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But most educators today agree that literacy instruction, at minimum, should include computing skills

Bruce and Peyton (1999) state, "Teachers can use network-based approaches to literacy instruction to support authentic reading and writing, collaboration, student-centered learning, writing across the curriculum, and the creation of classroom writing activities."

Questions raised by educators as they consider integrating technology into literacy instruction focus on three specific areas: research, practice, and professional development. Research: What empirical evidence exists to confirm that new technologies can be effective in support of literacy instruction? What technologies actually improve literacy programs? What technologies have little or no effect? Are any technologies, in fact, harmful to development of successful literacy instruction? Practice: Precisely which technologies, to date, are being used successfully to support literacy instruction? What technologies hold promise for the future? How are teachers integrating them into literacy instruction? Professional Development: How has professional development in literacy-based contexts been influenced by the advent of educational technologies? What skills do teachers need for integrating technology into literacy instruction?

Educational researchers and practitioners alike assert that the potential of new technologies for learning is likely to be found not in the technologies themselves but in the way in which these technologies are used as tools for learning (Means & Olson, 1995; Owston, 1997; Valdez et al., 1999).

A traditional use of technology is skills reinforcement

An authentic use of technology is using it as a tool to accomplish a complex task

even as researchers begin to describe empirical evidence supporting the effects a particular technology on an educational practice, that technology itself is changing and in some cases even becoming obsolete.

few thorough studies have evaluated the efficacy of new technologies for literacy education

As Kamil and Lane (1998) comment, "It is too late to ask questions such as whether we should allow students access to the Internet. Rather, we should be conducting research that asks questions such as, 'What does it take to use Internet connections successfully in teaching literacy?' " (p. 339).

Educational technologies that support the development of students' reading skills include audiobooks, electronic books and online texts, electronic talking books, and programmed reading instruction.

Audiobooks promote students' interest in reading and improve their comprehension of text, notes Beers (1998). They also have been used successfully by students who cannot read traditional printed books because of visual or physical handicaps.

When used in conjunction with written texts, audiobooks help improve children's reading skills.

"The use of audiobooks with struggling, reluctant, or second-language learners is powerful since they act as a scaffold that allows students to read above their actual reading level. This is critical with older students who may still read at a beginner level."

n terms of their advantages, Anderson-Inman and Horney (1999) note that electronic books are searchable, modifiable (for example, font sizes can be increased to meet the needs of the reader), and enhanceable with embedded resources (for example, definitions and details).

With access to an Internet-connected computer, students can find a wide variety of free online reading materials, including books, plays, short stories, magazines, and reference materials. This benefit is especially useful for students in schools that have few resources for the acquisition of new books.

As students read the text, they are able to click on the links to access definitions of words, additional information on concepts, illustrations, animations, and video—all of which can increase their understanding of the material.

The use of hypermedia to improve student comprehension of text likely is related to its ability to respond to the needs of an individual learner for information, which results in an increased sense of control over the learning environment and higher levels of intrinsic motivation (Becker & Dwyer, 1994).

The speech component offers a digitized reading of general sections as well as pronunciations of specific words within the text; it supports and coaches students as they read the text of the story (Leu, 2000; McKenna, 1998).

McKenna (1998) notes that electronic talking books increase motivation to read as well as promote basic word recognition.

In general, electronic talking books have been found to support reading instruction by providing background information, extended response actions, play actions, and explanatory notes. Talking books also show promise of accelerating reading growth by offering readers immediate access to a word's pronunciation—thus easing the need of the student to rely on context cues to understand new words. They also can be equipped with a tracking system for troublesome pronunciations; this system can provide feedback to teachers, enabling them to identify particular categories of words for further student study.

Use of the Internet search engines can promote students' research and investigation skills and enable them to locate online information on any possible topic. Students also can access online journals, magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias, and informative Web sites. Unfortunately, some information on the Web is neither accurate nor reputable. Students need to learn how to evaluate this information.

We must begin to develop strategies to help each of us keep up with the continually changing definitions of literacy that will exist in our world

In general, teachers need ongoing, hands-on training in various literacy-based technologies. This training should enable them to become proficient in word processing, basic computer skills, e-mail, classroom conferencing, and electronic bulletin boards. It also should provide exposure to literacy software programs and computer-assisted instruction, electronic books, audiobooks, and multimedia composing. Of utmost importance is learning how to effectively integrate these technologies into literacy instuction. Other important components of effective professional development include adequate time, curriculum-specific applications, technical assistance and support, and a connection to student learning.

The school or district has a clear set of goals, expectations, and criteria for improvements in student literacy. Educational technology supports literacy instruction in the classroom and is integrated into the literacy curriculum. All students have opportunities to use educational technology to improve their literacy skills. Ongoing professional development on literacy and technology provides educators with current and practical applications for enhancing students' literacy skills.

Participate in the development of the school or district technology plan to ensure that literacy goals are well-integrated throughout the plan. Be involved in discussions and selection committees to choose specific technologies and software that support the literacy curriculum. Become familiar with Standards for the English Language Arts, developed by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association, and the Technology Foundation Standards for All Students, developed as part of the National Educational Technology Standards by the International Society for Technology in Education. Determine how these two types of standards can be used in conjunction to promote literacy and technology in the classroom. Consider technology tools as an extension of—not a substitute for—traditional literacy instruction in the classroom. Determine how electronic books can be used in the classroom. Besides integrating video and audio cassettes into literature programs, go beyond these resources to embrace newer technologies for enhancing literacy. Be aware of online lists of award-winning children's books that can be suggested to children for reading. Develop strategies for using microcomputers in elementary language arts instruction. Monitor and reinforce the literacy skills that students are learning through classroom software. Follow appropriate guidelines for computer-assisted reading instruction in the classroom. Use computer-assisted writing instruction to promote students' writing skills. Guide students' writing, provide feedback, and encourage word processing for revision in the writing process. Use electronic portfolios to collect students' writing assignments and document their improvements in writing. Provide opportunities for publishing students' work on the Internet. Search the NETS database of lessons and units for grade-specific reading and writing activities that integrate technology into literacy instruction. Gain practice in evaluating online educational materials for use in instruction. Become aware of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for teachers and take steps to meet these standards. Participate in ongoing professional development on literacy and technology. Keep abreast of current realities as well as innovations, either through personal involvement in professional organizations that foster the understanding of technology and literacy across the curriculum, or through connections with computer-support personnel throughout the district.

Students who are unmonitored in their technology use may not reap real benefits in literacy. They need continued challenges and connections with the teacher to ensure that they are attaining higher-order thinking skills.

Teachers should monitor group processes to ensure that all children are participating in the reading and writing activities of each project.

Technology is most effective when it is used as an adjunct to traditional reading instruction.

Few educators dispute that students are better motivated to read for comprehension and write to be understood when they are engaged in making real-world connections. But the value of these relationships is only as beneficial as the time and attention devoted to them

Birkets (1994) laments the repercussions for young readers. He denotes the comfort and connection in physically handling and slowly reading a printed book, and says that these qualities are lost when text is instantly transmitted electronically by the click of a mouse.

Birkets thinks that children are better served when adults read aloud to them, thus providing opportunities for spontaneous questions and verbal interaction.

In several studies, students tested for comprehension after reading from a screen demonstrated less understanding and poorer memory than those getting the same information from a book" (p. 152).

Without presenting words in multiple contexts, students' understanding of those words is limited to the narrow context suggested by the software—preventing students from truly 'owning' a word in all its multiple nuances and meanings, which vocabulary experts say is necessary if students are to actually feel comfortable using new words" (p. 123).

new literacies, whether intentionally or unintentionally, impact literacy instruction in classrooms

Many graduates started their school career with the literacies of paper, pencil, and book technologies but will finish having encountered the literacies demanded by a wide variety of information and communication technologies (ICTs)

Given the increasingly rapid pace of change in the technologies of literacy, it is likely that students who begin school this year will experience even more profound changes during their own literacy journeys

While it is clear that many new literacies are emerging rapidly, we believe the most essential ones for schools to consider cluster around the Internet and allow students to exploit the extensive ICTs that become available in an online, networked environment.

In an information age, we believe it becomes essential to prepare students for these new literacies because they are central to the use of information and the acquisition of knowledge.

Another important problem is that we lack a precise definition of what new literacies are. This makes theory development as well as systematic investigation impossible.

The new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs include the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to the rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts that continuously emerge in our world and influence all areas of our personal and professional lives. These new literacies allow us to use the Internet and other ICTs to identify important questions, locate information, critically evaluate the usefulness of that information, synthesize information to answer those questions, and then communicate the answers to others.

social contexts profoundly shape the changing nature of literacy.

Throughout history, literacy and literacy instruction have changed regularly as a result of changing social contexts and the technologies they often prompt

The Internet also is appearing in school classrooms in the United States and other countries at a rate that parallels its appearance in the workplace and at home. In only eight years (1994 to 2002), the percentage of classrooms in the United States possessing at least one computer with Internet access has gone from 3% to 92% (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2003a). This is an adoption rate that is unprecedented in schools for any previous technology including televisions, radios, telephones, videocassette recorders, and even books. The availability of Internet access has had a demonstrated impact on students. In 2001, 94% of children ages 12-17 who had Internet access said that they used the Internet for school-related research (Lenhart, Simon, & Graziano, 2001).

Title II, Section D, of the No Child Left Behind Act is devoted to technology with the stated goal, "To assist every student in crossing the digital divide by ensuring that every student is technologically literate by the time the student finishes the eighth grade, regardless of the student's race, ethnicity, gender, family income, geographic location, or disability."

Hypermedia reading practices have at least as much to do with the multiple relations between images as they do with the paths among segments of print text. Importantly, the nature of images also permits writers and readers to link them in ways other than paper-based texts.

They foreground the important need to develop critical literacies as an essential element of any instructional program because new media forms, globalization, and economic pressures engender messages that increasingly attempt to persuade individuals to act in ways beneficial to an economic or political unit but not necessarily beneficial to the individual. During an age of information, any theoretical perspective that seeks to capture the changes taking place to literacy must include these essential critical literacies.

Media literacy perspectives often are closely aligned with critical literacy perspectives, though they focus more on media forms beyond text such as video and the images that often drive a culture.

proponents of a media literacy perspective stress the importance of analyzing an author's stance and motives as well as the need for a critical evaluation of the message itself.

because locations on the Internet often are populated with commercial, political, and economic motives, it becomes essential to be able to carefully evaluate these while gathering information (Kinzer & Leander, 2003).

we believe that a theoretical framework for the new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs needs to be grounded in these technologies themselves, taking advantage of the insights that a variety of different perspectives might bring to understanding the complete picture of the new literacies emerging from these technologies.

Our work is pointing us to these principles of a New Literacies Perspective: 1. The Internet and other ICTs are central technologies for literacy within a global community in an information age. 2. The Internet and other ICTs require new literacies to fully access their potential. 3. New literacies are deictic. 4. The relationship between literacy and technology is transactional. 5. New literacies are multiple in nature. 6. Critical literacies are central to the new literacies. 7. New forms of strategic knowledge are central to the new literacies. 8. Speed counts in important ways within the new literacies. 9. Learning often is socially constructed within new literacies. 10 Teachers become more important, though their role changes, within new literacy classrooms.

We believe the Internet and other ICTs are quickly becoming the central technologies of literacy for a global community in an information age. As a result, these technologies are quickly defining the new literacies that will increasingly be a part of our future. Literacy theory, research, and practice must begin to recognize this important fact.

Perhaps we can best recognize this fundamentally different conception of reading comprehension when we understand that two students, with an identical goal, will construct meaning differently, not only because they bring different background knowledge to the task but also because they will use very different search strategies, follow very different informational paths, read very different sets of information, draw very different critical conclusions about what they have read, and attend to very different informational elements.

We encounter new literacies nearly every time we try to read, write, and communicate with the Internet and other ICTs. Examples of new literacies include using a search engine effectively to locate information; evaluating the accuracy and utility of information that is located on a webpage in relation to one's purpose; using a word processor effectively, including using functions such as checking spelling accuracy, inserting graphics, and formatting text; participating effectively in bulletin board or listserv discussions to get needed information; knowing how to use e-mail to communicate effectively; and inferring correctly the information that may be found at a hyperlink on a webpage.

new technologies for information and communication require new literacies to fully exploit their potential. It is important to recognize, however, that when we use technology in new ways, we also transform the technology itself, creating additional new literacies in the process.

But collaboration is the most compelling aspect of blogs, which allow teachers to expand classroom walls by inviting outside experts, mentors, and observers to participate.

With a click, educators can download a book for multiple students to hear, either digitally or by burning the narrative onto a CD

Denise Johnson, assistant professor of reading education at the College of William and Mary, cautions in the Web-based journal Reading Online that audio books are not for every student. They're too fast or slow for some, and too cumbersome for those who prefer to read only on paper.

can introduce children to new genres, cultivate critical listening, and highlight the humor in text,

In sum, today’s 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.

The basic skills of visual literacy include the vocabulary of concepts necessary for understanding and discussing images.

Time to prepare for teaching and time with students are finite resources, with their ultimate objectives in mind, English educators might consider what is gained

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.

At the K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels, English educators must integrate digital texts into the curriculum, drawing on a wide range of databases, archives, web sites, web logs, and other online resources. At the K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels, English educators must encourage students to recognize, analyze, and evaluate connections between print and digital texts, as well as recognize what a reader of print and digital texts needs. At the same time, teachers must challenge students to expand print-based models of text and reader to incorporate new digital genres. At the K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels, English educators must prepare students to read new media using a range of new literacy skills, including information literacy strategies, multimodal literacy strategies, critical literacy strategies, and media literacy strategies.

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.

his 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.

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.

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.

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.

Teachers, teacher educators, and prospective teachers must be both knowledgeable about and sensitive to issues of equity and diversity in access to technology and technology expertise in their schools and in their students’ lives.

Teachers must discuss issues of equity and diversity with their students, helping them not only to understand their origin in the larger social, political, or economic contexts, but also encouraging them to consider these issues in their own interactions with technology and other technology users within and beyond the classroom.

Teachers and teacher educators must address plagiarism, ownership, and authorship in their classrooms.

Teachers and teacher educators must help students develop strategies to assess the quality of information and writing on the web

There should also be a unified school’s policy about fair use, intellectual property, privacy, and conduct,

Teachers and teacher educators must help students develop netiquette

Third, most of the text on the Internet is expository. Being able to read such text requires familiarity with its concepts, vocabulary, and organizational format.

By selecting links in various orders, a reader creates his or her own path when reading on the Internet.

Text on the Internet is not static whereas the text of a book remains the same each time the book is opened.

One answer is to begin with what we know about strategic readers of print text: They tend to use a set of comprehension strategies (Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991; Pearson, 1985).

To be adept at seeking, evaluating, and using information found on the Internet, readers must navigate through Internet text and apply their knowledge of the reading process. The merging of these skills is seen when the Internet reader performs a reading act

Educators can guide students to be successful Internet readers by helping them recognize their experiences with various types of text and applying this knowledge to Internet reading.

These Internet readers have taken the strategies used for reading print text and applied them to the reading of Internet text.