Silicon Literacies

Electronic communication is radically altering literacy practices. Silicon Literacies unravels the key features of the new communication order to explore the social, cultural and educational impact of silicon literacy practices. Written by leading international scholars from a range of disciplines, the essays in this collection examine the implications of text produced on a keyboard, visible on a screen and transmitted through a global network of computers. The book covers topics as diverse as role-playing in computer games, the use of graphic symbols in on-screen texts and Internet degree programmes to reveal that being literate is to do with understanding how different modalities combine to create meaning. Recognizing that reading and writing are only part of what people have to learn to be literate, the contributors enhance our understanding of the ways in which the use of new technologies influence, shape and sometimes transform literacy practices.

Ilana Snyder is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia.

List of figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgments Introduction Silicon Literacies Ilana Snyder Part I Online literacy and rhetorical practices 1. What am I bid? Reading, writing and ratings at eBay.com Netgrrl [star symbo] (12) and Chicoboy26 [filled in star symbol] 932) 2. Writing the visual: the use of graphic symbols in onscreen texts Chris Abbott 3. Reading, writing and role-playing computer games Catherine Beavis 4. Languages.com: the Internet and linguistics pluralism Mark Warschauer 5. The Web as a rhetorical place Nicholas C. Burbules 6. Then again who isn't: post-hypertextual rhetorics Michael Joyce Part II Teaching, learning, technology and innovation 7. Educational innovation and hypertext: one university's successes and failures in supporting new technology George P. Landow 8. Here even when you're not: teaching in an Internet degree programme J. Yellowlees Douglas 9. Design sensibilities, schools and the new computing and communication technologies Chris Bigum 10. Technology, learning and visual culture Ron Burnett 11. Technological revolution, multiple literacies, and the restructuring of education Dougles M. Kellner Conclusion Communication, imagination, critique - literacy education for the electronic age Ilana Snyder Index