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 article considers the problematic question of student plagiarism, its causes and manifestations, and how it is addressed in academic environments. A literature survey was conducted to establish how higher education institutions approach these issues, and a twofold investigation was conducted at the University of Cape Town. Data was gathered…

Designing Problem-Driven Instruction with Online Social Media has the capacity to transform an educator's teaching style by presenting innovative ways to empower problem-based instruction with online social media. Knowing that not all instructors are comfortable in this area, this book provides clear, systematic design approaches for instructors…

Digital literacy includes a range of abilities from basic computing skills to the creation of multimodal texts. This literature review examines eleven articles that track the digital literacy practices of youth populations or individuals between the ages of 12 and 17. It describes the practices of these individuals through three perspectives,…

Takes on a set of complex issues that call for careful analysis of technology and new literacy practices. Shows how the concerns are not just abstract problems for technology theorists, but are also practical issues for anyone who wants to become literate in today's world. (SG)

The essay recommends the incorporation of contemporary works in third-year courses at college level based on the redesign of two courses, "Advanced Conversation and Composition" and "GermanMedia." Curricular connections across the German studies major and focus on literacy skills can be enhanced through the systematic integration of recent…

Reports on the authors' experiences negotiating within an alien culture while attending and presenting at a conference in Japan. Notes that integrating computer technology in language skills classes is still new in Japan. Concludes that the world electronic culture will ask that educators consider that the technological tools used are imbued with…

Notes that basing composition almost exclusively on verbal instruction counters the very nature of literacy education, because the current verbal-based education system produces illiterates in this highly visual and multimodal modern society. Demonstrates composition's verbal bias; argues that this bias is both politically and rhetorically…

The world of the Net Generation is one that is mediated by technologies that serve as shapers of identity. Social networking sites, a common technological tool for this generation, are reconfiguring how this generation reads, creates, and interprets texts. By integrating text and tool in a new way, social networking sites are transforming prior…

Presents a transcript of an extensive interview with composition theorist Cynthia L. Selfe. Considers questions of the use of technology and computers in the English classroom. (HB)

Outlines the distinctive features of a small-scale literacy program offered to urban Aboriginal school students, which was premised on understandings of critical multi-literacies and explored through technological environments and texts. Argues for literacy programs to address critical practices that interrogate texts across multiple texts and…

Argues against the fractured view of literacy as a set of unrelated skills, and suggests that thinking and writing about computers could provide a means for students to see literacy from a broad-based interdisciplinary perspective. Describes a graduate course designed to explore connections between computers and literacy. (KEH)

Presents a transcript of an extensive interview with composition theorist Lester Faigley. Offers an analysis of the current state of composition studies along with a sense of where the field may be going. (HB)

How educators, especially those in the field of literacy, view and make use of email and its text-based features has been the subject of research. Journal articles addressing what educators and researchers know about email and how they work with email communication were reviewed. Email has moved from a limited group of users to the masses.…

Computerized writing (the digitized word) may affect the utility and meaning of reading and writing in coming generations. The digitized word poses no threat to the technology of literacy; it merely entrenches literacy further into Western culture by making certain operations faster, easier, repeatable, etc. One significant, positive by-product of…