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Educational technology is nudging literacy instruction beyond its oral and print-based tradition to embrace online and electronic texts as well as multimedia. Computers are creating new opportunities for writing and collaborating. The Internet is constructing global bridges for students to communicate, underscoring the need for rock-solid reading and writing skills. By changing the way that information is absorbed, processed, and used, technology is influencing how people read, write, listen, and communicate.

Literacy instruction traditionally refers to the teaching of basic literacy skills—reading, writing, listening, and speaking. In today's digital world, however, technology has contributed to an expanded understanding of literacy. Besides having basic literacy skills, today's students also need technology skills for communicating, investigating, accessing and using information, computing, thinking critically about messages inherent in new media, and understanding and evaluating data. As policymakers and educators ponder what it means to be literate in a digitized society, an array of literacy definitions is emerging.

What? Kids are reading and going to the library? Yes! For the last three summers middle school learners have challenged the summer reading loss, as reported by R.L. Allington and A. McGill-Franzen, and continued engaged reading through the use of e-readers and other technology. The Cyber Cafe Summer Reading Program has grown over the years with varying themes but consistent in digital reading and discussion, collaborative response projects, and communicating with authors and others online. Its success relies on great books, the collaboration of a public middle school, library, and university and the integrated use of multiple technologies.

We started with 25 e-readers, new to most, so we learned the features and functions. We read a common book, a dystopia novel, The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman and discussed it online using VoiceThread. Preservice teacher mentors from the university participated online and also met with students three times over the summer at the downtown public library.

Year two we paired a science fiction, First Light by Rebecca Stead with Seymour Simon’s non-fiction Global Warming. We added color e-readers to experience the beauty of Simon’s book and search for background information while expanding the number of students participating. We discussed our readings online through Wiggio and Stixy.

Personal computers, the Internet, smartphones, and other forms of information and communication technology (ICT) have changed our world, our job, our personal lives, as well as how we manage our knowledge and time effectively and efficiently. Research findings in the past decades have acknowledged and affirmed that the content the ICT medium carries is as important as the ICT medium itself. These studies also added a third constituent to the structure of ICT usage and integration; that is the pedagogical approach of teaching and learning. One of the modern ICT trends of organizations involves the incorporation and integration of a blended approach of teaching and learning; which combines the traditional face-to-face instructor-led method with ICT-based online teaching and learning environment. This quasi-experimental research study was deployed to evaluate and identity the effect and usefulness of a blended ' pedagogical approach of teaching and learning on students' academic achievement, motivation, and attitudes. A total of 128 (i.e., 64 experimental group and 64 control group) undergraduate students in the College of Education (COE) at Kuwait University (KU) participated in this study. The results revealed that the students enrolled in the experimental group were significantly outscoring their counterparts in the control group. They submitted projects with better quality; earned higher final grades; attended more online training courses; took more ICDL tests; and the majority attended all classes. These findings imply that the potential of a blended approach of teaching and learning is endless. It can produce robust teaching and learning environments and experiences. It can also reveal that teaching and learning with such method or strategy, while integrating and incorporating ICT tools, can be fun.

SampleA sample of 128 female undergraduate students from the College of Education at KU enrolled in six sections of an undergraduate-level course entitled "Computing in Education 0840-235" for the Fall and Spring semesters 2010-2011 participated in this research study. The study involved the application of a blended model of teaching and learning in only three sections (i.e., experimental group). Whereas, another three sections (i.e., control group) of the same course were taught in a traditional manner. Other extents of exploitations were not included. The selected sections included students from a variety of majors. The two groups were of comparable size (i.e., 64 students in the experimental group and 64 students in the control group) and gender balance, as well as they evinced a similar mix of academic and ethnic backgrounds. All participants were senior students. This academic course is a three-credit compulsory requirement for the professional preparation of all undergraduate students in the College of Education.

he study's data was collected over a nine-month period. The academic course taught the same subject content by the same instructor using different delivery methods for instruction--a blended pedagogical approach of teaching and learning versus a traditional face-to-face instructor-led approach. The data was collected in two phases. The first phase started in the Fall semester 2010-2011 where the researchers used a traditional face-to-face instructor-led approach of teaching and learning with the control group. However, in the second phase, which started in the Spring semester 2010-2011, the researchers exploited a blended learning and teaching environment model, with the experimental group, wherein ICT tools are effectively and efficiently utilized and integrated into teaching and learning along with traditional face-to-face instruction.

New forms of literacy call upon students to know how to read and write not only in the print world but also in the digital world. Today's definition of literacy is being broadened to include "literacy skills necessary for individuals, groups, and societies to access the best information in the shortest time to identify and solve the most important problems and then communicate this information" (Leu, 2000, p. 476). The Internet has provided the world of work with global competition and an informational economy (Leu, 2000).

The union of reading and technology on the Internet is causing educators to take a new look at what it means to be literate in today's society (Leu, 2002)

Instead of investing in prepackaged software programs, many teachers are harnessing the technology they already have—such as webcams, audio recorders, blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools—to boost literacy in students.

Sure, kids are writing a lot, from regular updates on their Facebook pages to an incessant stream of text messages, but is all that writing helping them to become more literate? Or is being AATK -- always at the keyboard -- leading to a generation that is stuck in the n00b (newbie) stage when it comes to reading and writing skills?

"I tell them I find that annoying. If they can't take the time to write a full word, don't write to me." The ease with which young people communicate, though, can help in advancing literacy in a digital age. "In one sense, when you try to get a kid to sit down and write an essay, to write something more substantial, they have a lot of difficulty with that," Hargreave said. "I think we are getting a little bit of a loss when it comes to creating longer-form, story structures and paragraphs. "But on the flip side, with young people having to tighten up what they say, they are learning to write very precisely, to focus on what they want to say."

If classrooms are not equipped with Internet-ready computers, consider purchasing handheld dictionaries with many of the same features and encourage students to get their own and use them. Have students sign up for a word of the day e-mail or text message to receive on their own cell or smart phones.