“It's That Easy”: Designing Assignments That Blend Old and New Literacies

Abstract

This article recounts what happened when one of the authors, a pre-service teacher, introduced a digital multimodal composition project in her 9th-grade inclusion English classes to support junior high students as they read the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather than regard new literacies as competing with print literacy for attention, the authors argue that teachers serve students best when they design assignments that blend old and new literacies in ways that allow them to coexist and inform one another.

Keywords:

• multimodal composition
• new literacies
• digital media
• teacher education