The New Millennium Reader

Literacy in the Twenty First Century

In my last blog I merely wetted your appetites with the ‘Missing Link’ in digital literacy. Now, let’s delve deeper. From fire to drums to the first telephone and then the computer, man has attempted to use the technologies of his time to communicate faster, easier and better. The New Millennium however, has seen the rapidity and turbidity with which technology has transformed societies.

Historically, the ability to read and write has separated the sheep from the goats, the educated from the uneducated. The concept of literacy has evolved tremendously in the twenty first century. The New Millennium generation of students- referred to the E-Generation, possesses digital competencies to effectively navigate the multidimensional and fast-paced technological digital environment.

The extent to which we as teachers can cope with this is the ‘educational challenge of the new millennium’. For us teachers, surfing the net and travelling through cyberspace seems as treacherous and daunting as learning a new language. In fact, Prensky (2001), described non-IT-literate individuals as being burdened with an accent, and as non-native speakers of a language, struggling to survive in a strange new world.

The children are Pros

By now you would have realised that digital and visual literacies are the wave of communication specialization in the New Millennium. Children learn these skills as part of their lives, like language, which they learn without realizing it. We adults however, approach the new literacy like we do a foreign language, one which is like Greek, complex and perplexing and not an absolute necessity for survival.

But is it really?

In my final official blog read more about digital literacy.


M. Prensky, (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 1–6.