Equating digital literacy with fearlessness comes from some first hand experience with software training and observing my own interaction with computers/software over the years. From my personal end, I’ve observed my own literacy is limited not particularly by any tools I was educated in or not, but by what I’ve had time to get into to meet a particular curiosity or need. I have a general sense that I could do anything, programming and application-wise, if I had the gumption and time.

In training others on a particular piece of software we use for indexing oral histories, we have observed that technical/computer skill sets of, say, a room full of high school teachers varies significantly. But that variability does not depend on age–though there is generally a correlation–and hence our strategy for teaching them has to be adaptable. I’ve observed that the variability falls on a continuum that I generally characterize as computer/tech fearlessness. On one end of the scale you have the fearless, to whom you can explain the broadest concepts and goals and turn them loose to bang their head against the software (i.e., little need for examples and details). On the other end, you have the more fearful, for whom step by step examples and instructions are imperative. The challenge is that the extremities often have to be instructed during the same short period of time. So I’m thinking the answer to the question “How can you teach advanced and basic literacy to a group simultaneously?” lies somewhere in the question “How do you teach/promote technology fearlessness?” Of course, we have to characterize it better first probably…

I surely like the idea of “Oral history as a Cultural, Technical, and Organizational Node in the Digital Age.”

Elaborate a bit, many layers there.