Negotiating ‘New Literacies’ in Literacy Learning and Teaching

1. Negotiating ‘New Literacies’ in Literacy Learning and Teaching Len Unsworth Professor in English and Literacies Education School of Education University of New England, Armidale, 2351 Australia. Phone 61 + (0)2 6773 2677 FAX 61 + (0)2 6773 2445 Email: len.unsworth@une.edu.au Homepage: http://fehps.une.edu.au/Education/staff/Unsworth

2. Rhiannon Rhiannon is one of 12 seventh and eight grade girls in a study of students’ out-of-school online literacy practices Chandler-Olcott, K., & Mahar, D. (2003). "Tech-saviness" meets multiliteracies: Exploring adolescent girls technology-related literacy practices. Reading Research Quarterly, 38(3), 356-385.

3. Rhiannon Rhiannon lived with her mother, a nutritionist, and a younger sister in an apartment complex about a mile from Oakwood Middle School…. She spent most of her time out of school with her church group or pursuing online activities, on which she estimated spending two or three hours each day. Her technology-mediated literacy practices included sending email and instant messages to her friends in other states, participating in chat rooms and online role-playing games, and writing fanfictions. Her primary technology-related pursuit, however, was constructing webpages on anime-related themes (p. 369)

4. Rhiannon Taught herself programming languages like HTML and JavaScript At the time of the study had constructed more than 12 homepages related to ‘anime’ On her websites visitors could comment on anime characters they most admired or download images from picture galleries Several sites featured fanfictions (episodic stories she wrote using characters from favourite cartoons and video games) She used a site called Transloader (http://www.transloader.com) to ‘raid’ images from other sites, rename them, and send them to her WebTV server She also constructed a website to help other children learn HTML.

5. Thomas, A. (2007). Youth Online: Identity and Literacy in the Digital Age. New York: Peter Lang. “Eowyn Skywalker” - 14yrs

6. Teens as Internet Media Creators According to a 2005 study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all American teens—and 57 percent of teens who use the Internet—could be considered media creators. For the purpose of the study, a media creator is someone who created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography,stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations. Jenkins, H. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century [Electronic Version]. Occasional Paper, The MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved 29.06.07 from http://www.digitallearning.macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.2029291/k.97E5/Occasional_Papers.htm.

7. Of the 4.4 million Australian households with home internet access in 2004–05, 28 per cent had broadband internet access and 69 per cent had dial-up access (p.43). Australian Bureau of Statistics The latest ABS Survey of Children’s Participation in Cultural and Leisure Activities found that in the 12 months prior to April 2003, 64 per cent of Australian children aged 5 to 14 years accessed the internet, either during or outside of school hours…. the proportion of children using the internet increased with age, from 21 per cent of children aged 5 years, to 90 per cent of 14 year-olds (p.44).

8. AUSTRALIAN children are flocking to the World Wide Web, with almost half those aged six to 17 logging on every day, according to a study. Older teenagers in particular are wedded to the world of Wikipedia, email and social networking, with 75 per cent of those aged 15 to 17 going online daily for study and to chat with friends. The findings were issued as part of Neilsen/NetRatings' 2007 Australian eGeneration Report, which uncovered shifts in the way families manage internet usage at home. Australian IT (The Australian) Ben Woodhead | October 16, 2007 The report finds that internet experience is now so prevalent among young Australians that the number aged six to 17 who are using the internet for the first time has plateaued. Almost 3 million young Australians have logged on to the web, representing 92 per cent of this age group. According to the report, most children go online for the first time between the ages of five and 10 and many quickly become regular internet users, with two thirds of children logging on from home at least twice a week and 43 per cent doing so daily. 85 per cent of family homes have high-speed internet access,

9. p.48

10. A … study (Coiro, 2007) … found that while offline reading comprehension and prior knowledge contributed a significant amount of variance to the prediction of online reading comprehension, additional, significant variance was contributed by knowing students’ online reading comprehension ability. Again, students were evaluated in terms of their ability to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information. The results of this study are also consistent with the conclusion that new skills and strategies are required during online reading comprehension. New Literacies in a Digital Multimedia Age Coiro, J. (2007). Exploring changes to reading comprehension on the Internet: Paradoxes and possibilities for diverse adolescent readers. Dissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. Leu, D. (2007) Expanding the Reading Literacy Framework of PISA 2009 To Include Online Reading Comprehension. A working paper commissioned by the PISA 2009 Reading Expert Group … students are seen to develop new media practices involving several media-specific competences (Mackey, 2002) which gives them access to new ways of meaning-making in their acts of reading or writing. It is tentatively claimed that students may thus develop alternative notions of authors as well as texts, which affect their own view of text production in school. Erixon, P.O. (2007). The Teaching of Writing in the Upper Secondary School in the Age of the Internet and Mass Media Culture. L1 – Educational Studies in Language and Literature , 7(4), p. 7-21.

11. Constantly evolving new literacies Don Leu and his colleagues (Leu et al., 2004), drew attention to three main sources of the ongoing emergence (deictic nature) of New Literacies: transformations of literacy because of technological change envisionments of new literacy potentials within new technologies the use of increasingly efficient technologies of communication that rapidly spread new literacies They further emphasized the following: As literacy increasingly becomes deictic, the changing constructions of literacy within new technologies will require all of us to keep up with these changes and to prepare students for a vastly different conception of what it means to become literate (Leu et al., 2004, p. 1591). Leu, D., Kinzer, C., Coiro, J., & Cammack, D. (2004). Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging From the Internet and Other Information and Communication Technologies. In R. Ruddell & N. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (Vol. 5, pp. 1570-1613). Newark, DE: international Reading Association.

12. Students fascination with the digital multimedia world and the ease with which they can access and contribute to it. Challenges of New Literacies • The almost universal and constant access of young people to online and digital multimedia communication. • The greater experience and expertise of many students with digital multimedia relative to their teachers. • The disjunction between students’ out-of-school literacies and those they experience in school. • The need to reconceptualize literacy and literacy pedagogy to account for multimodality and the affordances of digital technology.

13. Students fascination with the digital multimedia world and the ease with which they can access and contribute to it. Challenges of New Literacies • The almost universal and constant access of young people to online and digital multimedia communication. • The greater experience and expertise of many students with digital multimedia relative to their teachers. • The disjunction between students’ out-of-school literacies and those they experience in school. • The need to reconceptualize literacy and literacy pedagogy to account for multimodality and the affordances of digital technology.

14. An agenda for discussion…Negotiating New Literacies • Negotiating the leadership/mentorship role of teachers Negotiating engagement with new literacies in school contexts • Negotiating an interface between an ongoing research agenda and practical new literacies pedagogies

15. Negotiating engagement with new literacies in school contexts A viable framework is needed that addresses the integration of constantly evolving New Literacies into educational practice. Drawing on Reinking and colleagues’ developmental perspective on how teachers might conceptualize and implement new digital technologies in their work, which adapted Piaget’s concepts of assimilation and accommodation. • [Reinking, D., Labbo, L., & McKenna, M. (2000). From assimilation to accommodation: a developmental framework for integrating digitial technologies into literacy research and instruction. Journal of Research in Reading, 23(2), 110-122.]

16. A rationale for negotiating… Accommodation implies that the understandings and experiences of New Literacies have led to a fundamental restructuring of thinking, entertaining the idea that the very nature of literacy may well be changing. It means understanding that these New Literacies need to be negotiated in their own terms rather than being seen as extensions of established literacies. Lemke, J. (1998). Metamedia literacy: Transforming meanings and media. In D. Reinking, M. McKenna, L. Labbo & R. Kieffer (Eds.), Handbook of literacy and technology: Transformations in a post-typographic world (pp. 283-302). New Jersey: Erlbaum. Leu, D., & Kinzer, C. (2000). The convergence of literacy instruction with networked technologies for information and communication. Reading Research Quarterly, 35(1), 108-127. New Literacies are assimilated when they are conceptualised in relation to conventional literacy, and implemented in conformity with existing curricula and pedagogic practice.

17. Negotiating on-going change… Reinking et al (2000) point out that accommodation does not mean abandoning research on ways in which electronic texts interface with conventional literacy practices. What is suggested here is that assimilationandaccommodation will be required as complementary and iterative processes as school systems negotiate the ongoing emergence of New Literacies.

18. Exemplifying assimilation and accommodation: e-literature and literacy pedagogy Unsworth, L., Thomas, A., Simpson, A. and Asha, J. (2005) Children’s literature and computer based teaching. London: McGraw-Hill/Open University Press Unsworth, L. (2006) E-literature for children: Enhancing digital literacy learning. London: Routledge

19. The most likely scenario, given the massive inertia built into social and educational systems, is that linear and hypertext models of narrative will exist in parallel ... Fundamentally, for the foreseeable future, two quite different mindsets will be operating at the same time in our education system, and what we now think of as children's literature - narrative for children - will be at the centre of it Hunt, P. (2000). Futures for Children's Literature: evolution or radical break. Cambridge Journal of Education, 30(1), 111-119. Co-existence of linear book and digital hypertext narratives This book does not lament the digital world but celebrates it. It does not suggest competition between books and digital media but partnership. Dresang, E. (1999). Radical Change: Books for youth in a digital age. New York: Wilson.

20. Relating literary texts in book and digital media • digitally originated literary text. • digital media augmented literary texts • digitally re-contextualized literary text

21. digital media augmented literary texts

22. digitally re-contextualized literary text