Thinking about our digital afterlives: A new and important digital literacy

For this issue, we highlight one of the current articles, Teachers’ Transformative Learning on Digital Afterlife. Because the article provides a novel and useful example of the possibilities to expand issues of media literacy into new and important life areas, we would like to focus on both the unusual topic and the research approach. Although it is rare for us to single out one article for the editors’ column, we agree that this article is different enough from our usual research articles to merit individual attention. In addition to the unusual topic, the article provides a useful model for designing and implementing research in relatively new areas. In this column, we focus on highlighting the topic and the research design and encourage our readers to read the details in the article. The topic digital afterlife refers to the digital history each of us will leave behind on our various devices when we die. Although this digital history may be lengthy, personal, and detailed in many cases, we currently do not have agreed-upon procedures and rules for ownership of the contents of accounts, messages, photographs, projects at the time of a person’s death. Authors have suggested the importance of thinking through the ownership of the content sooner rather than later. Because our culture tends to ignore the reality of death for each of us, it is not surprising that the teachers in the professional development experience centered on digital afterlife were initially surprised, if not shocked, by the topic. The authors point out that this initial reaction of the professional development participants provided a good fit for the transformative knowledge learning theory base. Transformative learning theory is generally focused upon adult learning and usually begins with a disorienting dilemma. A disorienting dilemma is a situation where a learner finds that new information upsets or challenges their thoughts and/or practices. This disorienting dilemma provides motivation for a new learning experience and a possible change in behavior. In the case of this article, the disorienting dilemma is the introduction of the concept of digital afterlife. A large majority of the teachers in the study indicated they had never thought about their digital afterlife prior to this professional development experience. The article in this issue provides a clear introduction to the idea of digital afterlife and a theoretical base that helps organize and create knowledge in this new media literacy. Authors used the five stages in transformative learning as a structure for both data collection and analysis. The data clearly illustrate both the initial shock at the topic and the fact that many of the participants ended up sharing the knowledge gained with family and friends. The second outcome is probably rare coming out of professional development activities. This article was reviewed positively by each of the reviewers selected for this article, and all the reviewers viewed the topic as important for our readers. One of the reviewers stated: