Constructive

A third essential element of digital literacies is the Constructive element. As Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel (2006) have pointed out, literacy is always about reading and writing something. To construct a thing is therefore a test for literacy. Allan Martin (2005) expands upon this when he states that literacy in a digital world involves using digital tools appropriately to enable constructive social action.

It may seem like stating the obvious, but the physical world is very different from the digital world. There is, for example, no ‘undo’ feature in the physical world. Likewise, copying something takes effort and will be an analogue, imperfect version in the physical world. Doing so in the digital world, on the other hand, takes virtually no effort and results in a perfect copy. An understanding of what it means to ‘construct’ something in a digital environment, therefore, must be differentiated from its counterpart in the physical world. The digital and the analogue are qualitatively different.

The ability to reproduce perfectly other people’s work with a minimal amount of effort, changes what it means to ‘construct’ something. New forms of licensing such as Creative Commons allow publishers and 16 individuals sharing their content online to specify the conditions under which it may be used. Being Constructive, therefore, does not necessarily need to be from scratch, but can be building upon someone else’s work, giving them credit for what they contributed to the project.

Developing this Constructive element of digital literacies involves knowing how and for what purposes content can be appropriated, reused and remixed. It is as much about knowing how to put together other people’s work in new and interesting ways as it is about understanding the difference between the digital and physical worlds.

We will explore this further in Chapter 7 when we consider ‘Remix’.