"A Review of the 'Digital Turn' in New Literacy Studies" (Mills)

          It's no easy task to reflect upon so comprehensive a review.   Mills offers a thorough timeline of the varying interpretations of both the "new literacies" proferred by the "digital turn," as well as of how best to tap these new literacies pedagogically.  Two of her subsections, though, stood out to me as particularly salient.  First, that in online, informal spaces, there has been a "shift from traditional authority to an epistemology of shared knowledge and expertise" (Mills 254).  This to me echoes so much of the pre-digital turn literature on education.  All of our reading so far has stressed the virtues of student-centered instruction, calling for an end to the teacher as keeper of knowledge.  Banking, Freire tells us, is wholly ineffective, and from Moll we know that not only do our students bring with them funds of knowledge into the classroom, but that learning must be collaborative and inquiry-based.  We also know, however, that moving away from teacher-centered instruction is much harder to achieve in practice; that setting appropriate limits on our own authority and harnessing that of our students is not a perfect science, but rather a balance that the reflective, liberal-minded educator must struggle to achieve every day.  The findings, then, that students engaged in voluntary, informal learning online are not, in fact, learning from an adult/expert figure not only lends credence to the call for a move away from teacher-as-expert in the classroom but also, perhaps, a means of doing so.  We can strive to set up our classrooms in a way that harnesses not only the new literature that's available, but also this spirit of collaborative learning, mentorship, and shared knowledge.  Mills gives us an example of a student teaching herself HTML who, "when she reached the limits of her technical knowledge" received mentorship from two "more experienced peers" (254) which, let's be real, is just straight out of Vygotsky's zones of proximal development.  On the other side of the digital turn, I think we'll find that rather than trying to impose old theories upon new spaces, we will perhaps be able to embody these theories with more success and efficacy than ever before.
          The other noteworthy point that Mills discusses is what she terms "Pedagogy and Power relations in the 'Digital Turn.'"  She devotes the last two sections of her review to the potential inequities implicated in these new literacies because "although issues of power and pedagogies have not always been discussed within the New Literacy Studies...[there is] significant evidence of patterns of marginalization that are socially and historically constituted" (258).  I was surprised to learn that it is not merely access, but quality of access, that creates a divide here.  She cites Snyder's study of four families' digital practices at home and at school, which found that each family "appropriated the technology into existing family literacy practices" (259).  The most economically disadvantaged family used their shared computer as a source of entertainment, while the wealthier families used their individual computers "for work, information gathering, and organizing social aspects of their lives," affording them higher levels of economic power (259).  As instructors, then, we should not assume that access to technology means that our students are fully taking advantage of it.  We need to engage them in analyzing, evaluating, and criticizing digital sources, as well as in creative media production.