Literacies and new technologies in school settings

Abstract

This article introduces some concepts for thinking about issues and practices associated with ‘technologising literacy education’ under current and foreseeable conditions of schooling. It provides and analyses ‘snapshots’ of classroom activities involving the use of new technologies in literacy education within three sites, and describes four principles for guiding further developments in technologising classrooms: ‘teachers first’, ‘complementarity’, ‘workability’ and ‘equity’. The argument focuses particularly on analysing the kinds of things being done in the classrooms. It draws on three related distinctions advanced by John Perry Barlow, which contrast competing mindsets. We refer to these as the mindsets of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsider-newcomers’ to cyberspace, respectively, and show how the four principles are read differently by the two mind-sets. This reveals limitations we believe are inherent in these principles insofar as they are approached from the standpoint of current systemic assumptions – which can be seen as the mind-set of the ‘outsider-newcomers’.