Foundational Literacy
Literacy has been defined differently throughout the history due to the change of societal demands. Not too long ago, one can be determined as literate if s/he can read and write the basic information about herself or himself. With the change of the complexity in the society and the demand from the job market, one needs to have the ability to read, write, speak, listen, and think to be considered literate in order to function properly in their daily life. With new inventions of technologies, literacy, meanwhile, has upgraded and updated to include “the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, compute, and communicate using visual, audible, and digital materials across disciplines and in any context.” (International Reading Association, 2012; Leu, Zawilinski, Forzani & Timbrell, 2014).
Literacy, in general, is a common practice among the public in terms of the purposes of usage in a macro- environment, such as the one defined by what most agree upon due to the necessity for an individual to properly function in a society at large. Literacy is even more powerfully defined as a “situated practice” due to the nature of the language and the communicative purposes involved in a certain culture in a micro-environment. The term “multiple literacies” was used to emphasize different literacy practices among people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Taylor; Bond & Bresler, 2006). It was then expanded to address a broader range of literacy experiences among people who become literate in a world with diverse population and with diverse definitions of being literate (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 2001). In the 21st century, technology has raised the intensity and complexity of literate environments, a literate person should possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. (NTCE, 2008)
With profound changes in new technologies such as gaming software, video technologies, Internet, webpages, search engines and many more yet to emerge, the notion of “new literacies” began a different era. Literacy evolves to include a broader set of skills of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to consume and produce information (Leu et. al, 2004a).