Multiliteracies

Literacy throughout history has been defined and redefined nearly as rapidly as new generations emerge. As we tread further into the twenty first century, our generation moves to redefine literacy once again. However, unlike generations past, we are taking literacy and rapidly spanning it over new mediums that had been, until recently, unavailable. “Our personal, public and working lives are changing in some dramatic ways, and these changes are transforming our cultures and the ways we communicate” (NLG, 1996, p. 72). This means that the way we have taught literacy, and what counts for literacy, will also have to change. Recently as educators have become aware of these changing social and economic imperatives, the emphasis in literary circles has shifted from a narrow focus on ‘English’ and academic literary, to the boarder notion of ‘multiliteracy’. According to the New London Group (1996, p. 63) “multiliteracy is the multimodal activity in which oral, written and communic!

“A pedagogy of multiliteracies focuses on modes of representation much broader than language alone” (NLG, 1996, p. 83). These differ according to culture

...”we attempt to broaden this understanding of literacy and literacy teaching and learning to include negotiating a multiplicity of discourses”. (NLG, 2996, p.92)

For teachers, this notion of multiliteracy “suggests a wide range of implications for our definition of literacy; for the ways in which we deal with reading and writing, or readers and writers and in the manner in which we set up and operate computer-supported programs in the classroom” (NLG, 1996, p. 74).

Education is regulated through access to literacy. Previous to the 20th century, education was the domain of the privileged and was synonymous with prestige, classical languages. When education began to be publicly available, it was not only for the elite but it was carefully controlled by those in power - most often church or state - and maybe a colonial culture.

With all these changes going on around us, we need to examine how some of these trends might extend into the future. The obvious place for this to occur is on the computer and the World Wide Web. While these are not exactly new technologies, they have yet to truly impact the world of literacy in the method they are capable of.

The first of these aspects is that the computer is truly contains multimedia content, not just the written word. As such, "for the computer, it does not matter if we write the word "mountain" or if we say it aloud or draw a picture of a mountain." (Toschi, 1996, p. 193) What this means is that any document on the Internet is not, as in traditional books, restricted to text and static diagrams. It can have moving text, animated diagrams, and sound elements. With advances in virtual reality, it may someday be able to provide other sensations as well (touch, smell and/or taste). In this way, computerized compositions might vary from their traditional counterparts, which only use the written word.

Some topics in this essay:
Wide Web, HISTORICAL VIEW, According London, , COMPUTER LITERACY, reading writing, virtual text, nlg 1996, hierarchically organized texts, nelson 1992 hypertext, context specific, hierarchically organized, word-processing package, organized texts, written word, interactive literacy, literacy numeracy,