Last year, the author and his ninth-grade students explored ways to use mobile media devices such as iPods and cell phones to help guide literacy practices in their English classroom. Their school, South Central High School (SCHS; a pseudonym), is a public high school located in urban Los Angeles. As part of their seven-week exploration, the…

Children ages 2-18 spend between two and four hours per day watching TV, a calculation that is even higher if DVDs, videos and the Internet are included. Although the amount of television watched by today's children has raised concerns about their literacy development, captions could hold a key to turning television into an educational asset.…