New Literacies

Involved in some new projects in the general area of literacy and new technologies, I have been examining the area of new literacies research and the impact of media upon the reconceptualization of the role of the teacher-librarian. No longer just curators of bounded collections, teacher-librarians have emerged as information facilitators who assist learners in finding needed material (online, print, or human) and cultivators of literacy and searching strategies.

In the same vein as constructivist theories and brain-based research, new literacies involve "human production, distribution, exchange, refinement, negotiation, and contestation of meanings" (Lankshear and Knobel; Penrod; and Jenkins). Reading and writing is, therefore, not encoding and decoding text, but rather imbuing meaning through immersion in social practices.