This is another reflection on my time at Learning Technologies 2017. Much fat was chewed and I find myself with interesting matters to reflect on again.
Today I find my mind orbiting the theme of digital literacy. This was a phrase I had not heard before in the conference (my lack of attention I suspect). Digital capability or competence has come up many times before. Most often and tiringly, as a deficiency in L&D teams. There was an echo of fragile confidence in teams, colleagues and ourselves to create solid digital experiences for learners. Adding to the anecdotal evidence, I would say that this was less of an issue this year (from my own anecdote digest). There was much concern still about the digital literacy of senior managers and of IT departments but less about ourselves. Progress of a sort.
Digital literacy is a stalwart from the lexicon of my BBC days, when we would fret over how best to raise levels and close the digital capability gaps in the UK population. With typical BBC hubris, we would assume a central position in campaigns and march out to educate the populace. In fact, I think the iPlayer has done more to raise the bar of digital confidence nd understanding than any social action campaign by the BBC. It offers a service that people understand and is designed to stick to it. A well designed product with a singular use case is alway a solid foundation to bring any doubters on board. “Watching the favourite telly shows you missed” is a good call to action and remains so.
Facebook has changed the game of digital confidence for users. At least the combination of the Faceboook mobile app and smartphone adoption have. It has been common to worry about older users and their confidence in taking digital steps. Huge numbers of the over 65s are regularly sharing and commenting now. This platform has been responsible, in part, for a couple high profile elections amongst these demographics. Again, a well designed product for a clear use. We can worry less about those further reaches of demography for our content and services if we design well. Or just use Facebook, maybe. If we speak the language of our users in the conversational spaces they gather themselves, we will seem literate to them and can become useful and interesting to them.
On the other hand ( and typing this from a position of a certain age) I find my own levels of literacy undermined by Snapchat. Like many of my anxious contemporaries, I have had a go to see what all the fuss is about. To see what the youngsters are on about and to cling to connection with my ageing kids. It went quite badly and I confess that I don’t like Snapping very much. It leaves me with furrowed brow. As an interesting twist in product design, I am being designed out of the service. Or at least it is designed with no regard for me whatsoever. It’s kind of deliberately confusing. The UI and design is consciously tricky apparently, particularly for us older folks who have grown up with certain usability conventions. Successfully confusing, I might add. These features may evolve as the business needs to demonstrate a revenue model that ad executives can be confident of. We shall see…
Besides these demographic challenges and positions, there are more serious literacy chasms to cross. The pressing digital literacy challenges are now privacy, security, safety and the small matters of truth and trust. These are real challenges to gather around and support. (Use of Facebook becomes a little more problematic on all of these fronts). How we judge veracity of information, who knows what about us and why, where does our identity reside, can we keep it safe from harm? These are the pressing literacies we need to rehearse and develop. They are hard work too. Few services are designed to make these issues transparent.
I am no clearer now than I was when I started typing. Back to literacy school for me.