Teaching Rhetoric: Digital or Otherwise

"To recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" That's the Wiki definition of information literacy. It's a tall order for any kind of literacy. If my friend Patrick is right and "You can't know what you don't know until they tell you." How do you know what information is needed until they tell you?

One of the scariest things about the assigned reading ( apart from having to read on screen with bi-focals) was how true the Human Lobotomy: Second Draft was.

Should the inevitable occur and the major corporations once again find a way to turn a communication device into a money making device and a means of controlling the information that the population receives, how will we know what information is missing?

The digital divide is not just who has access to the internet and who doesn't, although that is a significant disadvantage. As this article explains.

For communication to go more than one way as Teaching Digital Rhetoric: Community, Critical Engagement, and Application explains. To be truly literate, digital or otherwise, one must only be able to read or decipher messages, one must be able to respond in a manner that is readable and decipherable.

And what about critical digital literacy? I especially enjoyed Prosumer Approaches to New Media Composition: Consumption and Production in Continuum. I loved that it started with a line from my favorite poem by TS Eliot. I got lost a little because I mean something completely different when I say "remediation'" I had to look it up to know that I had been doing it for some time. Once again confirming that my friend Patrick was right. I agree that it is of utmost importance that we become aware of what's missing.