Reflections on New Literacies

Published by in 1:1, assessment, literacy on November 26th, 2005

I am working on finding and creating my own theoretical framework for my dissertation, which is focused on the impact of technology immersion (1 to 1 laptop initiatives) on student achievement. Central to the theoretical framework I am working on is the concept of digital literacy, also referred by others as contemporary literacy, or new literacies. The following are my reflections on the rather lengthy article “Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging From the Internet and Other Information and Communication Technologies” by Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, and Cammack. This article was published in April 2004. Indicative of the speed of creativity at which our 21st century informational environment moves is the fact that the word “blog” is not mentioned at all in this article.

I will also be publishing a podcast soon which will be a synthesis of my reflections on and responses to this article. All quoted text in this post are from the original article.

Research questions raised by this article relating to TxTIP and 1:1:

  1. To what extent have 1:1 laptop immersion projects (like TxTIP) served as constructive, disruptive change agents for predominant classroom pedagogies?
  2. What are the comparative statistics for available Internet bandwidth available in TxTIP schools?
  3. To what extent have ICTs/web technologies become the central foundation for literacy development in the classroom, instead of traditional (print) sources in TxTIP schools?
  4. What have been the factors contributing to educational environments where technologies have been used for more disruptive rather than sustaining pedagogical purposes?
  5. What do TxTIP student achievement levels look like when you control for / remove economic status differences?
  6. What TxTIP schools have banned the use of instant messaging (IM) on student and teacher laptops?
  7. What are the relative levels of IT lockdowns for TxTIP students and teachers (limits by information technology departments on software that can be installed, how uses of the laptop are constrained or limited)?
  8. What data is available from TxTIP surveys or other instruments which reflects the types of assignments given to students on TxTIP campuses that require use of technology?

Topics I may podcast on / write on / act on:

  1. Without Google I am nothing. (not really, this is an exaggeration, but it is meant to highlight how much I and many others rely in today’s informationally transformed environment on Google as a daily tool of work and even existence.
  2. The evolution of tablet computer technology is key and essential to the further development of digital literacy– for myself personally and for others.
  3. We who are authors within and contributors to the blogosphere and the read/write web are explorers on a voyage of discovery. Our informational environment has fundamentally changed, and this fact must be both widely acknowledged and acted upon. We have had 500 years of stability in the informational environment, but now we have a dynamical and chaotic informational reality that is not likely to return to a stable, predictable state anytime soon– maybe ever.
  4. Looking at my own current process of reading new materials, processing new ideas, seeking understanding by forming my own synthesis of ideas– I am using traditional literacy methods (reading print-based articles and writing on them) but seeking to migrate my thoughts to more lasting, digital forms (this blog post and my upcoming podcast, as examples)
  5. The phenomenon of technology upgrades leading to functional downgrades is unfortunately common and likely widespread (especially with past product upgrades from Microsoft– maybe less so with read/write web technologies created to be simple, powerful and user friendly)
  6. Contrast the value in the experience of playing a violent computer game like Halo2 to creating / constructing an original video game version, like people can do with Hadron
  7. “Envisionment” as described by the authors is really just the creative use of technology (p17 of the printed article)
  8. The rationale of my blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, is really the same as that espoused in the article (p18 of print version): We are only limited in our uses of new technologies by our own imaginations (Einstein said this too)
  9. We all need to have a better historical perspective and understanding of how quickly and fundamentally our literacy environment is changing (print no longer being the basis for literacy, and the increasing levels of functional literacy displayed by students in classrooms relative to their digital immigrant/foreigner teachers)
  10. The key issue for educational pedagogy is getting teachers and students to ask and pursue answers to QUESTIONS THAT MATTER.
  11. Increasingly we need to look at alternative, creative educational approaches as models for ALL schools and ALL students (many of these are featured in Edutopia Documentaries)
  12. To be relevant today, content must be digital
  13. I should teach a workshop on Internet research and critical evaluation of electronic sources and content.
  14. Critical consumption of content comes best via creative producation! (or stated another way, through reflective creation)
  15. A very common and FALSE perception/assumption today: Anyone and everyone knows how to effectively search and research online
  16. Monastic learning strategies can be crippling. (p22 of the printed article) And monastic pedagogies (which discourage collaboration) are predominant in today’s classrooms! Yikes!
  17. Teaching in our new learning environment and knowledge landscape is MORE rather than less challenging than traditional educational models. This new form of educational dialog cannot be scripted and “performed” like traditional instruction has been / is / can be.
  18. I need to create a new blog page for digital storytelling.
  19. At a public policy level as well as the individual classroom level, we must stop just assessing and promoting monastic learning models.

The basic thesis of this article:

In an information age, we believe it becomes essential to prepare students for these new literacies because they are central to the use of information and the acquisition of knowledge. Traditional definitions of literacy and literacy instruction will be insufficient if we seek to provide students with the futures they deserve.

The authors define “new literacies” in the same way I have previously defined digital literacy: as the process of using technology to ask questions, access information, evaluate and synthesize it with the purpose of effectively communicating a message to a defined audience. In their words:

The new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs include the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to the rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts that continuously emerge in our world and influence all areas of our personal and professional lives. These new literacies allow us to use the Internet and other ICTs to identify important questions, locate information, critically evaluate the usefulness of that information, synthesize information to answer those questions, and then communicate the answers to others.

We need to create a new theoretical framework from the literacies inherent in our new digital informational environment. In the words of the authors:

We argue that new theoretical perspectives must emerge from the new literacies engendered by the requirements and possibilities of new technologies.

It is amazing to realize how for centuries, Christianity preserved its largely monolithic character (in both the Western and Eastern traditions) by intentionally constraining literacy: in both the access to literate materials (the written Bible), in deciding who was allowed to become literate, and controlling what was printed. Governments have historically done the same thing: limiting and controlling the spread of literacy and content to maintain control and power. In the words of the authors:

At other times, the need to spread religious dogma has shaped the form and function of literacy. In medieval Europe, for example, the Christian church used literacy as a vehicle to enforce a common religion in a world with competing religious viewpoints. A literate priesthood was used to faithfully copy, read, and interpret common religious texts. Holding literacy, the technologies of literacy, and the central texts of Christianity so tightly within a priesthood enabled this religion to survive across enormous distances, cultures, and time, while it also enforced inequities in power.

Forces of resistance inevitably emerged, however, largely due to the belief that individuals, not priests, should be responsible for their own salvation. In postreformation Europe, literacy became much more widespread as Martin Luther argued the need for individuals to read and directly access religious texts on their own. Simultaneous with this resistance, printing technologies and new book literacies emerged to enable this more individual definition of salvation and a more distributed definition of literacy.

The printing of books and the emergence of a more widely distributed literacy posed an important political threat to autocratic governments. In England and her colonies, the royal government carefully restricted printing presses. Until 1695, when the Licensing Act of 1662 expired, printing was confined to London, York, and the universities at Oxford and Cambridge (Ford, 2001). Printing was completely forbidden in the royal colony of Virginia until 1730. As one Governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley (1642-1652 and 1660-1677) put it, “But, I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing…for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both” (Ford, 2001, p. 6).

Is it not amazing to realize how sharply constrained the ability to print information and share it has been historically?!?! How amazing is it that I can read this article, write down my thoughts, and instantly publish them for a global audience via my blog and podcast? This is the amazing 21st century reality of publication at will, and has happened literally half a second ago on the historical time clock of human history.

The development of a theoretical framework involving new literacies must account for environmental factors. In the words of the authors:

Throughout history, literacy and literacy instruction have changed regularly as a result of changing social contexts and the technologies they often prompt. Clearly, the social forces in the present context will exert similar changes. Thus, any attempt to develop a theoretical framework around newly emerging technologies and new literacies must begin by exploring the important social forces at work today. Such an exploration provides the foundation for the New Literacies Perspective.

The article authors postulate that “The rapid emergence of the Internet as a powerful new technology for information and communication” is a powerful force shaping changes in literacy. I agree, but want to add that mere access to technology tools does not dictate how they will be used! Just look at the predominant forms of technology use in today’s classrooms. Teachers are using technology (and are largely constrained by most school district IT departments) in sustaining rather than constructively disruptive ways. The validity of this observation by the authors would seem to logically imply the CRITICAL importance of empowering today’s teachers and students to electronically collaborate across town and across the globe. Why do so many IT departments block access to IM and videoconferencing technologies?! I think it is because they don’t have a clue about what is important for the 21st century learner, and are operating on a modus operandi that dictates minimizing complaint tickets is the highest value and priority. This is ridiculous. The tail is wagging the dog if this is true. Pedagogy and communicative function should dictate IT policy, not the predominant culture of IT. I will likely write and article and podcast in the future on this issue.

Access to the web will increasingly define individual and community access to capital. Bandwidth is the 21st century means of production. In the words of the authors:

In some historical contexts, the nature of work has been defined by one’s access to land, labor, or financial capital. Analyses by Bell (1977), Burton-Jones (1999), Reich (1992), and others indicate this definition has changed fundamentally within nations developing postindustrial economies. Increasingly, it is access to information and the ability to use information effectively that enables individuals to seize life’s opportunities. More and more frequently, work is characterized by the effective use of information to solve important problems within a globally competitive economy. Moreover, as networked, digital technologies provide increasingly greater access to larger amounts of information, the efficient use of information skills in competitive workplace contexts becomes even more important (Gilster, 1997; Harrison & Stephen, 1996)

The authors assert “… workplaces must seek more productive ways of performing if they hope to survive.” The issue is not just one of PRODUCTIVITY, however, but CREATIVITY. This is the esssential message of Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age,” which I am about halfway through currently.

Problem solving and leadership skills are key in the 21st century educational and business environments. In the words of the authors:

Members of these teams must quickly identify important problems, locate useful information related to the problems they identify, critically evaluate the information they find, synthesize this information to solve the problems, and then quickly communicate the solutions to others so that everyone within an organization is informed. These high-performance workplaces seek more fully to utilize the intellectual capital among every employee. This change has had a fundamental effect on the nature of literacy within these organizations.

Each element of change that characterizes the workplace today has important implications for the nature of literacy instruction. First, the change to a high-performance workplace requires organizations to place a premium on people who possess effective problem-solving skills. As collaborative teams seek more effective ways of working, they are expected to identify problems important to their unit and seek appropriate solutions. This has important consequences for schools that will need to provide students with greater preparation in identifying important problems and then solving them, often in collaborative situations.

Acquisition of digital literacy leads to multiple levels of benefit. The authors state:

Expertise in the new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs helps individuals have more satisfying personal lives, more engaged civic lives, as well as more productive professional lives.?

The statistics cited in this article published in April 2004 for Internet use at home and work are really old (from 2000-2001). These should be updated for a current review of 21st century literacy issues.

A process of digital literacy acquisition should include the following with information:

  1. locate
  2. process
  3. synthesize
  4. evalluate
  5. use
  6. communicate
  7. evaluate

The article authors describe these processes and skills in the following way:

Having acquired information resources, members of high-performance workplace teams must then know how to critically evaluate that information, sorting out accurate information from inaccurate information, essential information from less-essential information, and biased information from unbiased information. These critical literacies and analytic skills also will become increasingly important elements in the literacy curriculum because they are essential to the careful evaluation of any information one obtains, something that is essential in an informational space such as the Internet where anyone may publish anything.

Internet use is getting ubiquitous for many sectors of society, and this trend is going to continue to accelerate. Stats in this article from the US Dept of Commerce in 2002 drive this point home, I am sure more current stats would further reinforce the same observation and theory.

The article authors are very excited about the virtually universal access that students in US public schools now have to the Internet:

The Internet also is appearing in school classrooms in the United States and other countries at a rate that parallels its appearance in the workplace and at home. In only eight years (1994 to 2002), the percentage of classrooms in the United States possessing at least one computer with Internet access has gone from 3% to 92% (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2003a). This is an adoption rate that is unprecedented in schools for any previous technology including televisions, radios, telephones, videocassette recorders, and even books. The availability of Internet access has had a demonstrated impact on students. In 2001, 94% of children ages 12-17 who had Internet access said that they used the Internet for school-related research (Lenhart, Simon, & Graziano, 2001).

This enthusiasm should be tempered with an awareness of how Internet technologies are and are not being used by students, however. The vast majority of classrooms (in my own estimation) are predominantly using computer technologies and their much-heralded access to the Internet to engage in traditional pedagogic activities like Internet research. This is sustaining technology use– YAWN!!! Very few are engaging in disruptive tech use I think. This is a direction I may want to go with my own dissertation.

Stats on school “broadband access” to the Internet may sound impressive, but I think this is deceptive. What is a breakdown of available schools’ per capita Internet bandwidth? In other words, if we take the available Internet bandwidth and divide it by the number of students at the school, what would we find? I have reflected on this previously, and will likely podcast on this topic soon, I will call this “The last mile” podcast. The gist of this argument is that most schools (especially those in rural areas) have paltry bandwidth access to the Internet, so all this hoopla over the benefits of broadband access in schools is WAY overstated, especially for rural learners.

We seem to have blind faith in the ability of educational standards to improve educational outcomes. This is reflected in the discussion in this article about educational standards that incorporate ICE. Representative of this view is the following:

The U.K. Department for Education and Skills has published other papers such as this at “The Standards Site” (www.standards.dfee.gov.uk). Both the national standards and the new national curriculum have included ICTs for the first time (U.K. Department for Education and Skills, 1998). Finally, a National Grid for Learning (www.ngfl.gov.uk) was launched in 1998 to provide an online national portal for teacher and student learning.

One of my cogent responses to this is, so what?! The legislation of new standards from on high does not necessarily correlate to ANY change in predominant instructional practice for teachers and students.

Finland seems to have been on the right track when it comes to the dire need we have for continuing teacher professional development relating to digital literacy:

Most important, the program also provides every teacher with five weeks of paid release time for professional development in the instructional use of new information technologies (Finland Ministry of Education, 1998; R. Svedlin, personal communication, January 8, 1998).

ScoilNet is a portal for Irish Education that provides a wealth of resources and appears to be a vibrant online learning community.

What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? This is becoming a central preoccupation of my life (at least as far as my academic studies and research are concerned). The authors are challenging me and others to further define answers to this question:

Yet to address these issues in a cogent manner, we must begin to develop an adequate definition of what it means to be literate. To develop such a definition, one must ask whether literacy as a term presupposes print, whether it presupposes text. Does literacy mean comprehension of print or comprehension of a message that has permanence in ways that a nonrecorded oral message does not? Does reading children’s literature presuppose a printed children’s book, or can children’s literature exist on a CD-ROM or website? Does text presuppose only print, or does it include all aspects in an author’s toolbox, which allows meaning to be preserved for later reading and response by an audience?

Literacy is changing today faster than it ever has before. Because we are in the middle of this change, I don’t think most of us appreciate the magnitude and importance of this fact as much as we should.

Our current definitions of literacy are not adequate. In the words of the authors:

However, to the extent that there are additional demands and capabilities of literacy in electronic environments beyond those available at the times respective definitions were conceptualized, current definitions may be less applicable. And, perhaps, the greatest shortcomings of current definitions can be seen in the requirements of interactions between traditionally available literacy resources and new ones, and in the demands on readers and writers that were previously not required for authorship, comprehension, and response to occur. We argue that, as the medium of the message changes, comprehension processes, decoding processes, and what “counts” as literacy activities must change to reflect readers’ and authors’ present-day strategies for comprehension and response.

Just what does “count” in today’s educational environment, btw? I am reminded of Einstein’s observation, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

A key research question is differentiating exactly what types of tasks ARE being done in classrooms that include technology use. The mere presence or undefined “use” of technology is not sufficient to conclude that learners are acquiring digital literacy in authentic contexts. The authors contend:

Within such a web of practice and representation, schools and districts lacking technology could well be imagined as only “partially literate” spaces

I contend in response that the mere presence of computer hardware and Internet connectivity simply equates to an educational environment’s CAPACITY to serve as a literate space, not its actual PRACTICE of literacy cultivation.

The author’s primary thesis for needing an expanded definition of literacy is captured in this paragraph:

Definitions of literacy must move beyond being located in only paper-printed media. Children’s literature cannot be limited only to the pages in a paper-based book of printed pages, but must include books in electronic formats as well. The added information and capabilities that electronic formats provide for authors and readers necessitate an expanded view of literacy, what it means to be literate, and what it means to be a teacher (and learner) in the language arts.

Components of literacy identified in the article include “…concepts of composition, decoding, comprehension, and response…”

The authors report the loud call for the development of critical literacies in the academic environment. I am of the mind that we learn to critique best as we learn to create, in the context of digital literacy. I agree that media is increasingly manipulative by its very nature, and this should affect the content and tasks of our daily educational experiences:

They [advocates for critical literacy] foreground the important need to develop critical literacies as an essential element of any instructional program because new media forms, globalization, and economic pressures engender messages that increasingly attempt to persuade individuals to act in ways beneficial to an economic or political unit but not necessarily beneficial to the individual.

The authors also observe that existing literacy frameworks have been evolutionary in nature, and have sought to basically assimilate existing Internet-based literacies:

Although each of these perspectives provides essential insights, we believe they are limited for at least two reasons. First, they fail to place the Internet and other ICTs at the center of their perspective. Instead of emerging from the new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs, these theoretical perspectives have evolved from other contexts and have then been applied to the ICTs landscape. We believe the new literacies of the Internet, because they are more encompassing and because they change more rapidly and in more profound ways than traditional print literacies, require their own theoretical framework in order to adequately understand them and the role they should play in a literacy curriculum.

The authors postulate ten “Central Principles of New Literacies Emerging From the Internet and Other ICTs.” These are:

1. The Internet and other ICTs are central technologies for literacy within a global community in an information age.

2. The Internet and other ICTs require new literacies to fully access their potential.

3. New literacies are deictic.

4. The relationship between literacy and technology is transactional.

5. New literacies are multiple in nature.

6. Critical literacies are central to the new literacies.

7. New forms of strategic knowledge are central to the new literacies.

8. Speed counts in important ways within the new literacies.

9. Learning often is socially constructed within new literacies.

10 Teachers become more important, though their role changes, within new literacy classrooms.

I would add to number 4 that the relationship between literacy and technology is INTERACTIVE as well as transactional. This may be implied in the word “transactional,” but I think it is important to use the word “interactive” as well, even if it is a synonym. The most frequent word used by participants in my “Online Instructional Design” and “Using Moodle in the Classroom” workshops 2 weeks ago was “interactive,” in the context of best practices for online course materials and online courses. I think this is significant.

Principle #10, about the primal importance of the teacher in the new educational context, is really not anything new. This is the message of teacher impact stories, which I have podcasted about previously.

The central technology of literacy today is the Internet. How amazing is it to realize that we have had print (mainly books) as the predominant foundation of literacy for the past 500 years!!!! WOW! This paragraph summarizes this viewpoint by the authors well:

For the past 500 years, literacy has emerged from a variety of social contexts but has been shaped largely by the technologies of the book and the printing press. Today, both the social context and the technologies of our age are rapidly changing. We believe the Internet and other ICTs are quickly becoming the central technologies of literacy for a global community in an information age. As a result, these technologies are quickly defining the new literacies that will increasingly be a part of our future. Literacy theory, research, and practice must begin to recognize this important fact.

The importance of developing individual’s abilities to appropriately and selectively allocate their own attention is vital. We live in an attention economy, as others have noted. That term is not used in this article, but the concept is present:

New skills and strategies are required in this context to successfully comprehend information such as how to search for appropriate information; how to comprehend search engine results; how to make correct inferences about information that will be found at any hyperlink; how to determine the extent to which authors “shape” information presented on a webpage; how to coordinate and synthesize vast amounts of information, presented in multiple media formats, from a nearly unlimited set of sources; and how to know which informational elements require attention and which ones may be ignored. Perhaps

Fundamental literacy skill sets are identified as:

…phonemic awareness, word recognition, decoding knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, comprehension, inferential reasoning, the writing process, spelling, response to literature, and others required for the literacies of the book and other printed material.

Meaning is temporally contextual, and so is literacy in our 21st century knowledge landscape. This concept is embedded in the observation that “new literacies are deictic.” The authors write:

The term deixis (dike-sis) is a word used by linguists and others (Fillmore, 1972; Murphy, 1986) for words such as now, today, here, there, go, and come. These are words whose meanings change quickly depending on the time or space in which they are uttered. If we say “now” as we write this draft, it means our current moment during the spring of 2003. If you say “now” when you encounter this example, it means the moment in time when you read these lines. While to Gertrude Stein “A rose is a rose, is a rose,” now is not now, is not now. Rather, its meaning depends on the temporal context when it is uttered or written.

I think the author’s 2nd identified source of “the deictic nature of literacy,”: “envisionments of new literacy potentials,” is just creativity in using technology tools.

I question their assertion that software upgrades lead to a need for more sophisticated digital literacy skills:

Consider, for example, the new writing skills required to effectively use a word processor like Microsoft Word. Each time one upgrades to a new version (Word 6, Word 2001, Word 2003, etc.) one must develop new composing and communication skills to take full advantage of the new potentials within each new version. While one might have needed the ability to save documents in different formats in an early version of this program, later versions require additional composing skills such as inserting photographic images from one’s photo files or editing a graphic image that is placed within a document. Subsequent generations of this single program will require even newer literacies as new technologies generate new communication and information potentials.

I think upgrades of past Microsoft products have led to functional downgrades for many users, rather than needed skill upgrades. How many people really have used much or any of the new functionalities offered in Word2000 or WordXP, compared to Word97? Not many I would wager.

I agree that anyone can creatively repurpose an existing technology for a new and innovative use. The authors write:

Thus, a word processor can be transformed into a tool for composing e-mail messages, a purpose for which it was not designed, but a function it fills admirably. This potential only comes to life when a person envisions a new function for a technology and enacts this envisionment. In essence, we can say that she envisioned how to repurpose a technology for a new and different function.

I am publishing these notes and reflections for multiple purposes. One is 21st century peer review. Any feedback I obtain on these thoughts consitutes a collaborative opportunity to further reflect upon and improve my own thinking about these ideas. I will also refer back to these notes myself for future writing projects. Because these notes now have a digital form, my ability to reuse and repurpose them is greatly heightened, compared to the alternative of just having a paper-based copy of the notes that only I have access to– and cannot be easily electronically searched and copied/pasted.

The rationale for the name I have given my own blog, “Moving at the Speed of Creativity,” is captured well in this paragraph from the article:

In summary, we believe that the deictic nature of literacy will increase in the years ahead, limited only by our own ability to adapt to the new literacies that emerge. People, not technology, will limit the speed with which new literacies appear.

We must acknowledge and adapt to the new digital knowledge landscape:

For traditional language arts curriculums that tend to focus on the process of making meaning from text as opposed to critically analyzing and interpreting the messages within images, Internet technologies require literacy educators to broaden their definitions of literacy to encompass these new, complex, and multiple forms of Internet literacies.

The purposes of the tasks in which we engage in educational contexts is so important!

Literate individuals will be those who can effectively assess their individual purposes for using the Internet and then seek out, from the Internet’s many offerings, the particular tool and form that best meet their needs.

Construction not just consumption of content is key.
- critical conception is achieved via creative production:

Another central principle of the new literacies is that they demand new forms of critical literacy and additional dependence on critical thinking and analysis as one encounters information. Open networks such as the Internet permit anyone to publish anything; this is one of the opportunities this technology presents.

Speed counts.

In a world of vast information resources, the new literacies of the Internet will be defined in important ways around the rate at which one can read, write, and communicate. Within competitive information economies where problem identification and solution are critical, the rate at which one can acquire, evaluate, and use information to solve important problems becomes central to success. The speed it takes to acquire information will become an important measure of success within various technologies. Quickly finding, evaluating, using, and communicating information will become central instructional issues.

The need for our graduates to have social/collaborativbe learning and problem solving skills should have HUGE impacts for how we structure formal learning environments:

Consequently, effective learning experiences will be increasingly dependent on social learning strategies and the ability of a teacher to orchestrate literacy learning opportunities between and among students who know different new literacies. This will distribute knowledge about literacy throughout the classroom, especially as students move above the stages of foundational literacy.

No one can know it all!

Monastic learning strategies can be (and are) crippling for many:

If, as we believe, literacy learning becomes increasingly dependent on social learning strategies, socially skilled learners will be advantaged while “monastic learners,” children who rely solely on independent learning strategies, may be disadvantaged. This will be an important change in many classrooms because individual learning often has been the norm, privileging children who learn well independently. In classrooms where the acquisition of new literacies is important, children who are better at independent learning experiences will be disadvantaged. Increasingly, we must support children who are unfamiliar or ineffective with social learning strategies.

Creative Commons is not linked from this article but it should be:

Much of the Internet is built on the social knowledge constructions of others (e.g., telecollaborative learning projects, threaded discussions, interactive chats, and collaborative databases).

The authors are SO RIGHT to point out how predominant uses of technology in classrooms, like using the Accelerated Reader program to test reading comprehension, are low-level (re Bloom’s taxonomy) uses of technology.

First, it is important to understand that simply using technology in the classroom does not assure that students are acquiring the new literacies they require. Using technologies such as Accelerated Reader (Topping & Paul, 1999) or other software packages designed to support the acquisition of foundational literacies will not prepare students for the new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs. Using these instructional technologies does nothing to develop the essential skills, strategies, and dispositions that define the new literacies.

The authors here are making the point that I made above: that just having the technology is no guarantee it will be used to cultivate and develop digital literacy skills.

There is a strong economic correlation between student SES and formally measured levels of “academic achievement.” In the authors’ words:

Of particular concern, white fourth-grade students scored at or above the “basic” level of reading at nearly twice the rate as many minority groups (NCES). Just as troubling, economically advantaged students at the fourth-grade level scored at or above the “basic” level of reading at nearly twice the rate compared to disadvantaged students (NCES, 2003b).

We need more research on “new literacies!”

Despite the perceived importance of the Internet as a context for teaching and learning (Web-Based Education Commission, 2000); U.S. Department of Education, 1999), relatively little research exists on the new literacies the Internet requires for achieving high levels of reading comprehension (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). This situation must change.

We must launch a widespread research agenda to address these needs:

A New Literacies Perspective suggests that an aggressive agenda of research must be launched immediately in order to better understand the new skills, strategies, and dispositions required to effectively use the Internet and other ICTs.

We must focus on developing and refining our skills as digital storytellers, as teachers and learners. We need more learning experiences with DEPTH rather than breadth:

Consequently, there is new sense of urgency in ensuring that students develop an awareness of the diverse perspectives around any question they investigate. Literacy educators will need to incorporate more strategies like those suggested by Brunner and Tally (1999) to foster deeper student insight into the various ways of looking at the same event, for example, viewing a historical event from the perspective of the different people involved (e.g., viewing a Civil War video series while “looking for evidence of the way average soldiers, in contrast to generals, or men in contrast to women, or white in contrast to blacks, experienced the war” [p. 46]).

Bandwidth for students, teachers and schools is of paramount importance:

Clear, rapid, and effective communication that takes advantage of the networked information contexts of ICTs will be central to our students’ success.

All this is just a pipe dream without bandwidth:

If we take full advantage of these new opportunities the Internet will allow us to construct a truly global village among classrooms that shows students how to take full advantage of the many benefits that diversity bestows.

We must prepare teachers through rich, varied, and prolific experiences with technology integration. That is my answer to the following challenge:

Our colleagues who conduct research on teacher education also have an enormous agenda ahead. They need to apply their finest heuristics, helping us to better understand how to prepare new and experienced teachers to support children in the new literacies of ICTs in the classroom. Increasingly the challenge for classrooms is one that is changing from access to the thoughtful use of powerful new technologies for literacy. We need important new models and clear data to direct us in this area.

Adult literacy is key also. My work and the work of others on LCLC fits this challenge well.

A critical question is how we should organize and orchestrate classroom learning:

We need to study how best to support the development of new literacies within classrooms where students will know more than teachers about some new literacies and seek new ways in which to organize and orchestrate classroom learning to take advantage of the new literacy knowledge others are acquiring. In short, we need to determine the most effective ways to manage learning experiences in the new literacies when these literacies are distributed throughout a classroom.

Blogs should be included in the discussion here about how teachers contribute to the existing knowledge base of best-practices using edtech.

The following disconnect is HUGELY important to consider in the context of digital literacy:

A fundamental challenge to the integration of new literacies into the curriculum, at least in the United States, is that we currently do not include these important literacy skills on national and state assessments. Given the evidence that teachers emphasize literacy skills appearing on important assessments (Linn, Graue, & Sanders, 1990), there is little incentive for teachers to make new literacies a central part of the curriculum until these are included in state and national standards and on literacy assessments.

The following is TRAGIC. It is evidence of how public education in many sectors has tremendous momentum pushing it toward 21st century irrelevancy:

New literacies, such as reading on the Internet or within other ICTs, are not included on any state assessments, and most states have no immediate plans to include these within literacy assessments (Leu & Ataya, 2002). Moreover, most states have seen the assessment of new literacies, such as comprehending text on the Internet, composing e-mail messages, or writing with a word processor, as a technology assessment issue, not a reading or writing assessment issue. This continues to occur even though the ability to locate, read, and evaluate information on the Internet is increasingly a part of our daily lives (Lebo, 2003). In addition, not a single state permits any student who prefers to use a word processor to do so during state writing assessments, unless this is formally specified in a special education student’s Individualized Educational Plan. This continues to occur despite evidence that nearly 20% more students are able to pass the Massachusetts state writing assessment when permitted to use word processors (Russell & Plati, 2000).

The above is a CRIME! Thank goodness at least on the GRE students in the writing portion can use a computer and write at the keyboard. If I had not been able to do so when I retook the GRE for my own doctoral studies, I am positive my writing score would have significantly suffered as a result.

We are just reinforcing “monastic learning” in our current assessment environment (high-stakes testing based on multiple choice exams.)

This final challenge is what I am addressing this very moment:

It will be up to each of us to recognize the continually changing nature of literacy and to develop a rich understanding of these changes. We hope that you will bring your own expertise to the important work that lies ahead as we all seek to prepare students for the new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs that define their future. They deserve nothing less

I agree whole-heartedly. This is the task in which I am presently engaged, and likely will continue to work on for the foreseeable future. :-)

On this day..

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