Transliteracy is a new term derived from the verb 'to transliterate', meaning to write or print a letter or word using the closest corresponding letters of a different alphabet or language. Today we extend the act of transliteration and apply it to the increasingly wide range of communication platforms and tools at our disposal. From early signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV & film to networked digital media, the concept of transliteracy provides a cohesion of communication modes relevant to reading, writing, interpretation and interaction.

Joined by a bipartisan group of former FCC chairmen and leading media industry executives and educators from across the country, Common Sense Media today announced the launch of the Digital Kids Task Force, a group that will organize a national campaign to fund efforts aimed at helping parents and teachers better manage the growing impact of digital media on kids and teens.

In Intelligence Reframed Howard Gardner contends that "literacies, skills, and disciplines ought to be pursued as tools that allow us to enhance our understanding of important questions, topics, and themes." Today's readers become literate by learning to read the words and symbols in today's world and its antecedents. They analyze, compare, evaluate and interpret multiple representations from a variety of disciplines and subjects, including texts, photographs, artwork, and data. They learn to choose and modify their own communication based on the rhetorical situation. Point of view is created by the reader, the audience and the medium.

I wonder what school would be like if we could have more options and choices available to students. Sure all students have to learn the same basic standards. How much choice do we give the students in how they go about doing it? Do we provide lectures, demonstrations, guided instructions, interactive activities, group activities, and self-tests in various digital formats for them? By using technology we can have many different forms of learning the standard available to the students. What, if instead of lock stepping the class in terms of the students’ learning, we freed up the class to make their own choices? They can select in what order or format to see/hear/experience the learning.

According to the first study of its kind released in the United States, kids are reading an average of about 26 books per school year. That's the great news. The less than great news is that their volume of reading peaks in second grade, and the level and volume of books that they're reading stagnates from about sixth grade onward, even dropping off in high school.