| Questions to consider |
|---|
| What relationships do you see between the concept of multiliteracies and Internet / electronic technologies, especially Web 2.0 technologies? |
| Based on your own experience with Internet / electronic technologies, in what ways would you say the technologizing of modes of communication is challenging the way we understand literacy? |
| Can you think of ways in which changes in communication modes have impacted you both personally and professionally (i.e.: How do you use Internet / electronic technologies, especially Web 2.0 technologies in your L2 classroom)? For what purposes? |
| What challenges do you envision in conceiving and implementing literacy-oriented, digitally-mediated L2 lessons? |
• new literacies
• multimodal literacy
• media literacy
• Web 2.0
• affinity spaces
The literacy landscape in the 21st century has shifted from print-based literacy practices to multicultural, multimodal, multimedia practices in a global environment that is complex and diverse. Much of this shift is largely due to communication through Internet and other computer technologies, especially Web 2.0 technologies, which according to Herring (2013) are “a fairly well-defined set of popular web-based platforms that are characterized by user-generated content and social interaction” (p.1). In other words, what Web 2.0 technologies have allowed, is increased participatory information sharing, user-centered design, and collaboration.According to Thorne (2010), Web 2.0 tools and environments “involve less a wave of technological innovation and more accurately a significant transformation in the types, quality and volume of personal expression, mediated interactivity, and ambient awareness of multiple social networks” (p. 143). Web 2.0 tools and environments also increase blending of multiple modes of meaning design that are linguistic, spatial, visual, gestural, and aural. Kress (2000) argues that “it is now impossible to make sense of texts, even their linguistic parts alone, without having a clear idea of what these other features might be contributing to the meaning of a text”(p. 337).
Despite the rising importance of multimodal communication in our world today, the verbal (i.e.: linguistic) modality continues to dominate over other modes of making meaning (i.e., spatial, visual, gestural, and aural) in the FL classroom. Attending to different modes of text design is of great importance for contemporary learners. However, it requires that we broaden our understanding of literacy beyond that of reading and writing “in page-bound, official, standard forms of the national language”, and thus limiting it to “formalized, monolingual, monocultural, and rule-governed forms of language.” Our understanding of literacy must not only include “the multiplicity of
