Procedural literacy

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This page will explain what procedural literacy or computer literacy is and what role it has or has not in today's (and tomorrow's) educational technologies. Author: sugarch0

Introduction

What has prompted the writing of this article is the question wether "digital natives" as Prensky has called the generation born after the development of digital enironments not only are better users of information technologies but also if they understand the underlying technology better than any "digital immigrant", as Prensky calls people that have not been born amidst a warm nest of interconnectedness but in an era where phones were still attached to the wall by wires.

First interesting views were found in the article "Procedural Litearcy: Educating the new Media Practitioner" by Michael Mateas. Further readings showed that the term "procedural literacy" is new (today in 2010) and one of the latest expression of a long series of of definitions of literacy that include information-, computer-, media- or digital literacy (Badwen 2001).

Several other authors (Sheil 1983 and 1993, Proulx 2002) join the idea that procedural literacy should be part of the basic culture of any digital device and/or web 2.0 users ("natives" or "immigrants")if they are to be truly literate in the present time. The call for procedural literacy seems to confirm that the education of digital natives, but also of any user of information technologies, is not complete without an “understanding of the interplay between the culturally embedded practices of human meaning-making and technically mediated processes”(Mateas 2005).

Bibliography

D.Badwen: Information and Digital Literacies: a Review of Concepts. Journal of Documentation, vol. 57, No2, pp 218-259, March 2001

M. Mateas: Procedural Literacy: Educating the New Media Practitioner. On the Horizon, Vol. 13, No1, 2005

M. Prenxky: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, On the Horizon, MCB University Press, Vol. 9, No5, October 2001