Digital literacy is a skill that a lot of people from different backgrounds use every day. Whether you are a teenager connecting with friends on social media or a middle-aged businessman sending emails to colleagues, most people have had a digital experience of some sort before, even if they aren’t computer experts.
Despite the fact that many of us use technology on a daily basis, most of us are not well-versed in all of the ins and outs of the complexities of computers. As a double major in Political Science and English, I, while digitally literate, am no computer expert myself. This brought me to think about how people with extensive digital knowledge viewed digital literacy. Do they look at it any differently than the rest of us?
To answer this question, I had a conversation with one of my best friends, Emily Chafin, a Data Science major. I’ve known Emily for almost four years now. Our first two years of college, we were suitemates and we have been best friends ever since. I always knew she studied data science and I would always see her in the dorm, tapping away on her laptop trying to figure out a code. Sometimes, I would see her break from her focused trance and smile proudly to herself when she figured it out, like she had placed the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle to complete a full picture, after hours of trial and error. Other times, however, she would loudly exhale in frustration, running her fingers through her dirty blonde curls when she was stuck and couldn’t complete the code. The whole practice seemed intimidating and complicated to me, so I never really talked to her much about her major until recently.
As a data science major, Emily is well-versed in many skills and programs that the average computer user might not be familiar with. For example, she knows how to code in Python and Java and she is also familiar with the Jupiter platform. She knows how to use IDEs for coding such as Pycharm and she knows how to use data visualization tools such as Tableau. These are all foreign concepts to me.
During one of her frequent visits to my apartment, I watched Emily whisper to herself, trying to figure out yet another code as she shifted restlessly in the navy blue bean bag chair in the corner of the room. Seeing that she could use a break, I decided that now would be a good time to ask her about her experience with digital literacy as a Data Science major.
“What does digital literacy mean to you?” I asked, curious of how she might define the concept differently from someone who did not have the extensive knowledge she had.
She paused and looked upwards, thinking carefully about the question and formulating a meaningful answer in her mind. “I haven’t thought about it until now, to be honest. I guess digital literacy is knowing how to get information out of computers,” she said simply. She took another pensive moment before elaborating. “For a person to be considered digitally literate at the most basic level, they must know how to open an internet browser and know how to search for information in a search engine. Most of the time, phrasing a full question to google will not produce desired results, so a digitally literate person must know how to recognize the proper key words and phrasing to use in a search engine in order to find what they are looking for.”
I thought this answer was interesting, considering that it did not differ much from what I would have defined as being digitally literate. I wondered how her digital literacy experience differed from mine. “What do you find difficult about digital literacy as a data scientist?” I asked.
“I’d say the most difficult part for me is pairing my technology skills with higher level mathematics,” she explained. “It is often challenging to search for anything using advanced math symbols and even more challenging to figure out how to explain the symbol verbally so that the search engine knows what to look for.”
“Does your Data Science major at least enhance your digital literacy?” I queried, wondering if data science would just be a source of further confusion or a valuable asset to everyday digital literacy.
Emily responded assuredly without thinking twice. “One hundred percent, yes. Being a data science major has only improved my digital literacy skills and brought me forward. This major has enhanced my digital literacy beyond a basic level and that I now have a deeper understanding of how computers function, generate information, and what it means when we perform basic actions on the computer.”
“Is there anything you wish more people knew how to do on the computer?” I asked as I was curious if she had any insight.
“I wish people could have a better understanding of basic computer and Internet terms,” she said half-jokingly with a chuckle. “Like Senator Blumenthal requesting to remove all ‘finstas,’” she cited and we both laughed as we recalled the Senator publicly misunderstanding the internet term ‘finsta’ on the Senate floor.
After our laughter died out, I asked one final question. “What does the future of digital literacy look like to you?”
Emily once again took a moment to formulate her answer, once again rolling her eyes upwards as she took a moment to think. “I believe that technology is the building blocks of our future and that we will only become a more technologically-based society as time goes on. I think teaching literacy in early education will become more prevalent and will find a more permanent place in school curricula as time goes on,” she answered finally.
It’s interesting to think that thirty years ago, Emily and I would have never had this conversation as computers were not machines used by everyday people. Using a computer, whether a smartphone or a laptop, is a normal practice for people of all ages nowadays. Thirty years in the future, what we know now could very well be fundamentally different. Will practices change fundamentally? Will our digital literacy definition have to change to meet the technology of the future? We may not know until it happens, but after speaking with Emily, I think it is clear that her knowledge in data science will keep her ahead of the game.