In recent decades literacy researchers began to examine the many different ways of reading and writing in cultures and groups other than those of white, Western, upper middle class. Researchers also began to attend to the multiple forms of literacy beyond print. This work forms the foundation of the concept of “multiliteracies” (New London Group” 1996).
Literacy is now conceived as both more expansive and more complex than ever before and as changing ever more quickly. For the current generation of students, consider how literacies have expanded since they started school. Many graduates started their school career with the literacies of paper, pencil, and book technologies, but will finish having encountered the literacies demanded by a wide variety of information and communication technologies (ICTs): Web logs (blogs), word processors, video editors, World Wide Web browsers, Web editors, e-mail, spreadsheets, presentation software, instant messaging, plug-ins for Web resources, listservs, bulletin boards, avatars, virtual worlds, and many others. These students experienced new literacies at the end of their schooling unimagined at the beginning . .. “a story that will be repeated again and again as new generations of students encounter yet unimagined ICTs as they move through school and develop currently unenvisioned new literacies.” (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro & Cammack, 2004, p. 1571).
“New literacies” refers to the unique ways of reading and writing with the new technologies of information, communication and multimedia. These literacies assume and require more complex processes, the use of multiple sign systems and the ability to mediate multiple text environments as summed up in the definition: “The ability to read, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and produce communication in a variety of textual environments and multiple sign systems.”
Information and communication technologies play a significant role in shaping views of new literacies and these new tools have prompted new forms of text and new creative uses of those texts.