Speaking in Lolcats: What Literacy Means in teh Digital Era

In 2009, Stephen Downes gave several presentations entitled Speaking in Lolcats. He put forward three theses:

1. That New Media is a new vocabulary (and therefore people can literally speak in Lolcats)
2. That languages can be understood analytically through a semantic framework
3. That 21st century skills are languages (not just content + skills + tools)

Of particular interest are the six elements of ‘literacy in teh digital era’ identified by Downes:

• Syntax
• Semantics
• Pragmatics
• Cognition
• Context
• Change

The talk is just over an hour with another twenty minutes or so of Q&A. Well worth listening to with the slides in front of you. Doug’s mindmap notes are here.