Criticizing Digitalk

In the article "No Longer a Luxury: Digital Literacy  Can’t Wait," Troy Hicks makes a claim that that there are five major no-no's that hinder the process of improving a student's digital literacy. While these are mostly accurate, and agreeable, one stands out that I just could not over look. Hicks claims, and has the proof to back it up, that "digitalk," basically acronyms and logograms, are necessary to help develop a student's linguistic competence. He further states that we, as educators and parents, should not criticize them for using it. But, I whole heartedly disagree.

I do not necessarily think it is "wrong" for a student, or a child, to use things like "gr8" in casual texting, but I do think it does not have a place in an academic environment. Sure, we all know what they are trying to say, but I do believe that part of learning, and assessing what they have learned, is to see how well a student can articulate what they are trying to say by fully expressing themselves. 

Growing up in the early stages of the digital age, I found myself using some of these abbreviations while texting my friends, but I never dared using them while doing school work. I had to put myself in the teacher's shoes. I'm not quite sure, and I can't speak for everyone, that people want to take the time out and decipher a sentence structured like this: "had a gr8 time @ the prk btw" when they could have taken the extra few seconds to type: "I had a great time at the park, by the way." 

In the S.A.M.R. model, I truly feel that "Augmentation" is what can potentially help students the most. In my experiences, not every student learns the same way and I believe that granting students the freedom to choose things that they find assists them the most can allow them to flourish more than demanding them use a specific app in a specific way. Of course, I do not think that the classroom should be limited to one part of the S.A.M.R. model. For instance, they suggest that a classroom following Augmentation should allow the students to submit their work in a shared Dropbox folder. I have seen how chaotic that can be, so I think that tapping into something like "Substitution's" suggestion and having files shared through email, whether to a small group or the teacher, reduces the likelihood of things going south.

Upon looking into some different forms of digital aides, I found that my stance has changed slightly. The application "Comapping" sort of promotes short-handed writing as it is used primarily for note-taking and collaborating with their peers. It does not, however, change my stance on using digitalk in formal writing, such as essays. Although, I heavily believe that students should have freedom to do what makes them comfortable and learn better, I have come to realize that I personally need to acknowledge that digitalk may just be what they need.