Transliteracy

Key takeaways

Transliteracy belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Transliteracy to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Transliteracy from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Transliteracy is "a fluidity of movement across a range of technologies, media and contexts". It is an ability to use diverse techniques to collaborate across different social groups. Transliteracy combines a range of capabilities required to move across a range of contexts, media, technologies and genres. Conceptually, transliteracy is situated across five capabilities: information capabilities (see information literacy), ICT (information and communication technologies), communication and collaboration, creativity and critical thinking. It is underpinned by literacy and numeracy. (See figure below) The concept of transliteracy is impacting the system of education and libraries.

History While the term appears to come from the prefix trans- ('across') and the word literacy, the scholars who coined it say they developed it from the practice of transliteration, which means to use the letters of one language to write down a different language. The study of transliteracy was first developed in 2005 by the Transliteracies Research Project, directed by University of California at Santa Barbara Professor Alan Liu. The concept of 'transliteracies' was developed as part of research into online reading. It was shared and refined at the Transliteracies conference, held at UC Santa Barbara in 2005. The conference inspired the at the time De Montfort University Professor, Sue Thomas, to create the Production in Research and Transliteracy (PART) group, which evolved into the Transliteracy Research Group. The current meaning of transliteracy was defined in the group's seminal paper Transliteracy: crossing divides as "the ability to read, write, and interact across a range of platforms, tools, and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio, and film, to digital social networks." The concept was enthusiastically adopted by a number of professional groups, notably in the library and information field. Transliteracy Research Group Archive 2006–2013 curates numerous resources from this period. For a number of years, there was a gap between significant interest in transliteracy among professional groups and the scarcity of research. A group of academics from the University of Bordeaux considered transliteracy mainly in the school context. Freelance writer and consultant, Sue Thomas, studied transliteracy and creativity, while Suzana Sukovic, executive director of educational research and evidence-based practice at HETI, researched transliteracy in relation to digital storytelling. The first book on the topic, Transliteracy in complex information environment by Sukovic, is based on research and experience with practice-based projects.

Transliteracy in education Transliteracy is making an impact on the classroom setting because of how technologically advanced younger generations are today. In 2012, Adam Marcus, a teacher and librarian at the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), decided to incorporate transliteracy into his school's public library summer reading program. He had a desire to enhance the experience of reading for his students by allowing them to connect to the text differently by using social media. He used a tool called VoiceThread in order to have his students "take part in conversations, formulate ideas, and share higher-order thinking through a variety of media channels: video, audio, text, images, and music". Students were also enabled to communicate with the book's author through blogs and websites, and were given multiple modes of media to comprehend and engage with the text on a deeper level. Some of these examples include an audio-video glossary and web links that aimed to bring the details of the text to life. The results of his experiment were deemed to have a positive effect on the program as students responded well to this interactive experience they were given. Marcus believes that it is important for educators and librarians to enhance storytelling for children by providing them with a modern and transliterate experience that one could not receive back then. The Agence nationale de la recherche funded a program at a French high school from 2013 to 2015, where the transliteracy skills of students were tested and observed. Students were placed in groups of three or four members and were required to use all sorts of media and tools in order to collect data for their projects. They were not allowed to only use digital sources, and were advised to use a diversity of sources. The focus of this experiment was to observe "the possible diversity of media and tools employed, on the ways of and reasons for switching from one to another, on how these different media and tools are distributed within contexts, according to the academic requirements and tasks individually and collectively performed by the students." The conclusions of the experiment dealt with physical space and organization being an issue for students and teachers to deal with. Spatially, it was challenging for students to navigate through different mediums when their space inside the classroom was limited. It was noticed that students were prone to use something that took up less space, rather than focusing on expanding their diversity of sources. Organizationally, it was challenging for students to organize all of the information they collected since everything was not being search and collected for digitally. In addition, students were not allotted a lot of time to complete their projects which also impacted their final product.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Transliteracy

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Transliteracy claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Transliteracy before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Transliteracy ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Transliteracy

In research: Transliteracy appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Transliteracy in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Transliteracy is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Information science, Library science terminology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Transliteracy outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Transliteracy in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Transliteracy means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Transliteracy out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Transliteracy in simple terms?

Transliteracy is "a fluidity of movement across a range of technologies, media and contexts". It is an ability to use diverse techniques to collaborate across different social groups.

Why does Transliteracy matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Transliteracy?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Transliteracy.