mentor working with Afghan postsecondary instructors in ESL and digital literacies reveal the problematic homogenizing Western economic and cultural assumptions and the intense naturalization of administrative technologies that accompany the denaturalized use of digital and textual technologies in global contexts. The connections of those challenges to recent scholarship in rhetoric and composition highlight the limitations of that scholarship's conception of political economy in a global digital context and also offers new possibilities for imagining hybrid multilingual digital literacies on a global scale.

Make Love at War? Representing Gender and Memory in the Soviet Estonian Film Dark Windows (Pimedad aknad, Tõnis Kask, 1968)

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-37
Author(s):  
Liis Jõhvik
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Moral Choices ◽  
The One ◽  
Falling In Love ◽  
The Way

Abstract Initially produced in 1968 as a three-part TV miniseries, and restored and re-edited in 2008 as a feature-length film, Dark Windows (Pimedad aknad, Tõnis Kask, Estonia) explores interpersonal relations and everyday life in September 1944, during the last days of Estonia’s occupation by Nazi Germany. The story focuses on two young women and the struggles they face in making moral choices and falling in love with righteous men. The one who slips up and falls in love with a Nazi is condemned and made to feel responsible for the national decay. This article explores how the category of gender becomes a marker in the way the film reconstructs and reconstitutes the images of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The article also discusses the re-appropriation process and analyses how re-editing relates to remembering of not only the filmmaking process and the wartime occupation, but also the Estonian women and how the ones who ‘slipped up’ are later reintegrated into the national narrative. Ultimately, the article seeks to understand how this film from the Soviet era is remembered as it becomes a part of Estonian national filmography.

scholarly journals Rethinking GPS navigation: creating cognitive maps through auditory clues

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Clemenson ◽  
Antonella Maselli ◽  
Alexander J. Fiannaca ◽  
Amos Miller ◽  
Mar Gonzalez-Franco
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Brain Aging ◽  
Spatial Navigation ◽  
Cognitive Maps ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
Space Technology ◽  
Gps Navigation ◽  
Spatial Understanding ◽  
The Way

AbstractGPS navigation is commonplace in everyday life. While it has the capacity to make our lives easier, it is often used to automate functions that were once exclusively performed by our brain. Staying mentally active is key to healthy brain aging. Therefore, is GPS navigation causing more harm than good? Here we demonstrate that traditional turn-by-turn navigation promotes passive spatial navigation and ultimately, poor spatial learning of the surrounding environment. We propose an alternative form of GPS navigation based on sensory augmentation, that has the potential to fundamentally alter the way we navigate with GPS. By implementing a 3D spatial audio system similar to an auditory compass, users are directed towards their destination without explicit directions. Rather than being led passively through verbal directions, users are encouraged to take an active role in their own spatial navigation, leading to more accurate cognitive maps of space. Technology will always play a significant role in everyday life; however, it is important that we actively engage with the world around us. By simply rethinking the way we interact with GPS navigation, we can engage users in their own spatial navigation, leading to a better spatial understanding of the explored environment.

Ladakh and the Creative Greening of the Desert: The Life Work of Sonam Wangchuk and Rebecca Norman Through Alternative Practices in Education and Farming

2021 ◽  
pp. 239386172110146
Author(s):  
Susan Visvanathan
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Alternative Education ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Water Harvesting ◽  
Cold Desert ◽  
Alternative Practices ◽  
Life Work ◽  
The Way

This article attempts to understand the way in which climate change affects the once dry cold desert of Ladakh and how local communities have adapted to these changes by becoming excellent organic gardeners. The contributions of Sonam Wangchuk and his work with regard to water harvesting and alternative education have been recognised by the Ramon Magsaysay Committee for 2018. This will propel Sonam to complete his life mission, which is the construction of a whole new township in Phey, to relieve Leh of the overload it now experiences. The article provides a background to the work of Sonam and his wife Rebecca Norman in the details of everyday life and work, which they bring to their school, SECMOL.

“Down-to-Earth TV dramas”: The reception of authenticity, reality, and modality in Danish TV dramas

2021 ◽  
pp. 174960202110463
Author(s):  
Yeşim Kaptan
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Television Viewing ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Empirical Material ◽  
The Way

This article investigates how Turkish audiences conceptualize authenticity in their engagement with foreign television (TV) productions in the case of Danish TV dramas. The theoretical notion of authenticity is juxtaposed with empirical material from fieldwork interactions, focus group interviews, and one-on-one interviews conducted with Turkish audiences between 2016 and 2018. By employing a semiotic analysis of fieldwork data, I argue that Turkish audiences attribute authenticity to the Danish TV drama series according to a socially created modality (truth value of a sign). This article draws on accounts about modality markers in TV drama series such as authentic portrayals of Danish TV characters and plausible-realistic depictions as a verisimilitudinous representation of everyday life. In the context of cross-cultural television viewing practices, the way Turkish audiences attribute meaning to Danish TV series in terms of authenticity, realism, and modality reveals a distinct differentiation between Danish TV dramas and other nationally and globally circulating media products.

Social Class, Consumption and the Influence of Bourdieu: Some Critical Issues

1997 ◽  
Vol 44 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 274-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Longhurst ◽  
Mike Savage
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Occupational Groups ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

Bourdieu's work has been an important point of departure for recent analyses of the relationship between social class and consumption practices. This chapter takes stock of Bourdieu's influence and explores some problems which have become apparent—often in spite of Bourdieu's own hopes and general views. We point to the way that Bourdieu's influence has led to an approach to consumption which focuses on the consumption practices of specific occupational classes and on examining variations in consumption practice between such occupational groups. We argue that it this approach has a series of problems and suggest the need to broaden analyses of consumption to consider issues of ‘everyday life’, sociation, and social networks.

scholarly journals No news is better than evil news. Clearing up the way to face Alternative Archaeologies

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Jaime Almansa Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Public Archaeology ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Professional Discipline ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Interpretation ◽  
Better Than ◽  
The Way

While Archaeology started to take form as a professional discipline, Alternative Archaeologies grew in several ways. As the years went by, the image of Archaeology started being corrupted by misconceptions and a lot of imagination, and those professionals that were claiming to be scientists forgot one of their first responsibilities; the public. This lack of interest is one of the reasons why today, a vast majority of society believes in many clichés of the past that alternative archaeologists have used to build a fictitious History that is not innocent at all. From UFOs and the mysteries of great civilizations to the political interpretation of the past, the dangers of Alternative Archaeologies are clear and under our responsibility. This paper analyzes this situation in order to propose a strategy that may make us the main characters of the popular imagery in the mid-term. Since confrontation and communication do not seem to be effective approaches, we need a change in the paradigm based on Public Archaeology and the increase of our presence in everyday life.

scholarly journals Using playful methods to understand children’s digital literacies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pekka Mertala
Keyword(s):  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Digital Literacies ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Meaningful Research

This chapter is the final for Section 3 and in many ways stands as an example of how many of the individual elements presented thus far in the book, can come together in a holistic way. This chapter demonstrates how we can adopt play, make it unique to the project and the children and still arrive at meaningful research data. This chapter describes a research project wherein 3- to 6-year-old Finnish children’s digital literacies were studied and supported via playful methods. The key theses this chapter advocates are:-The use of playful methods in early childhood education (ECE) research is one way to acknowledge and respect the characteristics of the research context.-The ambiguity of play should be acknowledged when planning, conducting, and evaluating playful research projects.-Studying and supporting children’s digital literacies do not always require digital devices.The chapter is structured as follows. First, a reflective discussion on the ambiguity of play and the use of playful methods as a context-sensitive research approach is presented. Then, an overview of the research project and its objectives are provided. In the end, three concrete examples of how the children’s digital literacy was studied and supported using playful methods are given.

scholarly journals Próba kognitywnego ujęcia mądrości (na materiale przysłów polskich i litewskich)

Adeptus ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Monika Bogdzevič
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Cultural Images ◽  
Wise Person ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Communities ◽  
The Way

The concept of wisdom in Polish and Lithuanian paremiologyIn this paper, an attempt has been made to present the semantic and axiological substance of wisdom hidden in the consciousnesses of two different, namely Polish and Lithuanian, linguistic-cultural communities. The analysis belongs to a branch of linguistics, interpreting language in terms of concepts, viewing it as a source of knowledge about people themselves, different communities, their mentality, ways of perception and interpretations of the way the world is. As a model to present the most thorough understanding of wisdom, the method of cognitive definition proposed by Jerzy Bartmiński is applied. Linguistic-cultural images of wise [person], understood as the concretizations of wisdom have to reveal him/her in opposition to stupid. The cognitive picture of wise is for the most part based on the analysis of features of character and appearance, portrayed behavior, interpersonal relations and the way others have as a perception of wise. Many cognitive parameters of wisdom are revealed while exploring the interactions between people and that of nature (plants, animals) which surrounds them and investigating deeper interpersonal relations with other people. The material for research was taken from Polish and Lithuanian proverbs. The latter occur as a result of world perception, everyday life observation, confrontations with its phenomenon. The proverbs are taken from compendiums of Polish and Lithuanian proverbs: Nowa księga przysłów i wyrażeń przysłowiowych (The New Book of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases) by Julian Krzyżanowski and Lietuvių patarlės (Lithuanian Proverbs), Patarlių paralelės (Parallels of Proverbs) by Kazys Grigas. Given as cognitive definitions the cultural visions of wise, despite all the emphasized differences, enable us to perceive many evaluations of wise similar or even common to Polish and Lithuanian cultures. Próba kognitywnego ujęcia mądrości (na materiale przysłów polskich i litewskich)Zamierzeniem artykułu jest próba przedstawienia semantycznej i aksjologicznej treści pojęcia mądrości tkwiącej w świadomości dwóch odrębnych wspólnot językowo-kulturowych – polskiej i litewskiej. Przeprowadzona analiza mieści się w nurcie badań językoznawczych, traktujących język jako źródło wiedzy o człowieku, jego mentalności i systemie wartości, sposobie postrzegania i interpretacji świata. Narzędziem opisu jest zaproponowana przez Jerzego Bartmińskiego metoda definicji kognitywnej. Językowo-kulturowe obrazy człowieka mądrego, stanowiąceukonkretnioną wizję abstrakcyjnego pojęcia mądrości, przedstawiają go w opozycji do człowieka głupiego. Obraz człowieka mądrego obejmuje cechy jego charakteru oraz wyglądu, mechanizmów zachowań, charakterystycznych miejsc przebywania oraz uwidacznia związek z zajmowaną przez niego pozycją społeczną. Wiele parametrów kognitywnych mądrości ujawnia się w trakcie analizy różnorodnych relacji człowieka z otaczającą go przyrodą (roślinami, zwierzętami) oraz wynika z bardziej skomplikowanych układów – ze stosunków z innymi ludźmi. Materiał analityczny stanowiły paremia polskie i litewskie, traktowane jako rezultat poznawania świata, obserwacji życia codziennego, zderzenia z różnymi jego zjawiskami. W badaniach wykorzystane zostały kompendia przysłów polskich i litewskich: Nowa księga przysłów i wyrażeń przysłowiowych pod red. Juliana Krzyżanowskiego oraz Lietuvių patarlės (Przysłowia litewskie), Patarlių paralelės (Paralele przysłów) pod red. Kazysa Grigasa. Ujęte w strukturę definicji kognitywnych kulturowe wizje człowieka mądrego, mimo istniejących różnic, pozwalają wyodrębnić sporo wartościowań podobnych albo nawet wspólnych, charakterystycznych dla kultur polskiej i litewskiej.

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