Hello meta-audiences! There has been something on my mind
lately: life is busy and time is short. We all have our own thing going on and
we give priorities and spend time on what we value. Truthfully, my talks of
metaliteracy are academia related and serve as a requirement for me. My enthusiasm
for it varies. Metaliteracy does seem like an abstract concept after all,
probably because it sounds too weird and it's hard to get motivation going.
But as I may have mentioned, many of us in some way are metaliterate.
Now if we forget about learning this meta-monster for a moment, put a pause on academics,
and think about actual forms of metaliteracies, maybe we can learn without the
weird taste of being schooled in your mind, welcome this word (metaliteracy) into
our dictionaries.
I’m sure at some point we all went on Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter. These are 3 big websites of the modern social world. We may like to watch videos, find out whats happening in
people’s lives, read tweets and so on. We know this as social media and entertainment
(in academia: media literacy). Ok taking
this one step further, let’s contribute to the video, post, or tweet that we have
just witnessed (and walk into the realm of metaliteracy). And I’m not talking
about just a thumbs up I mean like really say something about whatever you
looked at or listened to.
You ever saw how passionate people can argue especially
online? (Though sometimes the essays of conversation could turn your
attention away.)
Well if you find that they make a good point or you ever thought “Hey, I didn't think of that” or “that’s something new” then behold what you see is an example of metaliteracy. And let’s turn our minds to education mode and keep this piece of knowledge.
The back and forth of information and ability for discussion is what drives this word: metaliteracy.
From what I gather every time we learn and expand our mind
we are becoming more literate, any other form besides meta-. To transform our
literacy into metaliteracy gives a little effort when we spew out a little
information like kids at show-and-tell.
Though I know your goal in this post (or one of them anyway) was to bridge "academic" metaliteracy with "real world" metaliteracy -- the former being a lot of the high theory we've been learning in the MOOC, and the latter being the (fantastic) examples of how this plays out on social media. But I would submit that your examples *are* where metaliteracy not only happens but finds its meaning (i.e., in practice). There's a moment I think occurs with students/researchers engaging with metaliteracy, where, how we understand it shifts from being somewhere outside of us (in a "classroom" for instance, or described in an academic article), to the sudden realization that *any time we engage with information* (and as you indicated, it can be surface level i.e. clicking Like, or more complex and of substance i.e. contributing a comment to a thread under a post bout something significant and complex) -- this is metaliteracy. Our lives today *are* metaliteracy. Great post--so cool to see you make this connection :)
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you on this one. There are even more situations in our everyday lives that are examples of metaliteracy. For example, imagine going to a movie with a big group of your friends. You all sit together and experience the movie, and usually when its over you end up having a conversation about it. Some of you will love it, while others will think its anticlimactic. You'll also discuss your favorite parts, plot holes, make references and syntheses to prequels, etc. That right there is a small example of metaliteracy! There are so many examples from our everyday lives where we share our thoughts and continue to reflect on our own thinking, that we don't even realize them. Our friends and family help us to expand, develop and even modify our own thinking. So you're definitely justified in your belief that metaliteracy extends way beyond the classroom.
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