There is an interesting post on the University of Glamorgan’s Learning Zone blog entitled: “Digital Leisure and Digital Literacy”.
It starts as follows:
“We often assume that 18-21 year-old students are digital whiz-kids, brilliant at anything to do with computers, but often their expertise is associated with ‘digital leisure’ – for example social networking and games – rather than with their studies.”
I like the term “Digital Leisure”. But I am not sure that there is a well-defined boundary. If we move away from things digital and consider reading then there is a different style of reading for leisure than to reading for academic work. But there isn’t a clear boundary between them. Reading ‘chick lit’ takes less effort to follow the plot than a psychological thriller. Reading a recipe requires a lot of attention to detail if the dish is to turn out well, while reading about the antics of a celebrity in a magazine needs little attention.
For the Digitally Ready project I think we need to pay attention to the skills needed for Digital Leisure as well as those needed for more workaday purposes.
