Stuart Selber says that “to allow others to determine the design of human-computer interfaces is to risk naturalizing a set of literacy perspectives that fails to support the pedagogical practices teachers of writing and communication find most effective and informative” (11). I agree with this statement. I generally think that it is unwise to create any program without consulting a variety of people within the field(s) the program is being created for. What a program will be used for should impact how any interface is set up for it to be most useful to its users. For instance, even though Adobe Creative Suite was designed for graphic designers, many non-designers use it to do graphic design inside and outside of the classroom. If Adobe asked people who did not have specific training in Creative Suite, but had some experience in art and technology, they may have set the program up with more recognizable terminology to indicate the various functions, as Adobe Acrobat does.
More interesting than these thoughts, however, is Selber’s conception of teaching multiliteracies in the classroom. He identifies three types of literacy: functional, critical, and rhetorical (25). Selber’s model provides a well-rounded approach to the different uses of computers, all of which have relevance for all of us. The three ways of thinking about computer literacy are definitely complementary. For instance, we cannot produce technology (rhetorical literacy) if we cannot use it (functional literacy). We also cannot utilize it fully (functional literacy) if we have not discovered its limitations and capabilities through criticism (critical literacy). Furthermore, if we do not know how to produce technology, we certainly do not know how to criticize it, and likely do not know how to use it. Essentially, the only way to have a complete understanding of the purposes and benefits of technology is to operate under the three-part multiliteracy model that Selber provides us. Students need to understand that computers are not just word processing machines––they are also machines that allow us to produce multi-layered meaning in many different ways, as well as machines that need to be assessed for their limitations and advantages of use.
>Source: Selber, Stuart A. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. 2004. Print.
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