Online Literacy Engagement

 My family was an early adopter of the Internet into our home. In a world where my mother felt helplessly lonely post-divorce, she found community within the prehistoric email threads of Postcard From Hell, a mailing list that served as an online meeting place for fans of Uncle Tupelo, and later on Wilco and Sun Volt. This search for community was passed on to me as the web and I grew up together - myself maturing in ideas and the Internet maturing in reach. 

During my childhood, I’d play games on PopCap with access to live message boards, giving me the freedom to speak to anonymous individuals from across the world (always under the very watchful eye of my mother of course). One such conversation that stands out to me was between myself and a college age woman on a magnetic poetry style game called Psychobabble, who made me believe, for the first time in my life, that a college education was an option for someone like me. This was my first taste of online community and I felt empowered and seen. 

In my early teens, my relationship with the Internet started to change much like my relationships with my peers. With the introduction of early social media sites like MySpace, I felt the need to carefully curate my online presence to reflect the person I thought those around me wanted me to be in order to feel accepted. There was always a struggle between being this “persona” and wanting to share my actual interests, which were not popularly received by my classmates. This is where I first started to create digital media through feed updates, declarations of identity through HTML/CSS styles, and a rudimentary blog. I felt like I belonged, but none of it was REAL.

In undergrad, I found niche communities through RSS feeds, such as Google Reader and Reddit, where I really started to feel comfortable with being myself online and finding community though topics I cared about. I found peace in the anonymity of my accounts. I didn’t feel the need to play a part. Instead, I could engage freely in conversations about music, science, politics, obscure Russian animation, or whatever I Stumble[d]Upon. I posted my own writing, art, ideas and reveled in the discourse. This was also around the time the Internet started to become an integral part of the fabric of our society with the launch of more contemporary social media sites such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. I rejected membership to these accounts because of the sour feelings MySpace and Facebook had left in my mouth.

I’ve lived a lot of lives online, and seen how community has changed since the infancy of social interactions via online spaces but also what remains the same. While we’ve gone from reaching out to find one another across the vastness of the early Internet to being constantly seeked, blasted with influencers, advertising, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, content, ………………… I can sense us reaching out for each other again.

BUT HOW?

In Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, Henry Jenkins provides several skills we can utilize to both wade through the sludge of media that plagues our feeds and to consciously create media that serves a purpose. Through both “simulation” and “distributed cognition,” I am able to consume, interact with, and create content that expands my access to meaningful communities but also increases my own understanding of the world and the knowledge it contains. I keep my access to the parts of the Internet that provide me comfort, belonging, and growth, while filtering out the sour.

SO DOES THIS CONNECT TO THE CLASSROOM?

I come to digital media from a different angle than most ELA classrooms. I teach cybersecurity, programming, robotics, and digital video production. In those spaces, writing is rarely just writing. It shows up in code comments, captions, scripts, documentation, pitch decks, and social posts. Most of the time, it is public. It is attached to something students have made and want others to see. This aligns with how Jerasa and Boffone describe digital literacies, not simply as the use of technology, but as ways people engage with one another in social contexts.

Excerpt from robot documentation portfolio written

to explain development process to local engineers.

The biggest potential of digital media in urban classrooms is that it allows students to be makers instead of receivers. When students design an app, film a video, or document a robot build, they are putting ideas into the world. That instinct feels familiar to me. As a teenager online, I learned how to communicate identity and belonging through digital spaces long before I had words for it. Platforms like TikTok tap into that same instinct today. As Jerasa and Boffone note, TikTok succeeds with Gen Z because it values authenticity, idiosyncrasy, and self-deprecating humor over polished, filtered versions of reality. I see students take more creative risks and understand concepts more deeply when honesty matters more than perfection. 

At the same time, digital tools do not automatically make learning meaningful. It is easy for classrooms to reproduce the same rigid structures Jerasa and Boffone warn about, where teachers deliver information and students are expected to repeat it back. In technical classes, this can look like step by step tutorials or projects that appear creative but leave little room for inquiry. There is also the risk of what DeJaynes and Curmi-Hall describe as schoolification, where participatory, justice oriented work is reduced to something that simply needs to be graded or in which classrooms shy away from the difficult conversations. The taboo.

What I have noticed, though, is that technical classrooms can offer a way into difficult conversations with less personal risk. When students critique systems instead of people, they create distance that makes reflection safer. DeJaynes and Curmi-Hall describe students using media critique to talk about race and power in schools shaped by whiteness without putting themselves directly on display. I see similar moves when my students analyze surveillance through cybersecurity or racial bias through our discussions surrounding Artificial Intelligence. 

Video overview of Congressional App Challenge winning app

that teaches middle school student about Restorative Justice

Digital media holds real promise across disciplines because it gives students control, agency, and ownership over what they create. Jerasa and Boffone point to spaces like BookTok as examples of how youth driven media can disrupt traditional ideas about literacy and whose stories matter. I see that same potential when students tell stories through code, video, or design. 

Without intention, digital spaces become performative. With care, they become places where students learn how to shape media instead of just consuming it. That tension feels familiar. I lived it online as a teenager, and I see my students living it now.