Digital Literacies—Concepts, Policies and Practices

Th is book supports an emerging trend toward emphasizing the plurality of digital literacy; recognizing the advantages of understanding digital literacy as digital literacies. In the book world this trend is still marginal. In December 2007, Allan Martin and Dan Madigan’s collection Digital Literacies for Learning (2006) was the only English-language book with “digital literacies” in the title to show up in a search on Amazon.com. Th e plural form fares better among English-language journal articles (e.g., Anderson & Henderson, 2004; Ba, Tally, & Tsikalas, 2002; Bawden, 2001; Doering et al., 2007; Myers, 2006; Snyder, 1999; Th omas, 2004) and conference presentations (e.g., Erstad, 2007; Lin & Lo, 2004; Steinkeuhler, 2005), however, and is now reasonably common in talk on blogs and wikis (e.g., Couros, 2007; Davies, 2007). Nonetheless, talk of digital literacy, in the singular, remains the default mode. Th e authors invited to contribute to this book were chosen in light of three reasons we (the editors) identify as important grounds for promoting the idea of digital literacies in the plural. Th is, of course, does not mean the contributing authors would necessarily subscribe to some or all of these reasons. Th at was