Digital Literacy: an analysis of social practices in cyberspace from the accessibility and frequency of use

This paper discusses the Digital Literacy and the importance of social practices of reading and writing nowadays. The research aims to analyze the accessibility of Digital Literacy of the residents from the satellite cities in Distrito Federal and the frequency of use of cyberspace to conduct reading and writing activities. According to Levy (1999), the transmutation of various means of communication (telephone, printed newspapers and post office, for example, in chat, digital newspapers and email, respectively) enabled the synchronous communication, interactivity and sharing of information between people from different places in the world, whether in oral form - as in video conferencing and telepresencial classroom - either in writing - as in most digital genres. It is this latter method - the writing, and hence the reading on the Internet - which has guided our discussion. According to Soares (2002), we live in a era of changes in the practices of reading and writing due to new forms of interaction between reader, author and text provided by the communication in the global computer network. Nothing better, therefore, than investigating how the user handles literacy in this new environment. The Digital Literacy, according to Xavier (2005), requires new ways of reading and writing. This means that time-honored practices of literacy, for example, should be rethought and reformulated in order to insert new ways of understanding the learning process - from handling the text to your perception, through the reading of written texts, engravings and icons linked to the electronic sphere. In this sense, the Digital Literacy, associated with multimodal genres, is present in the daily lives of several people from different social classes - particularly in large urban centers. So, facing this situation, we investigate if the residents of the satellite cities of DF have easy access to digital literacy and how often they make use of texts in cyberspace.

PROPOSTA DE UNIDADE TEMÁTICA PARA O ENSINO DE INGLÊS EM AMBIENTE DIGITAL

Based on a sociocultural perspective (LANTOLF, 2000; 2010), the present article aims at presenting a thematic unit especially designed for an advanced leveled English group. This thematic unit has been elaborated in the virtual learning environment  http://pbworks.com , proposing twenty hours of collaborative tasks for the students, and it counted with varied textual genres and diverse digital tools. The objective of this thematic unit is to stimulate the collaboration between the students, focusing on the culture of English speaking countries in relation with crafts, setting up relations with the History of crafts in Brazil and working with the oral and written comprehension and production.  By creating a thematic unit that proposes the study of cultural aspects of other countries, an opportunity for the students to experience the culture of others is created, and for them to notice that culture is not apart from language. Such aspects are noticeable in foreign language classes due to the fact that by dealing with language, individuals also deal with cultural, identitary, and social aspects. Taking into consideration that oral and written comprehension and production are inseparable abilities, the proposed tasks in the thematic unit have been designed considering the students’ context, their necessities, the groups’ interests, and also the three types of knowledge according to Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais (1998): systemic, world and genre knowledge, besides the Oxford strategies (1990).