Part Three:
The Future and Our Responsibility: Sites and Plans for Action and ChangeThe final two chapters of Selfe's book rearticulate her definition of critical technological literacy:
By paying attention to the unfamiliar subject of technology--in sustained and critical ways, and from our own perspectives as humanists--we may learn some important lessons about how to go about making change in literacy instruction. (134)Selfe identifies four lessons that we can learn from the history of technological literacy education: that large-scale literacy programs can fail to realize their goals; that literacy education is driven by political and ideological forces that need to be recognized and challenged; that technology cannot be viewed as a "fix for many social, political, and economic problems" (142); and that we as individuals have stakes and responsibilities in this technological literacy project:[W]hen we allow ourselves to ignore technological issues, when we take technology for granted, when it becomes invisible to us, when we forget technology's material bases--regardless of whether or not we use technology--we participate unwillingly in the inequitable literacy system I have just described. (144)And Selfe goes further than this: she articulates 10 ways that scholars and activists can take and apply a critical definition of technology to their pedagogies, research, and participation in civic activities.
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