e-literature, multimedia authoring and metalanguage: new literacies and literacy engagement in the middle school years

Abstract

Far from threatening the role of literature in the English curriculum, new digital multimedia technologies enhance our opportunities for engaging 'net-age' children with established and new literary forms. It is now commonplace to observe the ease with which children are able to acquire facility with ever-emerging new communication software and hardware. However, although many children have more experience than many of their teachers with procedural, operational aspects of software, fewer children have experience and understanding of the strategic use of the meaning-making resources of language, image and sound that the software gives them access to. Teachers can help children to develop explicit awareness of this kind of meta-communicative knowledge, The mutual attraction of teachers and students to the powerful stories of established and contemporary literature can bridge the generational divide. It is not necessary for teachers' knowledge of digital multimodal technologies to be in advance of that of their students, What is necessary is for teachers to understand that there is no necessary dichotomy between new forms of digital storying frequently accessed via the World Wide Web and traditional literary experience of books with which many teachers are more familiar.