Dawn of the New Literacies

This Education Update article looks at the challenges of engaging students in traditional literacy practices while also teaching the new literacies, which involve reading and learning through the Internet and other information and communication technologies.

In her 2007 book Proust and the Squid, literacy expert Maryanne Wolf presents a history of how humans developed the ability to read and write. In her book, Wolf warns that "in a culture where visual images and massive streams of digital information are on the rise, people could become 'decoders of information,' whose false sense of knowing distracts them from a deeper development of their intellectual potential." Wolf wonders if we, as an Internet-obsessed society, could lose the capacity to read and think deeply by relying on the type of quick reading practices that the Internet encourages.

Conversely, Linda Labbo, a professor in the Language and Literacy Education Department at the University of Georgia, argues that although the Internet may have changed some reading practices, it's not as bad as critics believe. "The reading goes beyond traditional comprehension and study skills of skimming and scanning to more active decision making," says Labbo. "On a web page with rich links, students have to keep a clear purpose in mind and follow that purpose strategically as they navigate through different multimedia forms of information. Otherwise they are likely to go on superficial, exploratory scavenger hunts."

Teachers need to serve as guides to help students be critical readers of online information, teaching them to evaluate this information for credibility, timeliness, accuracy, and even hidden agendas, says Labbo. However, there is a bright side, Labbo notes: despite the challenges to traditional K–12 literacy, students now have access to a world of information at their fingertips.

Read the full article. 

ASCD Express, Vol. 6, No. 26. Copyright 2011 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.