gail dyer

What does it mean to be a reader or even a literate person in the 21st century? What challenges face teachers as they explore the complexities of new literacies in literacy instruction? What role does the learner have to play in developing his or her literacy skills?
In working with students from diverse backgrounds, students who use new technologies; including blogs, wikis, playing and making digital games it has been a puzzle as to why their BST/NAPLAN (Basic Skills Test/National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) writing results have been consistently above state average while they achieve below the state average in their reading results. Working with them on a personal level it becomes obvious they are not lacking literacy skills. It is just that their skills are different.
It was re-assuring to read the study by Leu et al (New Literacies for new times: preparing students for the 21st century, 2005) which found no statistical correlation between online comprehension and reading comprehension scores on the Connecticut Mastery Tests. Equally reassuring are Green and Hannon (Demos Report, 2007) who in their research have found “Children are establishing a relationship to knowledge gathering which is alien to their parents and to their teachers”.
WHY was it reassuring?
The new technologies centred on the internet including social networking and digital games are not a passing fad. By 2006 more than one billion people were reading on the internet and since the uptake of the new technologies is exponential, by 2011 more than half the world’s population will be reading online.
In the history of literacy there has been no other technology for reading, writing and communicating that has been embraced so rapidly by so many people in so many geographical places. Consequently, there are wide ranging implications for literacy.
The linear way of reading fiction books and the rigid content of textbooks are losing their relevance in the growing online context. Books are never going to be irrelevant because there always has been and always will be people who love the comfort and emotional attachment to the printed book. However, the speed, the amount of knowledge and diversity of interests are better catered for by the internet and new technologies.
Jakob Nielsen, dubbed “the guru of web page usability” by The New York Times, has spent the past 15 years gauging habits and screen experiences of computer users. He charts people’s online navigations using eye-tracking tools with the aim of mapping how vision moves and rests.
Mr Nielsen’s research reveals people scan hundreds of pages using a pattern vastly different from any learned at school. They read in an F pattern … extremely fast and only one in six reads a web page linearly.
Educators would do well to open their minds to findings from Nielsen’s research and incorporate some of his web usability ideas into the teaching practice, particularly in light of research such as that from The Rand Reading Study Group (2002). The study concludes that “accessing the internet makes large demands on individual’s literacy skills; in some cases, this new technology requires readers to have novel literacy skills, and little is known about how to analyse or teach those skills”.
Recent studies by Coiro et al (Handbook of Research on New Literacies, 2007) and Leu et al (Teaching with the Internet K to 12: New Literacies for New Times, 2004) also conclude:
• Reading online is more complex than reading offline.
• New skills and strategies are needed to read online.
According to Kinzer et al (Theoretical models and processes of reading, 2004) “new literacies are continually new literacies. Increasingly, the task of a literacy learner will be to learn how to learn, not simply to master a fixed set of skills that remain static”.
The new technologies demand new forms of critical literacy, critical thinking and analysis of information. Fortunately students currently in Years K to 12 have been completely sensitised to digital technologies, and are receptive to that new literacy. Technologies are fully incorporated into their lives. Many students in this group are using new media and new technologies to create in new ways, to learn in new ways and to communicate in new ways with new people. Moreover, research is showing that using new technologies in education “improves both comprehension of the lesson material and student’s interest in the topic” (Brady, More than just fun and games, Applied Clinical Trials Nov. 2004). Klopfler et al (Using the technology of today in the classroom today, 2009) believe there is enough evidence to conclude that new technologies have the capacity to “facilitate and leverage deep learning”.
Educators must adapt to the 21st century … almost 10 per cent of the century has passed us by and still there is resistance to this concept.
In The Horizons Report (Educause, 2009), there is a “call for formal instruction in the key new skills including information literacy, visual literacy and technological literacy”.
But what are they? How and what then do we teach to cater for the fluidity and constant updating of content that occurs on the world wide web?

The answer is actually quite simple. We have great tools at our fingertips. It is simply a matter of thinking outside the box and drawing upon the wealth of resources that are available online to engage, motivate and inspire our digitally savvy students. As a start point Web 2.0 meets Reading 2.0 is an amazing collection of Web 2.0 applications collected and collated by esessions an educator out of Alabama. It is a good site for teachers to go to start exploring Web 2.0 applications and reading.
The other resource is the taxonomy of reading capabilities developed by Luke and Freebody (1990). The Four Resources Model was developed as a means of responding to the complexity of reading and the changing and challenging demands in order to be a successful reader in today’s world. Whatever developmental point students are at, all four roles need to be taught systematically and explicitly. The roles are not a linear progression nor are they developmentally based. They are actually a set of skills that are interlinked, interdependent and necessary to be fully and functionally literate. The roles are just as appropriate when applied to multiple digital contexts as to the print context.

Students want to be part of the online conversation in an online world it gives meaning and purpose to their learning. We have a responsibility to engage our students as well as to develop discerning, critical users of the new technologies as both consumers and creators.

Four Roles/Resources of the Successful Reader
Roles/Resources What successful readers know and do
Code breaker
decoding the codes and conventions of written, spoken and visual text Understand
• the relationship between spoken sounds and written symbols
• the grammar of texts
• the structural conventions of texts
Text user
understanding the purposes of different written, spoken and visual texts for different cultural and social functions Know that
• different types of texts have different purposes
• these purposes shape the way texts are structured and formed
Apply this knowledge in using (eg comprehending, creating, transforming) text
Text participant
comprehending written, spoken and visual texts Make meaning by drawing on
• own experiences and prior knowledge
• knowledge of similar texts
Text analyst
understanding how texts position readers, viewers and listeners Is aware and can identify how
• texts are not ideologically natural or neutral but are crafted to represent the views and interests of the writer
• information, ideas and language in texts influence reader perceptions
• texts empower or disempower certain