What do you know about socio-emotional literacy?
Socio-emotional literacy is a type of digital literacy that involves sociological and emotional aspects of work in cyberspace. This type of skill is used to avoid “traps” and derive benefits from the advantages of digital communication. Socio-emotional literacy skills require the individual to be critical, analytical, and mature. The person must also have a high degree of branching literacy and information literacy. In order to have socio-emotional literacy skills, the person must also be willing to share data and knowledge with others, evaluate information, have abstract thinking, and be able to collaboratively construct knowledge.
What are your reactions to the idea that there are certain socio-emotional skills?
I think that this type of literacy is more complex than any of the other forms of digital literacy I have learned about. I believe that I have not mastered this type of literacy because I sometimes fail to avoid traps in cyberspace. I always thought that I was just naive. I never thought of it as being a literacy skill. Two years ago, I had a message from a “buddy” on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) that said, “check this out.” Because I knew the person, and because it looked like a normal message, I clicked on the link to check it out. All of a sudden, the message automatically forwarded to everyone on my buddy list and there were popups all over my computer screen. Of course, I had contracted a virus on my desktop computer by clicking on the link. I usually keep virus software on my computer, but I hadn’t realized that it needed to be updated. I have also fallen for many hoaxes in the past. I once ordered an item online in order to get a “free” item, but I ended up having to pay for a whole lot more than what I thought I was ordering. Since then, I have been very careful when opening files that I do not know exactly what they are. I have also improved my ability to tell the difference between a hoax and a real offer, yet I still do not do a lot of shopping online.
How do you think this “new” literacy will change education/schooling?
I think that this new type of literacy has already changed education and schooling because most of students today use the internet for different purposes. There are a lot of hoaxes and traps across the internet that can harm one’s computer, but children have to learn how to avoid them. Students also need this type of skill to distinguish between true or false information, wich goes along with the ability to evaluate information to check for validity and credibility. Children need socio-emotional skills to communicate in chatrooms in order to tell if others are really who they say they are.
4 Comments
November 5, 2006 at 10:11 am
I agree that this has already changed education. A lot of schools are so afraid of viruses that it is one of the things they stress the most.
November 5, 2006 at 11:19 pm
I also agree with you in that you don’t understand how complex all of these skills really are and how they are intertwined together. I feel like so much we have learned would not matter without these skills.
November 7, 2006 at 2:42 pm
There are many traps out there for students to fall into. I agree that we are beginning to change the way that we are teaching students. I hope that more programs are created for this type of literacy.
November 7, 2006 at 11:25 pm
That’s horrible that you got a virus. There are so many going around, and they look like something you would see online everyday that it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not.