Literacy and technology: Making the connections: A case study

Electronic and digital technologies are shaping the way students communicate. They are cultural texts because the multi -modal texts used in these technologies are socially constructed and form part of the students' ways of saying -being -doing -valuing. Students in Australian schools increasingly make use of electronic forms of communication. Referring to the impact of new media on the young, Carmen Luke (Luke 1994) argues that 'it is the intertextuality of these cultural texts and images that help shape children's understanding of themselves and the world around them, and of the ways that "culture", "difference", "society", or gender and ethnic identities are variously construed' (p.15).

In order to meet the literacy needs of students in the technologized western culture in which we live, educators need to focus on the designs of multi -modal literacies rather than simply on their content (Lankshear 1999) and (Knobel 1997). Conceptions of reading need to go well beyond understandings about decoding print to embrace understandings about purposes, audiences, roles, relationships, field, tenor and modes, linguistic features and structures involved in socially constructed multi -modal texts. In addition to operational skills and cultural understandings, students need to be given opportunities to develop critical understandings about multi -media that can lead to socially just practices.