Designed to help readers become critical thinkers about technology not simply consumers of technology. The readings span a broad range of topics and genres (and include alternative readings available on a World Wide Web site connected to the book). An abundance of writing-to-learn and writing-to-communicate assignments provide practice in crafting reflective pieces, thoughtful analyses of issues, argumentative discourse, research proposals, multimedia projects, and other kinds of electronic writing aimed at on-line discussion groups.

Literacy, Technology and Society: Confronting the Issues

Selfe, Cynthia L.

Hawisher, Gail E.

Computers & Technology

Pearson

Literate Lives in the Information Age

This book chronicles the development of electronic literacies through the stories of individuals with varying backgrounds and skills. Authors Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher employ these stories to begin tracing technological literacy as it has emerged over the last few decades within the United States. They selected 20 case studies from the corpus of more than 350 people who participated in interviews or completed a technological literacy questionnaire during six years of their study. The book is organized into seven chapters that follow the 20 participants in their efforts to acquire varying degrees of technological literacy. Each chapter situates the participants' life-history accounts in the cultural ecology of the time, tracing major political, economic, social, and educational events, factors, and trends that may have influenced--and been influenced by--literacy practices and values. These literacy histories are richly sown with information that can help those in composition and writing studies situate the processes of acquiring the literacies of technology in specific cultural, material, educational, and familial contexts. These case studies provide initial clues about combinations of factors that affect--and are affected by--technological literacy acquisition and development. The first-hand accounts presented here offer, in abundant detail, everyday literacy experiences that can help educators, parents, policymakers, and writing teachers respond to today's students in more informed ways.

Literate Lives in the Information Age: Narratives of Literacy From the United States

Computer Science

Routledge

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Part critique of existing policy and practice, part call-to-action, Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century explores the complex linkage between technology and literacy that has come to characterize American culture and its public educational system at the end of the twentieth century.
To provide a specific case study of this complex cultural formation, award-winning educator Cynthia L. Selfe discusses the Technology Literacy Challenge, an official, federally sponsored literacy project begun in 1996 that has changed―at fundamentally important levels―the definition of literacy and the practices recognized as constituting literate behavior in America. Selfe tries to identify the effects of this new literacy agenda, focusing specifically on what she calls "serious and shameful" inequities it fosters in our culture and in the public education system: among them, the continuing presence of racism, poverty, and illiteracy. 
She describes how the national project to expand technological literacy came about, what effects it has yielded, why the American public has supported this project, and how teachers of English, language arts, and composition have contributed to this project, despite their best intentions. 
A primary goal of this study is to make teachers of English and composition increasingly aware of the new literacy agenda and to suggest how they might positively influence its shape and future direction, both in the classroom and in the community. This awareness is an integral part of educators' larger professional responsibility to understand the way in which our culture thinks about and values literacy. Perhaps even more important, argues Selfe, this awareness is part of teachers' ethical responsibility to understand how literacy and literacy instruction directly and continually affect the lived experiences of the individuals and families with whom teachers interact.

Technology and Literacy in the 21st Century: The Importance of Paying Attention (Studies in Writing and Rhetoric)

Literature & Fiction

Southern Illinois University Press

Book by Selfe, Cynthia L., Rodrigues, Dawn

Computers in English and the Language Arts: The Challenge of Teacher Education

Reference

Rodrigues, Dawn

Words, Language & Grammar

Natl Council of Teachers

Book by Hawisher, Gail E., Selfe, Cynthia L.

Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies: Questions for the 1990's (Advances in Computers and Composition Studies)

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Natl. Council of Teachers of English

Literate Lives in the Information Age: Narratives of Literacy from the United States

Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History (New Directions in Computers and Composition Studies)

This book is a history composed of histories. Its particular focus is the way in which computers entered and changed the field of composition studies, a field that defines itself both as a research community and as a community of teachers. This may have a somewhat sinister suggestion that technology alone has agency, but this history (made of histories) is not principally about computers. It is about people-the teachers and scholars who have adapted the computer to their personal and professional purposes. From the authors' perspectives, change in technology drives changes in the ways we live and work, and we, agents to a degree in control of our own lives, use technology to achieve our human purposes. REVIEW: . . . This book reminds those of us now using computers to teach writing where we have been, and it brings those who are just entering the field up to date. More important, it will inform administrators, curriculum specialists, and others responsible for implementing the future uses of technology in writing instruction. - Computers and Composition

LeBlanc, Paul

Moran, Charles

Praeger

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