Preface<\/p>\n
The May 2005 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Conference on English Education (CEE) Leadership and Policy Summit brought together over 75 past, present, and future leaders of CEE from across the United States to Georgia State University to rethink issues related to the preparation and continuing professional development of English language arts teachers and teacher educators (see the Leadership and Policy Summit home page<\/a>). [Editor’s note:<\/strong><\/em> URLs for hotlinks can be found at the end of this paper in the Resources<\/a> section.]<\/p>\n The goal of the working meeting was to assemble a collective knowledge base and a series of written position papers to guide future policy efforts of English teacher preparation and development in this country. For more details on the summit itself, see \u201cReconstructing English Education for the 21st Century: A Report on the CEE Leadership and Policy Summit<\/a>,\u201d co-authored by Suzanne Miller, CEE Chair, and Dana Fox, CEE Leadership and Policy Summit Chair.<\/p>\n As Miller and Fox (2005) explain,<\/p>\n The CEE Summit was not merely an intellectual retreat but a working meeting<\/a> consisting of small group sessions for discussion and writing as well as plenary sessions for critical conversations on vital issues and reporting out to whole group. Collaborating in small thematic inquiry groups, invited participants<\/a> from various educational institutions across the United States worked together electronically for two months prior to the Summit and then face-to-face in Atlanta for three days to develop a framework of critical CEE issues and ideas and to begin to develop an action agenda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The following article represents the initial draft of one of the position papers resulting from the work of participants in the \u201cWhat do we know and believe about multimodal literacies and digital technologies in English education?\u201d thematic strand group of the CEE summit. This initial beliefs statement is being co-published online by both the English section of Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education<\/em> (CITE Journal), and CEE. As such, the original version is also located on the NCTE CEE Web site<\/a>.<\/p>\n As part of the rationale for this tentative beliefs document being published in the CITE Journal, the participants and authors in the CEE Summit multimodal literacies and digital technologies strand are inviting and encouraging short responses to this initial draft in the form of commentaries, which will be reviewed for publication in a commentary strand linked to the original article. The commentary feature takes advantage of an interactive medium to develop an ongoing, peer-reviewed dialog that, in this case, will be used to inform the revision of this tentative beliefs statement about technology and the preparation of English teachers.<\/p>\n Commentaries for this call for submissions should be submitted for review by February 1, 2006, and they may be submitted online by clicking on the submissions link at the top of this page or by using the following direct link: http:\/\/site.aace.org\/newpubs\/index.cfm?fuseaction=Info.CITEEntrance<\/a>. Reviews for these commentaries will be expedited, and commentaries accepted for publication will appear in the March 2006 issue of the CITE Journal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Introduction<\/p>\n English educators are charged to prepare preservice and in-service teachers to consider not only the ways in which we engage in meaning-making by using a variety of representational, interpretive, and communicative systems, but also to consider the synergistic relationships that exist between readers, writers, texts, contexts, and the situations in which texts, in their many forms, are written and read. Pope and Golub (2000) and Young and Bush (2004) provide important insights into preparing current and future English language arts teachers to use technology effectively, including methods for evaluating technology applications for their classrooms. However, challenges continue to mount. Today, new technologies are changing the types of texts we and our students create and interpret even as they are influencing the social, political, and cultural contexts in which our texts are composed and shared. Since these technologies are influencing the development of individuals, institutions, and communities (and since individuals, institutions, and communities are shaping these technologies and their uses), it is essential for English educators to turn a critical eye toward the benefits and affordances; the limitations and liabilities of integrating these newer technologies into our teaching.<\/p>\n Andrew Feenberg (2002) and Bob Yagelski (2005), among others, have warned educators not to conflate the adoption of newer technologies with progress. In other words, both men caution us not to view the integration of newer technologies into English language arts and literacy teaching as scaffolding innately and universally desirable outcomes\u2014or as determinist. The development of new technologies and the decision to integrate them into teaching and learning lives is neither a foregone conclusion nor following a predetermined trajectory. Teachers, individually and collectively, have the capacity and the responsibility to influence the development, modification, adoption, and\/or rejection of newer technologies. In order to make these critical decisions, they will need to understand not only how to use these technologies, but also the benefits and costs their adoption and integration into English language arts and literacy teaching have the potential to create for teachers, students, and the broader community. Since best practice in teaching requires that teaching be specific to individual students, classrooms, and communities, such decision-making will require additional research on the classroom at local as well as national levels.<\/p>\n The impact of these new technologies has been sufficiently pervasive that a document of this length can only be suggestive of the issues that these technologies raise for educators. We will not, for instance, take up such serious issues as childhood obesity that often results, at least in part, from more hours spent at the computer terminal than in outdoor play, or the gender gap between the interest of young women and young men in computer tasks that go beyond word processing and surfing the Internet. Although we will touch on them, we can\u2019t do justice to such grave problems as the continuing digital and didactic divides that follow race and class lines, or the ability of the ruthless to use newer technologies to exploit others, particularly children and the elderly. We will, however, identify some of the major issues our profession will need to consider if we are to offer the best possible educational opportunities for our students and their students. In our discussion, we use a number of terms that warrant further explanation and, as such, we offer the following definitions:<\/p>\n Focus Area:<\/strong> Defining terms, defining purposes, defining the outcomes of an exponentially increasing rate of innovation. We are struggling to develop a shared language for interrogating the ways in which newer technologies are influencing our conceptions and performances of best practice in English language arts\/literacy education.<\/p>\n Implications:<\/strong> Multimodal, multiliteracies, newer technologies, new media, new literacies; on-line courses, virtual courses, hybrid courses; technology as tool, technology as literacy, technology as culture. The word \u201ctechnology\u201d encompasses so much that it carries little meaning. As we continue to parse it to make it more specific, our conversations about its benefits and liabilities will become more useful.<\/p>\n Belief Statements:<\/strong> We have not yet reached consensus on what we are talking about when we talk about integrating \u201ctechnology\u201d into teacher preparation. In order to enhance our readers\u2019 ability to offer beneficial critique of our work, we offer in the annotations below, our definitions for specialized terminology we are using in this document.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Annotations\u2014Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Cybernetics:<\/strong> This discipline intersects neurology, electronic network theory, and logic and studies communication and control in living beings or machines.<\/p>\n Digital Storytelling<\/strong>: Digital Storytelling reflects both a broad reference to the emergent new forms of digital narratives (Web-based stories, interactive stories, hypertexts, and narrative computer games), as well as the specific approach of creating short digital films developed by the Center for Digital Storytelling.<\/p>\n Digital Technologies<\/strong>: A digital system is one that uses numbers, especially binary numbers, for input, processing, transmission, storage, or display, rather than a continuous spectrum of values (an analog system) or non-numeric symbols such as letters or icons. The distinction of “digital” versus “analog” or “symbolic” can refer to method of input, data storage and transfer, the internal working of an instrument, and the kind of display. The word comes from the same source as the word digit and digitus: the Latin word for finger (counting on the fingers) as these are used for discrete counting. The word digital<\/em> is most commonly used in computing and electronics, especially where real-world information is converted to binary numeric form as in digital audio and digital photography. Such data-carrying signals carry either one of two electronic or optical pulses, logic 1 (pulse present) or 0 (pulse absent). The term is often meant by the prefix “e-,” as in e-mail and ebook, even though not all electronics systems are digital.<\/p>\n Grammars:<\/strong> Grammar is the discovery, enunciation, and study of rules governing the use of language. The set of rules governing a particular language is also called the grammar of the language; thus, each language can be said to have its own distinct grammar. Grammars evolve through usage and human population separations. With the advent of written representations, formal rules about language usage tend to appear also. Formal grammars are codifications of usage that are developed by observation. As the rules become established and developed, the prescriptive concept of grammatical correctness can arise. This often creates a gulf between contemporary usage and that which is accepted as correct.<\/p>\n Instant Messenger (IM): <\/strong>Instant messaging requires the use of a client program that hooks up an instant messaging service and differs from e-mail in that conversations are then able to happen in realtime. Most services offer a \u201cpresence awareness\u201d feature, indicating whether people on one\u2019s list of contacts are currently online and available to chat. This may be called a \u201cBuddy List.\u201d In early instant messaging programs, each letter appeared as it was typed, and when letters were deleted to correct typos this was also seen in real time. This made it more like a telephone conversation than exchanging letters. In modern instant messaging programs, the other party in the conversation generally only sees each line of text right after a new line is started. Most instant messaging applications also include the ability to set a status message, roughly analogous to the message on a telephone answering machine.<\/p>\n Internet:<\/strong> The Internet, or simply the Net, is the publicly accessible worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols. It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.<\/p>\n LCD Projector:<\/strong> An LCD projector is a device utilized for displaying video images or data. They are the modern equivalent to the slide projector and overhead projector used in the past.<\/p>\n Massively Multi-player On-line Game: <\/strong>A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) is a type of computer game that enables hundreds or thousands of players to simultaneously interact in a game world they are connected to via the Internet. Typically this kind of game is played in an online, multiplayer-only persistent world. Some MMOGs are played on a mobile device (usually a phone) and are thus Mobile MMOG or MMMOG or 3MOG.<\/p>\n Media Studies:<\/strong> Media studies is a social science that studies the nature and effects of mass media upon individuals and society, as well as analyzing actual media content and representations. A cross-disciplinary field, media studies uses techniques and theorists from sociology, cultural studies, psychology, art theory, information theory, and economics.<\/p>\n Modes:<\/strong> In linguistics, mode is the channel of communication such as spoken, written or signed.<\/p>\n MOOs \/ MUDs:<\/strong> In computer gaming, a MUD (multi-user dungeon, dimension, or sometimes domain) is a multi-player computer game that combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash style computer games, and social chat rooms. Typically running on a bulletin board system or Internet server, the game is usually text driven, where players read descriptions of rooms, objects, events, other characters, and computer-controlled creatures or non-player characters (NPCs) in a virtual world. They may interact with each other and the surroundings by typing commands that resemble a natural language, usually English.<\/p>\n Traditional MUDs implement a fantasy world populated by elves, goblins, and other mythical beings with players being able to take on any number of classes, including warriors, mages, priests, thieves, druids, etc. The object of the game is to slay monsters, explore a world rich in fantasy and with adventure, and to complete quests. MUDs are typically fashioned around the dice rolling rules of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) series of games.<\/p>\n MUDs typically have a fantasy setting, while others are set in science fiction-based universe. Still others, especially those which are based on MOOs, are used in distance education or to allow for virtual conferences. MUDs have also attracted the interest of academic scholars from many fields, including communications, sociology, law, and synthetic economies.<\/p>\n Multimedia:<\/strong> Multimedia literacy is a new aspect of literacy that is being recognized as technology expands the way people communicate. \u2018Multimedia\u2019 is the use of several different media to convey information (text, audio, graphics, animation, video, and interactivity). As personal computers and their software become more powerful they have the capacity to record and edit sound, still images and video and manage interactivity. This places multimedia creation in the hands of any computer. As multimedia becomes a more prevalent form of communication it becomes important to understand the literacies of \u201creading\u201d and \u201cwriting\u201d using multimedia, and for these skills to be taught in schools and other education institutions.<\/p>\n Multimodal:<\/strong> A multimodal user interface provides the user with more than a single mode of interaction. The most common such interface combines a visual modality (e.g., a display, keyboard, and mouse) with a voice modality (speech recognition for input, speech synthesis and recorded audio for output). However other modalities, such as pen-based input or haptic input\/output, may be used. Multimodal user interfaces are a research area in human-computer interaction. The advantage of multiple modalities is increased usability: the weaknesses of one modality are offset by the strengths of another. On a mobile device with a small visual interface and keypad, a word may be quite difficult to type but very easy to say (e.g., Poughkeepsie).<\/p>\n New Literacies<\/strong>: For the contemporary world, literacy now comes to mean more than just the ability to read, write and be numerate. It involves, at all levels, the ability to use and communicate in a diverse range of technologies. Since the computer became mainstream in the early 1990s, its importance and centrality in communication has become unassailable. We should now, properly, speak of \u201cliteracies\u201d. These literacies always involve technology and the ability to use technology to negotiate the myriad of discourses that face us in the modern world. These literacies concern using information skillfully and appropriately, and are multi-faceted and involve a range of technologies and media. One such group of literacies that is growing in significance as personal computers become more powerful is multimedia literacy.<\/p>\n In sum, today\u2019s students need to cope with a complex mix of visual, oral, and interactive media as well as traditional text. People of lesser education or older people may see themselves falling behind as the informational gap between them and the people literate in the new media and technologies widens.<\/p>\n New Media:<\/strong> New media usually refers to a group of relatively recent mass media based on new information technology. It is based on computing technology and not reducible to communication in a traditional sense. Most frequently the label would be understood to include the Internet and World Wide Web, video games and interactive media, CD-ROM and other forms of multimedia popular from the 1990s on. The phrase came to prominence in the 1990s, and is often used by technology writers like those at Wired magazine and by scholars in media studies. The term has garnered negative connotations due to techno-utopian claims by new-media proponents about the revolutionary social and personal benefits of new media; the claims of revolutionary transformation of people\u2019s lives were widely seen as unjustified. All the same, new media have only grown in popularity, and their current ubiquity is slowly causing social changes; their initial proponents\u2019 error may have been in the speed with which they claimed media would transform society, rather than the prediction itself.<\/p>\n Personal Digital Accessory (PDA)<\/strong>: Personal digital assistants (PDAs or palmtops) are handheld devices that were originally designed as personal organizers, but became much more versatile over the years. A basic PDA usually includes a clock, date book, address book, task list, memo pad, and a simple calculator. Many PDAs can access the Internet via wireless or mobile \u2018phone technology. One major advantage of using PDAs is their ability to synchronize data with a PC or home computer.<\/p>\n Podcast:<\/strong> Podcasting is a method of publishing audio and video programs via the Internet that lets users subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). It became popular in late 2004, largely due to automatic downloading of audio onto portable players or personal computers. \u201cPodcasting\u201d in its strictest sense is distinct from other types of online media delivery because of its subscription model, which uses a feed (such as RSS or Atom) to deliver an enclosed file. Podcasting enables independent producers to create self-published, syndicated \u201cradio shows,\u201d and gives broadcast radio programs a new distribution method. Listeners may subscribe to feeds using \u201cpodcatching\u201d software (a type of aggregator), which periodically checks for and downloads new content automatically.<\/p>\n Semiotics<\/strong>: Semiotics\u2014also known as semiology\u2014is the study of signs, both individually and grouped in sign systems, and includes the study of how meaning is transmitted and understood.<\/p>\n Streaming media<\/strong>: Media that is consumed (read, heard, viewed) while it is being delivered. Although it is generally used in the context of certain content types (\u201cstreaming audio,\u201d \u201cstreaming video,\u201d etc.), streaming is more a property of the delivery systems employed to distribute that content. The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over computer networks; most other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (radio, television) or inherently non-streaming (books, video cassettes, audio CDs).<\/p>\n Text Messaging:<\/strong> Short message service (SMS) is a service available on most digital mobile phones that permits the sending of short messages (also known as text messages, messages, or more colloquially SMSes, texts or even txts) between mobile phones, other handheld devices and even landline telephones.<\/p>\n Visual Literacy:<\/strong> Visual literacy is the set of skills involved in the interpretation and criticism of images. It is a field of study in academia, drawing on art history and criticism, information design and graphic design, and computer interface usability. It is also a goal of education paralleling linguistic literacy. The basic skills of visual literacy include the vocabulary of concepts necessary for understanding and discussing images.<\/p>\n Web log (Blog):<\/strong> A weblog or blog (derived from web + log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally, but not always, in reverse chronological order). Although most early blogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of \u201cblogging.\u201d<\/p>\n W iFi: <\/strong>Wi-Fi (sometimes written Wi-fi, WiFi, Wifi, wifi) is a trademark for sets of product compatibility standards for wireless local area networks (WLANs). Wi-Fi, short for \u201cWireless Fidelity,\u201d was intended to allow mobile devices, such as laptop computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs) to connect to local area networks, but is now often used for Internet access and wireless VoIP phones. Desktop computers can use Wi-Fi too, allowing offices and homes to be networked without expensive wiring.<\/p>\n Wiki: <\/strong>A wiki is sometimes interpreted as the abbreviation for \u201cwhat I know, is,\u201d which describes the knowledge contribution, storage, and exchange up to some point. A wiki is a Web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows others (often completely unrestricted) to edit the content. The term wiki also refers to the collaborative software (wiki engine) used to create such a website (see wiki software). In essence, the wiki is a vast simplification of the process of creating HTML pages, and thus is a very effective way to exchange information through collaborative effort.<\/p>\n World Wide Web:<\/strong> \u201cWWW,\u201d \u201cW3,\u201d or simply \u201cWeb\u201d is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is actually a service that operates over the Internet.<\/p>\n Zine:<\/strong> A zine\u2014a contraction of the word fanzine\u2014is most commonly a small circulation, non-commercial publication of original or appropriated texts and images. Zines are written in a variety of formats, from computer-printed text to comics to handwritten text. Zines are seldom copyrighted and there is a strong belief among many zine creators that the material within should be freely distributed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n Building on the categories above and for the purposes of this paper, we have decided to organize our beliefs about technology and teacher preparation in relation to four major foci:<\/p>\n Each focus section will include some, if not all, of the following: a description of the focus, implications, belief statements, annotations, a consideration of what these beliefs might mean for teaching and for teachers.<\/p>\n Focus 1: Newer Technologies v. Newer Literacies<\/p>\n Focusing on teaching new technologies rather than English language arts\/literacy learning is shortsighted, since many newer technologies have relatively short lifespans. On the other hand, many new literacies and modes of inquiry require direct instruction on the use of hardware, peripherals, software, and interfaces.<\/p>\n Belief Statements:<\/p>\n . . . [Giving preferential attention to one mode or another, or multiple modes] depends on your interest, on who you are and what you do, what will put most weight on the scale, the things that were or the things that will be, the losses or the gains. But what is lost may return, and what is gained may yet turn out to be a loss. The new technologies\u2019 emphasis on multi-modality, three-dimensionality and interactivity can be seen as a return of many of the things that were lost in the transition from \u201corality\u201d to \u201cliteracy,\u201d as a \u201csecondary orality,\u201d in other words (Ong, 1977). But the search for immersion, 3D virtual reality and interactivity, and the advent of \u201ccyberculture,\u201d may also signify the most profound loss of embodiment we have seen yet. . . (p. 92).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Annotation:<\/p>\n Newer technologies present a conundrum for many English educators. Most teachers would agree that the best teaching is student centered, outcomes oriented, theoretically sound, contextually appropriate, and research based. The difficulty English educators face is in effectively evaluating the potential of newer technologies unless they commit to personal explorations. These new technologies have spawned a wide array of new venues, semiotic systems, genres, and issues for English educators and their students, and the learning curves for each (for instance, teaching in online environments, developing a better understanding of visual literacy, composing Web sites, or studying new intellectual property laws) is usually steep. Existing research on the impact of newer technologies on students\u2019 literacy tends to be anecdotal and descriptive rather than definitive and prescriptive.<\/p>\n A document of this length cannot address the multitude of ways in which newer technologies or repurposed older technologies have changed our lives. Pat Sullivan (1991) views these implications as so serious that she encourages us to think of newer technologies as \u201cchange agents\u201d rather than tools; Walter Ong (1982) suggests that we consider the ways in which these technologies change the way our students compose their thinking; and Jim Porter (2002) reminds us to consider the ways in which the technologies we have used have shaped our ideologies\u2014including our perceptions of the values and limitations of newer technologies.<\/p>\n Implications for Teaching:<\/p>\n Technologies we have used have shaped our ideologies\u2014including our perceptions of the values and limitations of newer technologies. The following belief statements are an attempt to suggest the possible changes that consideration of such technologies might stimulate.<\/p>\n Belief Statement:<\/p>\n Annotation:<\/strong><\/p>\n Formerly, the K-16 students\u2019 study of literacy and language was largely faculty driven and occurred primarily in classrooms (and to a lesser extent as independent study in students\u2019 homes, libraries, and museums). Today, newer technologies have created additional sites for teacher and student learning. Students have a far wider array of \u201cspaces\u201d in which they can participate as active learners. These include, for instance, online and hybrid courses offered by individuals, schools, educational consortia, universities and bookstores; Web sites, wikis, and blogs created by professionals in various fields as well as by enthusiasts and other students; and a growing array of games. We were amazed at the ability of our students to master geography as they played Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? decades ago. Many of our students have had the experience of entering an alternative, persistent work where they assume alternative personalities, address new challenges, and receive new rewards. In many instances, students are engaged in these worlds with peers from many other countries. This is an area, Gee (1993) reminds us, that has great potential, but has not yet been sufficiently studied.<\/p>\n Frequency and duration of contacts between English educators and their students and in-service teachers and students can increase in both frequency and duration through the use of newer technologies. These new instructional sites offer English educators and their preservice students opportunities to engage with in-service teachers and students in a wider variety of community settings (urban, suburban and rural; high, middle, and low-income; racially homogenous and diverse) and courses (in writing, literature, and\/or drama courses; and in disciplines other than English) than they could experience in real time and face to face.<\/p>\n These new technologies, however, offer new challenges. Many teacher educators do not have access to newer technologies, and, if provided access, will also require professional development opportunities that allow them not only the opportunity to learn functional aspects of the technology, but also opportunities to think critically about pedagogical concerns (with whom, when, where, how, why, and to what extent to use them), and about the intellectual, social, cultural, political, and economic impact of using them.<\/p>\n These newer technologies will allow English educators to follow cohorts of new teachers during their induction years and to provide additional support at the point of need during this critical period of a teacher\u2019s career. In addition to the widely adopted listservs for continued professional development, new videoconferencing interfaces may go far to address some of the many reservations that faculty have had regarding on-line courses and distance learning. With an opportunity for all students and the teacher to interact synchronously and to view simultaneously real-time audio and video of one another as well as a shared whiteboard on which they can all write and share software they all can use may mediate some of those concerns. Those who value the informal or co-curricular learning opportunities that students who can afford to become residents of college campuses enjoy will be challenged to imagine how to create new informal, co-curricular opportunities for students who study and learn primarily or exclusively in these new spaces.<\/p>\n As some courses move on-line or become hybrids of on-line and face-to-face teaching, educators are finding that students who enjoy ubiquitous computing also expect a ubiquitous faculty. As teachers increase the means and methods through which they make themselves available to their students, they will need to consider at what cost that availability comes:<\/p>\n Focus 2: The Influence of Newer Technologies on Theories Informing Our Thinking About Text, Language, and Literacy<\/p>\n Theories to inform our thinking about text, language, literacy, as influenced by the latest technologies, is another important consideration. Areas related to this focus would include, for instance, semiotics, grammars of newer literacies, and languages being developed by newer technologies.<\/p>\n Implications for Teaching: <\/strong><\/p>\n These theories inform our thinking about learning, teaching, and our ways of thinking about text, language and literacy in general.<\/p>\n Belief Statements:<\/p>\n Annotation:<\/p>\n Digital texts both imitate and expand existing print forms. Some digital texts share common forms and common purposes: the online newspaper, for example, is similar in many ways to its print-based counterpart. At the same time, digital texts possess characteristics that are unique to the digital medium, challenging our ideas about what texts are and how they work. More specifically, digital texts may be hypertextual and multimodal, linking to a multitude of other texts; they are dynamic, changing content in real time. Also, they are indeterminate, with no definite beginning or end, and multimodal, incorporating visual, auditory, and other non-verbal elements. New digital genres, such as web pages, web logs, multi-user virtual environments like MOOs and MUDs, and collaborative writing platforms like wikis and threaded discussions are evolving and new digital grammars emerge with each new form.<\/p>\n Translating print texts into digital format also alters the ways they transmit meaning and the ways in which they are accessed. As publicly accessible online archives make more and more texts available\u2014from fiction to non-fiction, from classic to contemporary, from the academic to the mainstream\u2014our study of texts will continue to change. Online archives have the potential to resituate print works within rich multimedia contexts, to expand the boundaries of texts through links to biographical, historical, and other connective texts, and to widen the canon to include previously marginalized writers and genres formerly underrepresented in the print medium.<\/p>\n Like the reader of print texts, the reader of digital texts takes an active role in the creation of meaning. Digital texts can expand this role by allowing the reader to follow non-linear reading pathways, by encouraging the reader to intervene in and expand the text, and by presenting the reader with rich opportunities for meaning making through multimodal content, such as video, audio, and other elements. Through these interactive processes, readers of digital texts become more \u201cwriterly\u201d readers, collaborating with the author to co-create the text. More importantly, new media for digital texts asks for, and to a large degree, demands interactivity in order to be fully realized as a civic discourse.<\/p>\n In reading digital texts, readers use a wide range of new literacy strategies to create meaning. Increasingly, information is taking on new forms that incorporate images, video, sound, and other non-textual elements. Such multimodal texts require readers to recognize, evaluate, and make meaning within these variant modes of representation. As digital information resources grow incomprehensibly vast, readers must know how to locate, evaluate, synthesize, cite, and use information judiciously and with integrity. Reading a single report on one news Web site, for example, may involve manipulating icons, viewing related streaming video, listening to audio, participating in an instant poll, and identifying and following links to related information.<\/p>\n At the same time, reading digital and multimodal texts requires conventional literacy strategies necessary to all reading acts. Such strategies are based on the belief that that reading is a personal, meaning-driven process, and that readers actively create meaning as they read. While technology applications have the potential to reinforce reductive literacy strategies, as in skill-and-drill phonics software, they also have potential to support richer and more holistic views of reading by helping readers to envision and partake in the world of the text, by encouraging students to make intertextual, intratextual, and extratextual connections, and by offering sophisticated means of textual analysis and critique.<\/p>\n Lastly, like the print media, new media reinforce the values and ideologies that are embedded within our language and society at large. Readers must recognize and respond to these cultural subtexts, not only in computer-mediated texts, but in film, television, music, and other popular media as well.<\/p>\n What Does This Mean for Teaching?<\/p>\n Technology integration in any content area is most effective when the instructor, an expert in his or her discipline, makes important connections between the objectives and pedagogy of his or her content area and the available technology tools. This process involves asking how technology can support and expand effective teaching and learning within the discipline, while simultaneously adjusting to the changes in content and pedagogy that technology by its very nature brings about. Within the English language arts, this means:<\/p>\n Focus 3: Composing With Multimodal and Multimedia Technological Tools<\/p>\n Composing processes with multimodal and multimedia technological tools in efforts to create various types of text, including hypertext, hypermedia, Web design, PowerPoint presentations, digital literacy portfolios, and digital video documents, will continue to evolve and effect how we go about the teaching of writing, producing text, and communicating.<\/p>\n Implications for Teaching: <\/strong><\/p>\n A careful consideration and analysis of composing processes and products that include multimodal literacies and multimedia technology will better inform our learning, teaching, and ways of thinking about composition, composing processes, and conceptions of an expanded, multimodal notion of text and meaning-making.<\/p>\n Belief Statements:<\/p>\n Annotation:<\/p>\n The composing process yields a variety of legitimate and effective products, outcomes, and artifacts that go beyond the printed page, including hypertext, hypermedia, Web design, digital literacy portfolios, presentations, and digital video documents. Using multimodal literacies and multimedia technologies has the potential to make the composing process and the subsequent texts produced more dynamic, interactive, generative, exploratory, visual, and collaborative.<\/p>\n Composing in multimodal forms and with multimedia technologies includes important considerations of visual, design, and performance aspects since it is not limited to print text to convey meaning. This creates opportunities to reinvent and enhance notions of audience, purpose, genre, form, and context. It also has important implications for mechanics, usage, grammar, style, and evaluation.<\/p>\n Composing processes in multimodal and multimedia technologies provide opportunities for collaboration and partnerships that occur with students and teachers across classrooms, schools, communities, states, and the globe.<\/p>\n New and innovative technology has created changes and challenges in education, and it suggests new ways of teaching and learning, including how we teach composition. A greater respect for and emphasis on the importance of multimodal literacies and emerging multimedia technologies is reshaping current theory and practice in composition processes and products. Modalities such as print, still images, video, and sound, along with the arts, and popular culture all have the potential to inform, enhance, and transform the composing process. Music, art, print, dance, video, photography, sports, and games might be tools used to facilitate the composing process, or they might be some of the products and\/or artifacts created within the composing process.<\/p>\n With the growing range of texts available to students today, literacy skills have expanded to reading images, codes, and sounds in addition to words. Greater emphasis must be placed on how various forms of technology, media, and modalities shape students\u2019 encounters with and creation of texts, as well as the meaning they are deriving from and\/or creating with them. The various networks available to students today allow them to explore a variety of texts and meanings in almost infinite ways, depending on how they access, modify, generate, send, and archive print and multimedia texts. Computer technology, especially Web-based applications, create innovative possibilities to combine multiple literacies, modes, and technologies in compelling ways and reinvent notions of text, audience, purpose, context, performance, and genre that consider, but also extend and make dynamic, traditional print media.<\/p>\n As communication tools continue to evolve and expand to include modes beyond print alone, \u201cwriting\u201d reaches a broader sense of \u201ccomposing\u201d that extends beyond pen and paper; even word processing includes elements of design, as well as texts featuring multiple genres and modes of expression. Rather than limiting composing to a linear process, multimodal literacies and multimedia technology make use of hypertext and create opportunities for interactive reading with multiple points of entry into and exit from a text. Rather than being limited to creating a linear print-based text, students can compose an interactive, multidimensional hypertext. Composing with multimodal and multimedia technologies also provide expanded opportunities for students to collaborate on individual and jointly-written texts, many of which can be shared with a much wider audience, including other classrooms, schools, and communities across the country and the globe.<\/p>\n As teachers of writing, we must be prepared to facilitate a more textured and complex approach to the composing process. While a research project from the past might be solely comprised of a third person expository essay, a similar project composed today might include some version of the traditional essay along with multimedia components, such as sound, image, and video clips, and multiple modes of expression, such as music, artwork, poetry, and first person narratives of historical fiction, all providing different perspectives on the topic under study. Furthermore, students are able to construct deeper critical insights and meaning-making in the choices they make in terms of specific artifacts they include, those they create themselves along with those of others they choose to include and cite. The links they make, internal and external, as well as the choices they make in terms of design and formatting, all contribute to meaning. In other words, multimedia texts that make use of technological innovations and integrate multimodal literacies provide a broader and more dynamic representation of ideas than afforded by the limitations of print; they also provide boundless, creative ways of connecting various forms of expression and, in turn, help to forge critical new understandings and meaning-making.<\/p>\n What Does This Mean For Teaching?<\/p>\n In order to provide opportunities for students to engage in composing processes that make use of multimodal and multimedia technologies, teachers need to minimally understand: <\/strong><\/p>\n Focus 4: Political, Economic, and Socio-Cultural Influences<\/p>\n The political, economic, and socio-cultural influences operating upon the practice of the new literacies with the new technologies is one of the most important considerations in education.<\/p>\n Implications for Teaching: <\/strong><\/p>\n What are the implications of these sociocultural, political, and economic influences for learning, teaching, and our ways of thinking about learning as a social practice?<\/p>\n Belief Statements:<\/p>\n Annotation:<\/p>\n Thomas Friedman (2005), in his New York Times bestseller, The World is Flat<\/em>, observes that,<\/p>\n \u2026 it is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing, than at any previous time in the history of the world\u2014using computers, e-mail, networks, teleconferencing, and dynamic new software. (p. 8)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What new knowledge, skills and dispositions will be needed by American students if their futures will connect them on-line, in virtual environments, with students from around the world? How likely do we think it is that Friedman is right? How would our teaching change?<\/p>\n Increasingly, full participation in our globalized world demands extensive experience with new literacies and the innovative thinking and flexible communication that grow from technological expertise. With that in mind, when frequent access to newer technologies and to the teachers who have the knowledge, skills, and disposition to integrate these technologies into their pedagogy follows racial and\/or class lines, the situation threatens to widen the gap between privileged and marginalized student populations. Such inequities result in more than a lack of computer skill. As Friedman suggests, communication will occur most often in the future in digital environments. Since it is through communication that we exercise our political, economic and social power, we risk contributing to the hegemonic perpetuation of class if we fail to demand equal access to newer technologies and adequately prepared teachers for all students.<\/p>\n Many teachers and students do not have adequate access to hardware and software in their schools and classrooms. Frequently, the available technology is essentially obsolete since the processor speed or memory capacity is inadequate for current and supported software and insufficient for multimodal composing. In other cases, the technology is broken and the school lacks the funds or sufficient instructional technology support to repair it. Restricted access or difficulty scheduling visits to computer labs make teaching lessons that would extend beyond a single class period impossible.<\/p>\n Adequate access involves more than up-to-date and well-maintained hardware and software; it also includes Web connectivity with a bandwidth capable of uploading and downloading complex texts in reasonable amounts of time. It includes access to such peripherals as digital cameras, scanners, LCD projectors, microphones, digital recorders, and camcorders. It involves classrooms that are laid out and furnished with this type of composing in mind, providing the right type of tables, chairs, outlets, and space for students work.<\/p>\n Well-informed teachers are also not measured solely by their ability to manipulate the equipment and software named above. Current and future teachers need familiarity with methods of obtaining opportunities for their students by finding and evaluating freeware, share ware and open source software and interfaces. They can benefit their students by developing and then teaching their students to develop expertise in evaluation of search engines and critical analysis of Web site credibility. Well-prepared teachers, with a deep and broad understanding of language, linguistics, literature, rhetoric, writing, speaking, and listening, can complement those talents by studying additional semiotic systems that don\u2019t rely solely on alphabetic texts.<\/p>\n New literacies will also challenge conventional notions of authorship and ownership of intellectual and artistic property. We already see students unwilling to stop pirating music and movies, and many feel that plagiarism has reached epic proportions in this country since editing tools combined with access to the Internet and effective search engines make it easy to cut and paste information from one document to another document, blurring for students, and sometimes for their teachers, the distinction between the creators, users, and owners of intellectual and artistic property. Not only will teachers need to understand \u201cfair use\u201d policies, they are likely to need to integrate units on ethics back into the curriculum to complement those units on rhetoric.<\/p>\n Technology has also changed the nature of privacy, personal space, and identity. In contrast to print-based writing, technology allows for vast distribution of any text. Therefore, its audience can be global. Anyone who has access to the Internet can potentially read Web posting, even those readers for whom it is not intended. Students should be counseled not only on the risks to their physical safety, but also on the ways that the texts they are composing today, and believe they have eliminated, often have lives beyond their computers, and may reappear in the future at a most inopportune time.<\/p>\n Students invited to study rhetoric and ethics in conjunction with new media and literacies might be well served to learn methods of critically analyzing the ways in which others are using multiple semiotic systems to convince them to participate, to buy, to believe, and to resist a wide range of appeals. Ancient methods of persuasion have been enhanced through artful use of music, color, animation, voice over, and tempo. Since students with limited incomes are often on ad-supported \u201cfree\u201d Internet sites, these might become wonderful sites in which to explore and analyze persuasive appeals. In addition, interacting in such highly commercialized spaces has also begun to have a negative impact upon personal identity of their users, who may put economic interests over other interests in their search for information and truth.<\/p>\n Successful communicating with technologies involves the ability to consider communicative events from multiple cultural, social, and ideological perspectives, and use those perspectives for effective meaning-making and culturally responsible dialogue with others. It also implies the process of uncovering one\u2019s own cultural, social, political and personal (e.g. age, gender) backgrounds and understanding how these backgrounds can and often do influence one\u2019s own ways of communicating and interacting with others in virtual and face-to-face encounters. In short, digital communication is an interactive process, involving dialogue and learning for both the sender and receiver.<\/p>\n Unlike face-to-face communication, digital communication does not always allow for nonverbal signals such as voice tone, facial expression, or body language, to help the writer clarify intended meanings. Language and cultural differences among members from diverse and multinational online communities pose additional challenges to interaction in virtual spaces. For these reasons, online messages can lead to miscommunication and misinterpretation.<\/p>\n Internet communication and interaction is not always a safe and pleasant experience for its users. Instances of anti-social behavior in online communication such as using hurtful language and discriminating among certain members of virtual communities have been reported. The Internet space also allows their members to construct and act out identities that may not necessarily be their real selves and thus lose a sense of responsibility toward others. However, while any act of online communication involves a degree of risk, the vast majority of Web interactions occur without endangering the safety of participants.<\/p>\n What Does This Mean for Teaching?<\/p>\n References<\/p>\n Feenberg, A. (2002). Transforming technology: A critical theory revisited.<\/em> Oxford: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n Friedman, T. (2005). The World is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century<\/em>. New York: Farrow, Straus & Giroux.<\/p>\n Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy<\/em>. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.<\/p>\n Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal: The modes and media of contemporary communication<\/em>. London: Arnold.<\/p>\n Miller, S., & Fox, D. (2005). Reconstructing English education for the 21st century: A report on the CEE leadership and policy summit<\/em>. Retrieved November 16, 2005, from the National Council of Teachers of English Conference on English Education Web site: http:\/\/www.ncte.org\/groups\/cee\/featuredinfo\/122846.htm<\/a><\/p>\n Ong, W. J. (1977). Interfaces of the word: Studies in the evolution of consciousness and culture.<\/em> Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.<\/p>\n Ong, W.J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word<\/em>. London: Methuen.<\/p>\n Pope, C., & Golub, J. (2000). Preparing tomorrow\u2019s English language arts teachers today: Principles and practices for infusing technology. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education<\/em> [Online serial], 1<\/em>(1). Retrieved November 16, 2005, from https:\/\/citejournal.org\/voll\/issl\/currentissues\/english\/article1.htm<\/a><\/p>\n Porter, J. (2002). Why technology matters to writing: A cyberwriter\u2019s tale.<\/em> Computers & Composition, 20<\/em>(4), 375-394.<\/p>\n Postman, N. (1996). The end of education: Redefining the value of school<\/em>. New York: Knopf.<\/p>\n Sullivan, P. A. (1991). Taking control of the page: Electronic writing and word publishing. In G. E. Hawisher & C. L. Selfe (Eds.), Evolving perspectives on computers and composition studies: Questions for the 1990s<\/em> (pp. 43-64). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.<\/p>\n Yagelski, R. (2005). Computers, literacy and being: Teaching with technology for a sustainable future<\/em>. Retrieved November 16, 2005, from the State University of New York at Albany Web site: http:\/\/www.albany.edu\/faculty\/rpy95\/webtext<\/a>\/<\/p>\n Young, C. A. & Bush, J. (2004). Teaching the English language arts with technology: A critical approach and pedagogical framework. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education<\/em> [Online serial], 4<\/em>(1). Retrieved November 16, 2005, from https:\/\/citejournal.org\/vol4\/iss1\/languagearts\/article1.cfm<\/a><\/p>\n Other Related Reading<\/p>\n Aarseth, E. J. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on ergodic literature. <\/em>Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.<\/p>\n Alvermann, D. E. (2002). Adolescents and literacies in a digital world<\/em>. New York: P. Lang.<\/p>\n Beach, R., & Myers, J. (2001). Inquiry-based English instruction: Engaging students in life and literature.<\/em> New York: Teachers College Press.<\/p>\n Boardman, M. (2005). The language of websites.<\/em> London: Routledge.<\/p>\n Bolter, J.D. (1998). Hypertext and the question of visual literacy. In D. Reinking, M. McKenna, L. Labbo, & R. Kieffer (Eds.), Handbook of literacy and technology: Transformations in a post-typographic world<\/em> (pp. 3-14). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.<\/p>\n Bolter, J.D., & Grusin, R. (2000). Remediation: Understanding new media. <\/em>Cambridge, CT: MIT Press.<\/p>\n Bruce, B. C., & International Reading Association. (2003). Literacy in the information age: Inquiries into meaning making with new technologies.<\/em> Newark, DE: International Reading Association.<\/p>\n Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture<\/em>. Cambridge, UK: Polity.<\/p>\n Burmark, L. (2002). Visual literacy: Learn to see, see to learn<\/em>. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.<\/p>\n Cooper, J., & Weaver, K.D. (2003). Gender and computers: Understanding the digital divide. <\/em>Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.<\/p>\n Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2000). Introduction: Multiliteracies: The beginnings of an idea. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Ed.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the future design of social futures<\/em> (pp. 3-8). New York: Routledge.<\/p>\n Cuban, L., Kirkpatrick, H., & Peck, C. (2001). High access and low use of technologies in high school classrooms: Explaining an apparent paradox. American Educational Research Journal, 38<\/em>(4), 813-834.<\/p>\n Emig, J. (2001). Embodied learning. English Education, 33<\/em>, 271-280.<\/p>\n Fabos, B. (2004). Wrong turn on the information superhighway: Education and the commercialization of the Internet<\/em>. New York: Teachers College Press.<\/p>\n Frand, J., L. (2000, September\/October). The information-age mindset: Changes in students and implications for higher education. EDUCAUSE<\/em>, 14-24.<\/p>\n Fitzpatrick, H., & Hardman, M. (2000). Mediated activity in the primary classroom: Girls, boys, and computers. Learning and Instruction, 10<\/em>, 431-446.<\/p>\n Grabill, J. T. (2003). On divides and interfaces: Access, class, and computers. Computers and Composition, 20<\/em>(4), 455-472.<\/p>\n Hull, G. A., & Nelson, M. E. (2005). Locating the semiotic power of multimodality written communication. Research in the Teaching of English, 22<\/em>(2), 224-261.<\/p>\n Jonassen, D. H., Howland, J.L., Moore, J.L., & Marra, R. M. (2003). Learning to solve problems with technology: A constructivist perspective<\/em>. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.<\/p>\n Kinzer, C.K., & Leander, K. (2003). Technology and the language arts: Implications of an expanded definition of literacy. In J. Flood, D. Lapp, J.R. Squire, & J.M. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts<\/em> (2nd ed., pp. 546-566). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.<\/p>\n Kist, W. (2005). New literacies in action: Teaching and learning in multiple media.<\/em> New York: Teachers College Press.<\/p>\n Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. <\/em>London: Routledge.<\/p>\n Kress, G. (2000). Multimodality. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the future design of social futures<\/em> (pp. 182-202). New York: Routledge.<\/p>\n Landow, G. P., & Landow, G. P. (in press). Hypertext 3.0: Critical theory and new media in a global era.<\/em> Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.<\/p>\n Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M (2003). New literacies, changing knowledge and classroom learnin<\/em>g. Philadelphia: Open University Press.<\/p>\n Leu, D.J. (2002). The new literacies: Research on reading instruction with the Internet and other digital technologies. In A.E. Farstrup & S.J. Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction<\/em> (3rd ed., pp. 310\u2013336). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.<\/p>\n Leu, J. D., & Kinzer, K. C. (2000). The convergence of literacy instruction with networked technologies for information and communication. Reading Research Quarterly, 35<\/em>, 108-126.<\/p>\n Leu, D.J., Jr., Kinzer, C.K., Coiro, J., & Cammack, D.W. (2004). Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the Internet and other information and communication technologies. In R.B. Ruddell, & N. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading<\/em> (5th ed., pp. 1570-1613). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Also available: http:\/\/www.readingonline.org\/newliteracies\/lit_index.asp?HREF=leu<\/a>\/.<\/p>\n Leu, D. J., & Leu, D. D. (2004). Teaching with the Internet: Lessons from the classroom<\/em> (4th ed). Norwood, MA: Christopher Gordon.<\/p>\n Levy, D. M. (2001). Scrolling forward: Making sense of documents in the digital age<\/em>. New York: Arcade.<\/p>\n Luce-Kapler, R., & Dobson, T. (2005, May\/June). In search of a story: Reading and writing e-literature. Reading Online, 8<\/em>(6). Retrieved November 16, 2005, from http:\/\/www.readingonline.org\/articles\/art_index.asp?HREF=luce-kapler\/index.html<\/a><\/p>\n Luke, C. (2000). Cyber-schooling and technological change: Multiliteracies for new times. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures<\/em> (pp. 69-91). Melbourne: Macmillan.<\/p>\n Madden, M., & Rainie, L. (2003). America\u2019s online pursuits: The changing picture of who\u2019s online and what they do. <\/em>Retrieved November 16, 2005, from the Pew Internet & American Life Project Web site: http:\/\/www.pewinternet.org\/PPF\/r\/106\/report_display.asp<\/a>\/<\/p>\n McGann, J. J. (2004). Radiant textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web<\/em>. New York: Palgrave.<\/p>\n McKillop, A.M., & Myers, J. (1999). The pedagogical and electronic contexts of composing in hypermedia. In S. Dewitt & K. Strasma (Eds.), Contexts, intertexts, and hypertexts<\/em> (pp. 65-116). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.<\/p>\n Monroe, B. (2004). Crossing the digital divide: Race, writing, and technology in the classroom<\/em>. New York: Teachers College Press.<\/p>\n Moran, C., & Hawisher, G. E. (1998). The rhetorics and languages of electronic mail. In I. Snyder (Ed.), Page to screen<\/em> (pp. 80-102). New York: Routledge.<\/p>\n Moran, C., & Selfe, C.L. (2000). Teaching English across the technology\/wealth gap. English Journal: Trends and Issues in Secondary English<\/em>, 98-109. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.<\/p>\n Myers, J., & Beach, R. (2001). Hypermedia authoring as critical literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 44<\/em>(6), 538-546.<\/p>\n Myers, J., Hammett, R., & McKillop, A.M. (1998). Opportunities for critical literacy and pedagogy in student-authored hypermedia. In D. Reinking, M. McKenna, L. Labbo, & R. Kieffer (Eds.), Handbook of literacy and technology: Transformations in a post-typographic world <\/em>(pp. 63-78). Mahwah, NJ: Erbaum.<\/p>\n Myers. M. (1996). Changing our minds: Negotiating English literacy<\/em>. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.<\/p>\n National Telecommunications Information Administration. (2000). A nation online: How Americans are expanding their use of the Internet.<\/em> Retrieved Jan 28, 2004, from http:\/\/www.ntia.doc.gov\/ntiahome\/dn\/index.html<\/a><\/p>\n Peck, C., Cuban, L., & Kirkpatrick, H. (2002). Techno-promoter dreams, student realities. Phi Delta Kappan, 83<\/em>(6), 472-480.<\/p>\n Pope, R. (1995). Textual intervention: Critical and creative strategies for literary studies.<\/em> New York, Routledge.<\/p>\n Porter, J. E. (1998). Rhetorical ethics and internetworked writing. <\/em>Greenwich, CT: Alex Publishing Corporation.<\/p>\n Romano, T. (1995). Writing with passion: Life stories, multiple genres. <\/em>Portsmouth, NH: Boynton\/Cook.<\/p>\n Romano, T. (2000). Blending genre, altering style. <\/em>Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.<\/p>\n Schmar-Dobler, E. (2003, September). Reading on the Internet: The link between literacy and technology. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 47<\/em>(1). Retrieved November 16, 2005, from http:\/\/www.readingonline.org\/newliteracies\/lit_index.asp?HREF=\/newliteracies\/jaal\/9-03_column\/index.html<\/a><\/p>\n Selfe, C. L. (1999). \n
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\nComposing in multimodal and multimedia technologies includes important considerations of visual, design, and performance aspects, and is not limited to print text to convey meaning.<\/li>\n\n
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