Transliteracy is "a fluidity of movement across a range of technologies, media and contexts" (Sukovic, 2016). 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 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 (Marcus, 2013)." 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.