1. Read~ng Research Quarterly
Vol. 35, N o . 2
Aprili3lay,June 2000
El999 International Readlng Association
(pp.276282)
What will be the influences of media on literacy
in the next millennium?
fiction and other entertaining books limited to what he or she could ex-
being regarded as frivolous and pect from that library facility and with
highly discouraged. Surrounded by a few exceptions through interlibrary
Susan B. Neuman tomes of great works. children were loan, could use only the resources
Temple Lhrvcrsrty, Phrladelphra,
to adopt the appropriate behavior contained within its four walls.
Pennsylvunru, USA
for reading in the library. They were In the future. that same young
to sit quietly, read silently, and never reader entering public libraries in the
?= arly supporters presented a
halcyon picture of the public
library at the turn of the last
speak above a whisper.
As we consider literacy for the
new millennium. what might the
U.S. will expect and demand global
resources. immediately and directly.
The library of the future will become
century (Garrison. 1979: Van House. new philanthropists of the library en- increasingly transformed from a fi-
1972). Building what amounted to vision for the future? How might nite space with finite resources to a
the modern library system, philan- technology change the ways in finite space with infinite resources.
thropist Andrew Carnegie sought no which children use resources, ex- But children will no longer be sitting
less than a social and cultural trans- change ideas with others, and en- quietly at their tables turning the
formation in society, hoping to uplift gage in learning in such public pages of a book. The library will
and enlighten the literary tastes of spaces as the library? What will look different, and children will be-
the masses, support education for recreational and functional reading have differently.
the underprivileged, and provide a look like in the future? The library of the future will be
natural extension of free public edu- characterized by open shelves, a
cation for all (Van Slyck, 1995). The modern library in the term once used to reflect free access.
Carnegie's concept was to build a li- 21st century Kow, however, it is used to describe
brary characterized by free access, Even a decade ago, someone the limited collection of books in the
services for children, separate chil- entering a public library in the U.S. library and the more limited atten-
dren's rooms. and cooperation with could expect to find a scene highly tion to circulation figures as indica-
local schools. Tens of thousands of reminiscent of Carnegie's original vi- tors of library activity. Instead, there
young readers benefited from his sion. One could find books, maga- will be computer terminals every-
largesse, borrowing books for the zines, newspapers, and some where, with keypads designed to
first time free of charge. educationally oriented audiovisual match the age-appropriate hand size
Yet Carnegie's great libraries materials. The public library's collec- of children of different ages. Hits on
exacted their own kind of payment. tion would reflect the interests of the various Web pages are now the
not in cash but in demeanor. Early community, and the size of the col- norm for determining amount and
libraries were collections of good lection would be largely determined type of library activity in the branch.
books, and librarians were their by the size of the building. The most Public libraries of the future
guardians. Activity at the library in- desired books could be unavailable will not merely support young pa-
volved reading what librarians for weeks, having been recently trons; they will cater to them. Due to
thought children should read, with checked out. The young library user, its massive resource capacity, the li-

2. brary will attract many nontraditional If we ask our current philan- the future of media and its effects on
young users. But not unlike the past thropists what their vision of the literacy is tricky business. But I'll
century, there will be continuing de- public library might be, they proba- step into my time machine, crank
bate about how these resources are bly would say to transform society the engine a few times, and give it a
used. Many will decry the young by providing greater access and thus try nonetheless.
children's interest in demanding the ensure a more knowledgeable public One thing that I think will
very lowest level of reading material than ever before. And perhaps chil- change is the definition of literacy it-
in quality and taste. However, there dren of the 21st century will be self, which historically has referred
will be something for everyone- more sophisticated consumers of in- to at least a rudimentary ability to
some typically advantaged children formation and entertainment than decode, comprehend, and produce
will be using resources to their great- ever before. But the ambiance of the written language. even by such limit-
est capacity, while others will find dark public library with patrons qui- ed means as a signature. When the
their thrills in sexual kick-boxing etly turning the pages of their books world was a much simpler place.
and oddball chat rooms. will be forever changed. these definitions seemed adequate.
The demeanor among children Language served as the primary
in the library will change from the REFERENCES medium through which people con-
pensive and the quiet to the social GARRISON, D. (1979). Apostles of culture: structed systematic representations of
The public librarian and American society 1876- their worlds, and written documents
playground, with large groups of 1920. New York: Free Press.
children waiting to get on, or in- VAN HOUSE, W. (1972). Public library user
served as the basis for the structure
volved in, the Internet. Navigating fees. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. and machinery of society: laws, his-
for resources and sites will be easier
VAN SLYCK, A. (1995). Free to all. Chicago: tory, records. and so on. While liter-
University of Chicago Press.
with multiple interfaces designed acy in terms of language is still
around the fourth-grade level with prerequisite to active participation in
much of modern life, it is now part
plenty of pictures to convey ideas
of what Wertsch (1991) has called a
along with the print. Children will
"tool kit" of mediational means (p.
read, but in brief bursts as they
93). While language is still no doubt
move from picture to picture. Books
the "tool of tools" (Cole. 1996. p.
will rarely be checked out; instead.
children will favor CDs and videos. Peter Smagorinsky log), other communicative and me-
diational means are being developed
The librarian of this coming Universip o f Georgia. Athens, U S A
w
that play a strong role in fin de siBcle
century will no longer be a biblio-
literacy and presumably will increas-
phile but a bit of a hacker and tech- riting on the future of me-
ingly help one to live the good life
nician, since equipment is always in dia and literacy brings to
in the new millennium.
need of repair. Rather than finding mind science fiction
Before looking too far ahead. I
books for patrons or answering ref- movies from the 1950s, with flying would like to review an argument I
erence questions, now his or her ac- saucers swinging across the screen made a few years ago (Smagorinsky.
tivity will be more of an online on not-so-transparent strings, and 1995). At that time I had spent a lot
personal help service, although aliens with names like Zoltan wear- of time visiting classes across the
painful back ailments from leaning ing aluminum foil space suits and curriculum in a large public high
over people's shoulders may pre- speaking very formal English. That school and had tried to understand
vent long interactions. KO longer is is. no matter what I say here, it is how students made meaning as they
there time to get to know the pa- bound to look a little silly before moved from class to class, discipline
trons' names, or even their faces for long because it's hard to say how to discipline. What I found raised
that matter, since most are always media and technology will develop questions about the notion that writ-
looking forward at a screen. Despite in the next few decades. When I was ing across the curriculum is the most
all efforts, he or she will not filter a kid, media referred to those large worthwhile goal for schooling, given
the content of what children are reel-to-reel projectors that always that in many disciplines students
reading; in fact in the US, it won't seemed to eat our science class produced highly meaningful texts
be allowed since challenged by the films. Even 5 years ago, few people consistent with disciplinary values
First Amendment to the U.S. had even heard of the World Wide and conventions, yet through media
Constitution. Computer clubs have Web, now a fixture in any home other than language. Students in an
replaced story hours. with a computer. And so forecasting Equine Management and Production
What will be the influences of media on literacv in the next millennium? 277

3. class, for instance. needed to learn a ate vehicle for mediating students'
wide range of knowledge and skills engagement with ideas.
for breeding and maintaining horses. As new media develop. I think
The culminating project for the se- they will increasingly afford new sys- Patricia E. Enciso
mester was to synthesize all of their tems of representation. Recall that Columbus, L1S/4
O h i o State ITnrversry,
knowledge of horses in the design many of the original educational
of a ranch that they might conceiv-
ably own and operate at a profit.
They combined multidisciplinary
knowledge in order to design their
ranches: geometry for designing an-
programs for computers looked very
similar to what already existed in
workbooks; that is, the potential of
computers was poorly exploited be-
cause they were viewed as simply a
T he theories and practices of lit-
erary interpretation are as old
as Talmudic studies and as
new as poststructuralist linguistics and
postmodern identity politics. Yet
gles, mathematics for developing different means for providing the across the centuries. studies of literary
feed mixes in the right proportion, same texts. Now. sofmare designers interpretation have addressed the
physics to know how to situate work with animation, sound, interac- same intersections of reader, text, and
buildings for drainage, weather to tion, voice activation. image making, context through questions that in-
know how to build for local condi- and who-knows-what-awaits in or- clude these: Who are readers? What
tions (e.g.. one-story structures if tor- der to provide computer users with should they read? What are the cir-
nadoes are a threat), economics for useful and entertaining tools. cumstances of their reading? How?
deciding what crops to grow for If we assume that literacy serves Why? Who benefits from these views
feed, and much more, including spe- to construct, preserve, and document of reader, text, and context?
cific knowledge of how to accom- frameworks for social practice-and Old and new approaches to lit-
modate the needs of particular to enable communication within erary education have been developed
breeds of horses. those frameworks-then it is conceiv- and critiqued in terms of these ques-
The project took over a month able that computers and software will tions and in relation to the production
to conlplete and involved a long- provide tools for a different kind of of new literary forms. more fully artic-
term process of composition, includ- literacy. In that sense, then, school ulated theories of readerhext transac-
ing planning, drafting, revising, and production may change. Instead of tions. reconfigurations of philosophies
the production of the final product writing a research paper. for instance. of the self, and assertions of political
that the students regarded quite students can create a multimedia pre- power focused on containing particu-
seriously. Work was conducted col- sentation that includes film footage. lar texts and relationships to texts. In
laboratively, with students talking scanned images, music, voice-overs, the coming century. I imagine these
frequently with one another and and so on. In my view, the key ques- influences will continue to shape the
their teacher about their designs. In
tion should be. in what ways does scholarship and teaching of literary
short. the production of the horse
the process of composition both lead interpretation. In addition, reading
ranch designs included all of the as-
to new learning and provide a repre- and literary education will continue to
pects of writing that are usually the
sentation of that learning that follows wrestle with many of the same ques-
basis for viewing writing as an es-
appropriate cultural conventions? The tions and problems that others have
sential tool. The difference was that
developnlent of new technologies attempted to resolve over the past
words were only used as labels.
and media, while changing the tools decades. I want to look to the past for
with the spatial configuration of im-
and forms through which students a moment. to describe one prescrip-
ages being the primary vehicle for
compose, should not change that tion for reading education that illumi-
constructing and representing mean-
fundamental question. nates many of the issues we will face
ingful ideas.
From this class and many oth- in the next millennium.
REFERENCES On the cusp of the 20th centu-
ers, I concluded that the concern of COLE, M. (1996). Cu/iuralpsychology: A once
educators ought to be with conzpos- and future discipline. Cambr~dge,MA: Harvard
ry, M.E. Burt. a veteran teacher, librar-
ing across the c u t ~ c u l u m
rather than Un~versity Press. ian. and member of the Chicago
writing across the curriculum, given SMAGORINSKY, P. (1995). Constructing Board of Education, wrote a com-
meaning In the disciplines: Reconceptualizing writ-
that writing does not have exclusive ing across the curr~culum composing across the
as
pelling, no-nonsense treatise on the
properties for enabling people to curr~culum. American Journal of Education, 103, form and content of children's literary
construct or represent meaning. 160-1 84. educations. Her compact book. ~0111-
WERTSCH, J.V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A
Furthermore, in some disciplines plete with an annotated bibliography.
soc~ocultural approach to mediated action.
writing is not the culturally appropri- Cambridge, MA: Haward University Press. was entitled Litemly L a n d m a h ~ f o r
278 READING RESEARCH QUARTERLY ApriVMay/June 2000 35/2

4. Young People (1899). Burt outlined She would have found a kindred spir- ple are represented and interrelated? I
the selections of literature that should it, no doubt, in E.D. Hirsch had they am hopeful that today's multistoried,
be available to and read by all chil- been contemporaries at the turn of multimedia children and adults will
dren, what they should and should the 20th century. She might also have not be content with a singular line of
not attend to as they read ("He will found much in common with litera- literary landmarks that convey "a mas-
read with better expression if his ture-based reading educators who en- terpiece of creative goodness" (p. 1j).
mind is searching after the largest courage deep and wide reading, as That line, based almost exclusively on
thought in the piece than he will if he James Britton proposed in the mid- European male values, language, and
is continually nagged at concerning 1960s. Indeed, in the latter part of her histories, thins and weakens rapidly,
the definitions of words") (p. 29), and book, she presents a strong argument leaving many children wondering
what adults should know before they for the centrality of literature across where they fit in to the process of
ventured their opinions on children's the curriculum, particularly in science making meaning.
reading ("It always excites my indig- and social studies education. She cer- If, at the turn of the last century,
nation and contempt to hear 'scholars' tainly would have supported family literary study and interpretation had
putting themselves on haughty literacy research and practices, partic- as its purpose the coherent mapping
pedestals of classicalism, speak dis- ularly those located within middle of historical relationships associated
paragingly of giving the greatest class and economically depressed with the writer's art, then, at the be-
works to laboring men or their neighborhoods, that bring children ginning of the next century the chal-
children") (p. 23). and adults together around the best lenges for researchers, teachers, and
Burt had no patience with books available. students may be to comprehend the
scholars or publishers who suggested Burt's perspectives on literature incoherences in stories, the unstated
that children's texts should be limited selection and literary interpretation histories, the long-denied and mis-
in literary style or content. She argued placed high value on universal access placed representations within literary
that children needed the best of liter- to ideas, art, and goodness. In her forms. Unlike Burt, who advised
ary art and ideas if they were to gain day. these views would have been ac- teachers to guide children toward "the
a sense of the continuous chain of ceptable to most teachers, librarians, big ideas" within literature. future
events and ideas that have formed politicians, and labor organizers (but teachers and researchers will need to
modern thought. Her comprehensive not scholars!). The United States was consider what could possibly be con-
plan for literary studies included bibli- seeking a political compass at the strued as a shared idea. "Big ideas" or
cal stories and Arthurian legends for turn of the century and found much themes, the staple of literary interpre-
young children, Fenelon's Lives o the
f to support its largely immigrant popu- tation, are intentionally obscured by
Philosophers and Chaucer's Griselda lation in the form of socialist and pro- today's artists and authors working
for upper elementar).-aged children, gressive politics, the equity politics across media-based and book-like art-
and a study of Dante's poetry and reflected in Burt's vision of literary ed- forms (see, for example, Monster,
Marlowe's Fazrst for adolescents. As is ucation. Her writing was also a reac- 1999. by Walter Dean Myers).
apparent from her recommended tion against the modernist vision of Students may be far ahead of teachers
reading list, she saw no reason to social change that imposed catego- and researchers in recognizing that
separate adult and children's reading: rization, efficiency, and reductionism themes are precisely what limits
"Any book is not good enough for on school curricula. particularly read- meaning: the artform and the artist
the youngest child in the primary ing education. are questioning. not sustaining, the
grade unless it would be a good book I wonder, now, how Burt's per- reader's assumption of an answer.
for the teacher or parent." She argued spectives on literature selections and The future of literary interpreta-
that, in the company of great books interpretations might persist while the tion promises to be an exciting
and avid adult readers. children form and substance might be scramble through texts and images.
would soon discover and delight in changed in the 21st century. How Still. the key question for future liter-
the interrelatedness of literary struc- would she, in these postmodern and ary and reading educators, in the
tures, themes, and historic events. postcolonial times, organize histories United States and other emerging
Many advocates of Western that cannot be made commensurable den~ocracies, not so much what
is
classical literature might wholeheart- as a continuous chain? And what cri- new literary forms and interpretations
edly agree with Burt that a chain of teria would she use to select from the might be possible, but whether teach-
events can and should be gleaned extensive body of literary art forms ers will have authority within the po-
from the guided selection and inter- and ideas so that the exemplary voic- litical struggles over the form and
pretation of well-wrought literary art. es and visions of all the world's peo- substance of reading education, to
What will be the influences of media on literacy in the next millennium? 279

5. determine how any text will be se- textbooks, and government docu- variety of specific search constraints
lected and interpreted. The future of ments will sit out there on the (Boolean, proximity. case matching.
research and teaching regarding liter- Internet in a full-text, searchable for- and more). A search for the phrase
asy education will be played out mat that elin~inates need for cellu-
the emef-gentliteracy. for example.
against a landscape of definitions, val- loid archives on each and evesy n,ould result in the almost instanta-
ues. and civil rights. And here we can college campus. There is already a neous identification of every occur-
return to Burt's vision. Should we. wide range of virtual librasy services rence of the phrase in all volun~es,
like Burt, demand the most compre- including academic periodical collec- issues, and articles. To obtain the
hensive and remarkable exemplars of tions such as First Search and EBSCO. same result from a Web site, the user
the world's narratives and literasy which claim several thousand period- would have to don,nload the entire
forms-based in local and global icals online and fully searchable. The database from the site, which would
texts, music, film. CD-KOMs, and oth- logical extension is a complete librasy take hours or days. The sophisticated
er media-for all of our children? Or accessible by Internet. There is, how- searching I have just described can-
a-ill inequitable funding continue to y
ever, an alternative: m e lib?-a cozild not be conducted by remote because
place magnificent libraries in some exist inside yozi r PC the bandwidth of the Internet limits
schools for a few children, while a It's been exactly 20 years since the speed at which information can
majority of children pick through last I bought my first home computer. be exchanged. In the a1ternatix.e it is
centuT's worn-out paperbacks? an Apple 11+ with a Halloween possible to tag issues or articles-if
Should we, like Burt, fear loss of liter- screen monitor, two external 5.25- each article is its own file-with key
acy among fourth graders and then inch floppy disk drives. 64k of =!I. a~ords. Issues or articles tagged for
focus attention on "the theosy that and a daisy~vheelline printer that the kelword can then be down-
reading should be v e v simple and sounded like a muffled machine loaded for printing or further inspec-
monosyllabic" (p. 28). Or should n,e. gun. Hard drives and the Internet tion. Current online services operate
like Burt, argue long and loud for were still in the future. The storage in this fashion. In a few years band-
"spirited discussions," that "leave the capacity of my Apple 11+ was 128 width may be expanded to the point
question open?" (p. 49). The right to kilobytes, about one eighth of a where full-text, indexed searches as I
interpret is always contested. I inlag- megabyte. In 1987 I bought a 286 have described here will be possible
ine researchers and teachers becom- PC with a 20-megaby-te hard drive. from a Web site.
ing more infornled and more vocal in which represented a 15.000% in- Given the choice. I would
the effort to determine both the rights crease in storage capacity over the much rather access information from
to, and the contests over. images old Apple II+. The PC on which I n ~ y ard drive than from the Internet.
h
and ideas. work now has a 6.5-gigaby-te DVD It's a lot faster. and I don't have to
(digital video disk) drive and a 9-gi- xvorT about connect//disconnect
REFERENCES gabyte (9,000 megabytes) hard dri- dilemmas. Imagine what it would be
BURT, M.E. (1899). Literarylandmarks for ve, a 77.500%)increase over the like to do word processing from a
young people. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
MYERS. W.D. (1999). Monster. New York: storage capacity of my old PC. To Web site instead of having the pro-
Har~erCollins. give this some everyday perspective, gram inside your own computer!
a single DVD disk could hold the If the internal storage capability
sum total of all publications of the and processing speeds of PCs contin-
International Reading Association, ue at their current pace. in 10 years
the National Keading Conference. the hard drives and peripheral stor-
and the College Keading age devices of PCs will be able to
Association, all volumes of all jour- hold the complete archives of a col-
nals, books. monographs, and lege librasy as easily as they hold
R. Scott Baldwin newsletters ever published in their Microsoft Word. Of course, the speed
,-ii,lrm St(1tL' CG//L'$c,, - l L 7 1 1 l ~ ~ ' 7 , combined histories, And. all of these and accessibility of the Internet will
C0101~L7d0, LTS,4 publications could be hypertext continue to advance at its own warp
linked and fully searchable in a speed: the Internet may be the ulti-
M ost people seem to think
that the university librav
of the fi~turewill be virtual
and Web based. In this scenario tens
of thousands of digitized periodicals.
few seconds.
A DVD database with a stan-
dard search engine (e.g..Adobe
Acrobat) could be searched in sec-
onds for any word or phrase under a
mate solution when it comes to
transacting business and getting cur-
rent information fast. However, my
prediction is that when it comes to
archiving professional knowledge,
280 READLNG RESEARCH QUARTERLY ApriVMay/June 2000 35/2

6. the librasy of the fi~ture
will end up ,I.fonoli?zgz~al-> :Vlztltilingzral. (MTL', for example) are a mix of im-
inside your computer and not on No one language can fully represent age. talk. Web referencing, call-in.
somebody's Web site. the range of information, knon.1- visual clips, music. and so on-a
edge, and perspectives possible. As pastiche of semiotic systems at the
the pressures grow to know and un- s e r i c e of a singular message.
derstand beyond one's national, cul- Te.~tzlal-> Intetle.~tzral.
tural, and linguistic borders. and Because no single text, or informa-
access to other linguistic knowledges tion source, can possibly contain all
and understandings becomes easier there is to know about a topic, idea.
through technological tools, the limi- person, or event, it is increasingly
Douglas K.Hartman tations of being literate in one lan- important that students know how to
guage (which is true for most in the select. connect, and organize infor-
1I.S.) will move our thinking toward mation from a large number of tex-
y approach to thinking reading in-and writing in-more tual sources across extended periods
about how media will in- than one language. The monotonous of time. Most of the materials in the
uence literacy in the new sound of one language will give way 20th centusy have been designed to
millennium is much like futurists do to the stereophonic sensibilities of a outline master narratives or para-
in corporate America: They look at larger n,orld with which to c o n ~ n ~ u - digms in a single text for students to
present patterns, and based on these nicate. Imagine most LT.S. elementan conlprehend and conlpose. Reading
patterns. project scenarios for what students moving toward reading and and writing in the next millennium
could exist tomorron7.These scenar- writing fluency in two or more lan- will increasingly deinand the relating
ios are not predictions, but stories guages. with the help of electronic and rerelating of information across
that present alternative i~xages of speech and print coaches that can multiple texts and learning situa-
possible tomorrows. I see a number assist with translation and mediation tions. It will be a time where the
of patterns that suggest scenarios in among the languages. reading of one text leads to another
three areas: conceptions, materials. and another, back and forth across
and methods of literacy. Materials for literacy histosy and across language and cul-
The materials to be used in lit- tures: where readers are challenged
Conceptions of literacy erate activities are also being re- and surprised often by unexpected,
What constitutes literacy is al- shaped by the influence of media. serendipitous linking discoveries in
ready being reshaped by the influ- The shape of these nlaterial move- their reading: where readers continu-
ence of media. The movement of ments are from: ally revise their understandings and
these changing conceptions is from: Linguistic -> Selniotic. In this responses to previous texts: where
Literacjl-> Litemcies. For centun we have largely valued and readers exploit the rich literary and
most of this millennium a singular used linguistic texts-that is. fixed artistic possibilities kvithin, across.
conception of literacy has prevailed: print on a bounded paper page-for and beyond texts: and where readers
the production and reception of communicating, learning, and spend their days waist high in works
meaning through print. But a more recording information in school. that can be traversed in one direc-
pluralistic conception is taking work. and community. We are wit- tion, and then in another and still
shape. It includes print-based, nessing a dramatic shift to the use of another.
meaning-making practices. but much other text types-to those known as Hzlndled -> Distrihzited. In
more. The relative ease by which semiotic texts. These new text types our professional lifetime we've seen
someone can represent thoughts, are both paper and digital in form. the commercial materials used for in-
knonings. and meanings through requiring a reader to read not only stn~ction bundled together in kits or
iconography. movement, sound. and print, but images. icons. and sounds; packages. Beginning with the Dick
so on m-ill make other forms of pro- they are a virtual mix of various sign & Jane readers around midcentuq-,
duction and reception just as valued systems on the same page or screen this bundling of teacher edition, stu-
as print has been for so long. This that must be read in relation to one dent edition, big flip charts. trade
open, inclusive set of literacies nil1 another. Print. film. music. art, nlove- books. cassette tapes, flash cards,
require neu- languages for talking ment, photographs, and other modes tests. and so on has I>ecome the
about the sense-making practices of representation will be counted as norm. The hallmark of this deliven
n-ithin a particular literacy. as n.ell as text that can be read and written. approach is that you can have all
across the various literacies. The digital semiotic texts of today necessan materials located in one
What will be the influences of media on literacy in the next millennium? 281

7. place for easy access and use. The shaped as well. The shape of these ist. therapist, director, producer, me-
downside has been the one-size-fits- pedagogical movements are from: dia resource specialist, salesperson,
all conception it usually propagates. Assignments -> Workshops and engineer, to name a few. The
But the move is toward a more -> Projects. The pressures of media learning communiv formed within
distributed means of locating the are already extending literate activiv these classroon~s reaches far beyond
materials. Some conlmercial publish- beyond assignments and workshops its walls and uses the resources with-
ers are already using their Web sites to the use of comprehending and in them more imaginatively.
as an integral part of the material composing in the context of project Intramediation -> Transmed-
package, with certain parts of the work. Project work involves students iation. The prevailing literacy meth-
bundle available only from or investigating sustainable topics and ods of the last millennium operated
through remote access to these sites. ideas in considerable depth, often in an intramediato~ fashion-they
Teachers can get background infor- for a sizable part of the school day worked back and forth within one
mation and video footage of the au- and year. The literacy instruction fo- medium (print). from reading to writ-
thor not available in the printed form cuses on helping students locate and ing and back again. With expanded
of the teachers' edition; students can use textual resources to reconstruct conceptions of literacy and the media
locate a mountain of story-related their environment, knowledge, and tools to represent meaning in other
material when and if they want or social relations. Furthermore, stu- modes, a new set of literacy methods
need it: and there are additional skill dents explore complex and impor- n,ill be needed to operate in a trans-
and strategy practice opportunities tant ideas and systems through mediatory fashion-working back
that dovetail into the minilessons project work, using and reusing a and forth across media, from print to
yo~l've already provided. And imag- broad range of literacy tools and video to sculpture to iconic notations
ine a Web-based smart teachers' edi- modes to research, report, and re- to music and so on. Imagine class-
tion, where teachers can tailor-fit the spond to what they are learning. As rooms everywhere that possess the
distributed materials to the unique such, the literacy instruction is em- tools and know-how to transform a
features of students in their class- bedded in classrooms that are part book into a film-from writing the
room. The hallmark of distributed museum, publishing house, think script, acting the parts, choreograph-
material usage will be its customiz- tank, writers' workshop, artists' stu- ing the moves, shooting the footage.
ing power. dio, theater, drafting room, computer editing the film, dubbing the music
lab, library, bookstore, gallery, and sound effects, advertising the
Methods in literacy recording studio, and more. As a re- production on a Web site-and then
Finally, the methods for teach- sult, the teacher's role becomes that use the film as the basis for writing a
ing or using literacy are being re- of curator, impresario, editor, futur- sequel to the book.
282 READING RESEARCH QUARTERLY April/May/June 2000 35/2