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How might teachers promote “literacy across the curriculum” in the electronic age?
In the Board of Senior Secondary School Studies “Art syllabus for Senior External Examination” (1996) literacy is defined in two ways. One is the traditional reading and writing literacy – using the art discourse, and the conventions of writing. Another important literacy is visual literacy, which pertains to images – students are expected to have learnt to apply and understand all aspects of visual language. The syllabus states that visual literacy involves a process of “manipulating, classifying, recalling, discriminating, selecting, arranging and constructing images”.
The art syllabus also suggests fields of study where students can become visually and electronically literate, for example Electronic imaging. Students learn how to use “computer imaging programs, lasers, telecommunications, photocopiers, fax machines and sound technologies” (BOSSS, 1996) to reflect on our society’s new obsession with the electronic age, information, communication and advertising.
The electronic age provides many opportunities for promoting visual literacy. New technologies are a tool for manipulating the concepts of students in ways that would have been impossible ten years ago (Reade and Johnston in Whelan, 1991). Electronic and online media have new implications for literacy so art and technology need not be polar opposites any longer. Reade and Johnston (in Whelan, 1991) suggest that these new media be used not as a machine but as a tool for creativity. Just like a student learning to use a paintbrush and oils, students need to be literate in all applications of these new tools.
Print texts in art have many limitations. Because of the dependence on imagery in this field, students must have access to good quality prints of artist’s work. The electronic age offers interactivity with images. If the photographic and scanning quality is good, students can zoom in on the image to see close up – something they may not be able to do with an image in a book, or even in real life. An Intel advertising campaign uses this to advertise it’s new technologies on an Intel powered site called ArtMuseum.net, where users can browse Van Gogh paintings in 3 dimensions instead of in two dimensional form. The information students can retrieve from print media can just as easily be transformed to an electronic media with more possibilities, for example: hyperlinks to related areas and quality imagery. New technology based media in visual art such as video and sound art can not effectively be captured within the print media. Electronically students can view the performance piece just as the artist would liked the audience to view it, instead of as video stills in a journal.
To effectively promote literacy across the art curriculum (including visual literacy, language literacy and electronic literacy) students must have access to electronic media. Being technologically literate is of the utmost importance because if art is a reflection on society, future art maker must be literate in all technological advancements. Reade and Johnston mention that art is a way in which people have “civilised their humanity” (Whelan, 1991) and human being’s interaction with technology can not escape the artist’s quest to capture this development in society.
To what extent is a “critical literacy” of electronic media similar or different to that of print texts?Critical literacy has become more important with the advent of the Internet and electronic media, whereas in print text we tend not to be critical because they are normally edited by someone other than the author in order to be published. There is no such role on the internet, because no one owns the network of computers across the world, and no one monitors the quality of information posted on the millions of sites (Gilster, 1997).
Being critically literate means not taking web pages at face value (Gilster, 1997); electronic media can use sound, images, icons, animations, and movies to illustrate the content (Reinking, 1994). Readers can become carried away with the aesthetics and not critically evaluate the site. The web page on youth subcultures evaluated in section A (3), did not have all these bells and whistles – on the first page, one that can be likened to a table of contents page in a print text, were a few images to illustrate each topic area. In the print text, “Youth cultures, Style and Education” an academic essay, all the reader has to “read” is the text itself. Both texts evaluated were in the academic essay genre, and each author has remained true to the conventions of the genre by using text – not distracting the reader with images, because the reader would also have to evaluate the images in relationship to the text.
Finding out information on the author of a web page is a more detailed process than finding out authorship of print texts. Anybody with access to the internet can author a web page (Gilster, 1997), and with the advent of free homepage providers like www.xoom.com and www.freeservers.com users do not have to pay for a domain name or to maintain it through their Internet Service Provider. Gilster (1997) suggests using the finger command, domain name provider searches, email, and search engines to do research on authors of web pages. However thousands of pages and authors are virtually untraceable because of the use of free web page and email providers. Many responsible authors provide an email link, so you can communicate with them about the content of their site; they also provide a page on themselves and their background. The youth culture site in A (3) was authored by a pastor called Mark Tittely, he provided a page about himself, his family and his ministry in South Africa as well as an email link encouraging people to communicate with him. The essay evaluated for the print text proforma was written by a lecturer specialising in the field of youth studies, and the book it is in was edited by lecturers involved in education at QUT. Anyone not an educational professional or student at QUT would not know this authorship information.
Electronic media has the capacity to be interactive because of new textual structures that allow the reader more freedom – such as hyperlinks (Reinking, 1994). Indeed the youth subcultures web page, took advantage of this interactivity. The reader can jump mid paragraph to another related topic that may be more pertinent to their information need, allowing the reader to be in control of their own meaning making. In print texts the reader may be offered references to other related print texts, however the information is not just a click away as it is on the internet. The reader must go through the process of finding the particular related resources before sitting down and reading.
Critical literacy of electronic and print texts is fraught with many problems, the only similarity between the two types of media is that we can evaluate the information we have or have not been given. For example, whether or not non-verbal elements such as images are relevant to the genre, and the availability of authorship information. One marked difference between electronic and print media is that on the internet references are available by clicking on a hyperlink, however finding print references is a more drawn out and traditional process.
REFERENCESArtMuseum.net (2000), http://www.artmuseum.net (accessed 3 April 2000)
Art Syllabus for the Senior External Examination (1996), Board of Senior Secondary School Studies: Queensland.
Department of Education, Queensland (1991). National Arts in Australian Schools Project: The Arts and Technology, Curriculum Corporation, Queensland.
Gilster, P. (1997) “Content evaluation”, Digital Literacy, New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 87 – 123.
Reinking, D. (1994) “Reading and writing with computers: literacy research in a post-typographical world”, Plenary address, National Reading Conference, Sandiego, CAL.