The digital is inextricably woven across people's everyday lives and literacy practices, and English educators are tasked with preparing students to be critical, ethical, and agentic inventors and consumers of digital text. What has crystallized for English educators is an awareness that facilitating "digital discourse"--or the multiple…

Building communicative competence in textual and multimodal literacies has become a linchpin of learning, of engagement with the world, and of participation in online and blended spaces. Young creators now compose online and with digital tools, often in what we call "user-generated content affinity spaces" -- interest-based spaces that…

The Linguistic Landscape (LL) is a relatively new field which draws from several disciplines such as applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and cultural geography. According to Landry and Bourhis (1997),"the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop…

Critical media literacies can help nurture students' creative agencies and engender positive, sustained change in local communities. Although students do need to develop faculties with digital technologies, they must also participate in critical readings of cultural artifacts and discriminate between various multimedia sources. It is important for…

Teaching English as a Foreign Language from a New Literacy Perspective (2nd edition) is intended to be both a guide for EFL student teachers (i.e. prospective teachers of English enrolled in pre-service EFL teacher education programmes provided by faculties of education at the undergraduate level), and a resource book for EFL teacher educators…

Treasure quests in virtual worlds can help students develop multi-literacy communication skills and promote community, offering insights about art teaching and learning. As part of the new media literacy, students explore the offerings of Second Life (SL), a virtual world, as a series of quests. Multi-literacy involves communication. Through their…

Communicating and collaborating in online contexts can be quite different from face-to-face situations and requires students to acquire multiple literacies in addition to foreign language skills and intercultural communicative competence. This paper looks at how the development of multiliteracies can be included in the EFL classroom through the…

The meaning of citizenship has usually been associated with the power of individuals in the process of social decision-making. Throughout the history, effective citizenship has required functional literacy skills as the fundamental factor for attending societal life. In the past, the 3Rs (writing, reading, and arithmetic) were considered to be…

This article argues that both traditional literacy (reading and writing print) and new digital literacies (for example, playing video games) come in two grades or forms, one of which can lead to success in the modern world and one of which is less likely to do so. In both cases, the role of "academic" or "specialist" language is crucial in…

Like it or not, knowing how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is an essential ingredient to personal success in the twenty-first century. But how can we use digital media so that they make us empowered participants rather than passive receivers, grounded, well-rounded people rather than multitasking…

New literacies have many functions in schools and learning, but science and mathematics education are among the contexts where their full potential has yet to be explored. This book both illustrates and critically analyzes the practice of blogging and its possibilities for fostering different ways of communicating, interacting, learning, and…

This article defines Twitter[TM]; outlines the features, affordances, and common uses; and conceptualizes "tweeting" as a literacy practice, comprising both traditional and new literacies, and impacting both informal and formal learning settings. Also provided is an overview of traditional and new literacies, and insights from a scan of the…

This paper focused on whether the use of online discussion boards can enhance the quality of interaction in the middle and high school English classroom, covering both the characteristics of online discussion boards and potential negative effects of their features. The features of online discussion boards, their effects, and how these boards…

The media environment is currently being dramatically changed by social networking, mobile computing, augmented reality, and transmedia. Of these four, transmedia is probably the least familiar to most educators. Transmedia enhances a central story idea with a variety of media components that provide additional information, give increased…

An innovative, practical guide for middle and high school teachers, this book is packed with specific ways that technology can help serve the goals of effective writing instruction. It provides ready-to-implement strategies for teaching students to compose and edit written work electronically; conduct Internet inquiry; create blogs, websites, and…