Responding to Modern Literacies

How can organizations (not just schools) respond to new literacies?

New literacies shifts our mindset in a few ways...

Bookspace to Cyberspace
Published to Participatory*
Individuated to Collaborative
Author-centric to Distributed
Expert-oriented to Collective Intelligence

*The battle to define Web 2.0 has been great...After the dust settles, I anticipate web 2.0 being defined by one word, PARTICIPATION.

Our organizations may respond to modern literacy by:

• Increasing focus on collectives as the unit of production.
• Distributing expertise/authority.
• Creating open/fluid collective spaces.
• Fostering relations in emerging digital media spaces.

The Microsoft school reflected some of these design considerations in 2006, but most promising is the development of the thousands of inexpensive collaboration apps that enable all organizations to respond effectively.