The Convergence of Literacy Instruction with Networked Technologies
for Information and Communication
 

Donald J. Leu, Jr.
Syracuse University
and
Charles K. Kinzer
Vanderbilt University
 
 

To appear in Reading Research Quarterly
© International Reading Association

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Abstract

This article describes the convergence of literacy instruction with the Internet and other networked technologies for information and communication.  It also explores the consequences of this convergence including the fundamental changes taking place in the nature of literacy and literacy instruction. We suggest that three forces appear to be causing this convergence: global economic competition; public policy initiatives by governments around the world; and literacy as technological deixis.  We show how each of these forces is driving the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICT) to a central position in the classroom and we describe the nature of literacy and literacy instruction that is emerging.  We then explore three challenges that will determine the speed and effectiveness of the convergence that is occurring: challenges related to budget considerations, challenges related to professional development, and challenges related to using technology in ways that will make all of our lives better.  We argue that the literacy community must begin to explore these new contexts for literacy and learning if we wish to prepare children for their literacy future.
 

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 The Convergence of Literacy Instruction with Networked Technologies for Information and Communication

Predicting the nature of literacy instruction during the new millennium is an impossible task.  It is easy to be naive in a world that changes so quickly, especially as we anticipate the nature of an institution that changes so slowly.  We are reminded, for example, of Thomas Edisonís faulty prediction in 1922 about the effect of motion pictures on schooling and textbooks:

The motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system . . . in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks. . . . we get about two percent efficiency out of schoolbooks as they are written today.  The education of the future, as I see it, will be conducted through the medium of the motion picture . . . where it should be possible to obtain one hundred percent efficiency.  (as cited in Cuban, 1986, p. 9).

and of Seymour Papertís prediction, now 15 years old, that

There wonít be schools in the future. . . . I think the computer will blow up the school. . . . The whole system is based on a set of structural concepts that are incompatible with the presence of the computer.  (Papert, 1984, p.38)

Of course, neither predication has come to pass.  The motion picture has not revolutionized education nor has it replaced textbooks in schools. Moreover, schools are not in imminent danger of being discontinued as both the computer and classroom instruction have been shown to be quite compatible with evolving, constructivist views of education.

Clearly, accurately anticipating the future for any aspect of education is a challenge.  In fact, developing this article is a bit like beginning to read a good book and then being asked to stop and write the remainder of the story, predicting every word exactly in order, every plot twist exactly as it happens, and every characterís actions exactly as it takes place. We know the story of literacy instruction up to the point where we started writing this article and we have a general understanding of the forces at work in the remainder of the story, but it is impossible to predict every line, on every page, that follows.

Our contribution is not to make specific predictions about each line in that story.  These will inevitably be proved wrong as change overwhelms our ability to anticipate it.  Instead, we hope to paint a broad outline of the continuing story of literacy instruction that will take place in classrooms around the world.  We hope our description will call attention to the important need for all members of the literacy community to focus their attention on networked information and communication technologies such as the Internet. We must begin to explore these new contexts for literacy and learning if we wish to prepare children for their literacy future.
 

Convergence

While it is impossible to accurately predict every line in the story of literacy instruction, we do believe it is inevitable that one predication will be fulfilled: We believe in the accelerating convergence of literacy instruction with the use of networked information and communication technologies (ICT) in classrooms around the world. Currently the most important manifestation of these networked technologies for information and communication is the Internet.  The convergence of literacy instruction with Internet technologies is fundamentally reshaping the nature of literacy instruction in classrooms around the world as teachers seek to prepare children for the futures they deserve.

The convergence of literacy instruction and networked ICT follows the convergence of multiple media technologies into more unified technologies.  Several media theorists (Martin, 1978; McLuhan, 1964; 1989) anticipated the convergence of separate information and communication technologies into more unified vehicles for their simultaneous use. Today, we see this taking place as computers, television, radio, and telephonic communication are converging into a single application, the World Wide Web of the Internet. Convergence is a defining characteristic of the profound changes taking place today with information and communication technologies.  We believe that literacy instruction will begin to accommodate itself to this fundamental facet of our lives.  As the Internet enters our classrooms and as we envision the new literacies that Internet technologies permit, it is inevitable that literacy instruction and networked ICT such as the Internet will also converge.

Our analysis of this phenomenon will be based on what we see as the major cultural forces generating changes in the nature of literacy education in many countries around the world.  It will not be based solely on extent research on literacy or literacy instruction, though research will be used in our analysis.  In fact, later we will argue that efficacy research on the use of ICT often is less important than simple observation about the changing nature of literacy.

Consider, for example, a startling fact: Despite limited efficacy data and many calls for more data demonstrating the effects of ICT on student learning (Cuban, 1986; Oppenheimer, 1997; Rukeyser, 1998; Rochlin, 1997; Roszak, 1994; Stoll, 1995), a preeminent group of scientists and educational researchers in the U.S. recently argued that ICT and other digital technologies were so central to the future of the U.S. that additional data on their efficacy were unnecessary before moving to systematically integrate these technologies into schools. Such a call from such an important group of scientists and educators, despite calls by many for more data demonstrating the efficacy of ICT on student learning, says much about how cultural forces are often far more powerful than scientifically developed data.  In the final sentence from the report of the Presidentís Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST, 1997), this group states, "The Panel does not, however, recommend that the deployment of technology within Americaís schools be deferred pending the completion of [a major program of experimental] research." (p. 131, emphasis appears in the original).

As this example illustrates, convergence is driven as much by the forces that shape societies as by research results, perhaps even more so. Despite other views with which one might take exception, Gates has correctly articulated this aspect of change: "One thing is clear.  We donít have an option of turning away from the future.  No one gets to vote on whether technology is going to change our lives." (1995, p.74).
 

Literacy within Cultural Contexts

Ultimately, the forms and functions of literacy as well as literacy instruction itself are largely determined by the cultural forces at work within any society (Boyarin, 1993; Diringer, 1968; Illera, 1997; Manguel, 1996; Mathews, 1966; Shlain, 1998; Smith, 1965).  In the past, these cultural forces have had diverse origins.  The complexity of economic structures, the forces of oppression and resistance, the dissemination of religious dogma, the essential nature of certain forms of democracy, nation building, international conflict, and many other disparate influences have all influenced the nature of literacy and literacy instruction in different eras.  In the future, cultural forces will continue to define the forms and functions of literacy as well as the essential nature of literacy instruction.

Often, in the rush to develop the latest response to one literacy crisis or another, we lose sight of these historical roots.  Briefly identifying some of these forces will remind us of how important it is to understand the cultural context of any period before seeking to understand how literacy functions within that context, even one that extends so far into the future as the new millennium.

The central role of cultural forces in defining the nature of literacy can be seen at one of the important starting points for reading and writing, Sumerian society during the fourth millennium, BC. As this society expanded, recording business transactions and tax records became important for a more complex society to maintain itself.  This was the probable inspiration for the development of the first cuneiform tablets in Mesopotamia (Boyarin, 1993; Diringer, 1968; Manguel, 1996), since so many of these early literacy artifacts appear to be records of economic exchanges or tax obligations.

In some cultural contexts, literacy became a way to communicate common experiences among the oppressed.  This happened in 11th century Japan when a separate writing system was developed by the women at court and Lady Murasaki wrote the first novel, The Tale of the Genji (Manguel, 1996; Morris, 1964). It also happened in Czarist Russia when resistance to oppression led to politically charged forms of literacy.  These included samizdat, a secretive system of self-publication for revolutionary texts and literature prohibited by the government.  This form of writing and reading developed its own symbolic representations for revolution and resistance, many of which made their way past unknowing censors into officially published works of literature. Other examples of oppression shaping the form and function of literacy include the story of the Cherokee and of African Americans in the antebellum, southern U.S. (Cornelius, 1991; Douglass, 1981; Manguel, 1996).

During medieval Europe, literacy was a vehicle to enforce a common religious dogma in a diverse world with competing religious points of view. A literate priesthood was used to faithfully copy, read, and interpret common religious texts for the masses in order to assure their salvation.  Holding the central texts of Christianity so tightly within a literate priesthood enabled this religion to survive across enormous distances, cultures, and time.

Forces of resistance inevitably emerged, however, largely due to the belief that individuals, not priests, ought to be responsible for their own salvation.  In post-reformation Europe, literacy became much more widespread as Luther argued the need for individuals to read and directly access religious texts on their own.  Simultaneous with this resistance, printing technologies developed to enable this more individual definition of salvation and a more distributed definition of literacy.

In the U.S. and other countries, the development of democracy, based on informed citizens making reasoned decisions at the ballot box, eventually led to a widely distributed definition of literacy.  It also led to the establishment of public schools charged with developing citizens who were literate, and in their literacy, might be thoughtfully informed about important national affairs.

It is clear the cultural context profoundly shapes the nature of literacy.  It is also true that the cultural context profoundly influences the nature of literacy instruction.  Some time ago, Nila Banton Smith (1965) demonstrated how cultural forces at work within the U.S. regularly altered the nature of literacy instruction:

The story of American reading is a fascinating one to pursue...It is a story which reflects the changing religious, economic, and political institutions of a growing and progressive country...This evolutionary progress in reading has been marked by a series of emphases, each of which has been so fundamental in nature as to have controlled, to a large extent, both the method and content of reading instruction during the period of its greatest intensity. (p. 1)

Smith went on to describe different periods of reading instruction and how each was shaped by the most powerful cultural forces of its time. These included periods where reading instruction was influenced by: religion (1607 -- 1776), nation building and morality (1776 -- 1840), the education of an intelligent citizenry (1840 -- 1880), the view of reading as a cultural asset (1880 -- 1910), the scientific investigation of reading (1910 -- 1935), international conflict (1930 -- 1950), and culminating, in a prescient analysis, with a period of expanding knowledge and technological revolution (1950 -- ).

Clearly, the cultural contexts of the future will exert a profound effect in shaping the nature of both literacy and literacy instruction.  Therefore, any attempt to predict the nature of literacy and literacy instruction must begin by exploring those cultural elements most likely to shape our futures.  As we do so, we need to remind ourselves how inevitably limited even this view of the next millennium is.  The disparate nature of the many cultural forces described above makes clear how difficult it is to anticipate all of the influences that will shape our literacy futures.  Who can anticipate which new forces will be important to shaping literacy instruction 200, 400, 600, or 800 years from now?

While it is impossible to anticipate which cultural forces might shape the nature of literacy instruction that far into the future, it is possible to explore those forces at work today which are likely to shape literacy instruction during more immediate time periods.  Such an exploration, while inevitably speculative, may inform our thinking by providing a broad, descriptive portrait of the direction literacy instruction might take.

What are the important cultural forces at work today that will frame the story of literacy instruction in the future?  We believe they include the following:

• global economic competition within a world economy based increasingly on the effective use of information and communication;
• public policy initiatives by governments around the world to ensure higher levels of literacy achievement; and
• literacy as technological deixis.

While these cultural forces will frame the broad outlines of the story we will all be constructing in the years ahead, the outcome of a number of other issues, whose resolution are far less certain, will determine how the individual lines of this story are written.  Chief among these are the important challenges we will face to convergence: budgetary challenges, staff development challenges, and the challenge to use ICT to make all of our lives better.  We will explore these issues at the end of our analysis.
 

 Global Economic Competition within A World Economy Based Increasingly on the Effective Use of Information and Communication

 As we begin to speculate about the nature of literacy instruction in the years ahead, it is important to consider how the nature of work is likely to change. Especially in the recent past, literacy education has been seen as important in preparing children for lifeís opportunities through the nature of work we anticipate in the future (Bruce, 1997a; Mikulecky & Kirkley, 1998).

 In some cultural contexts, the nature of work has been defined by oneís access to land, labor, or capital.  Analyses by Reich (1992) and Rifkin (1995) indicate this definition has fundamentally changed in many countries.  Increasingly, work is characterized by the effective use of information to solve important problems within a globally competitive economy.  Today, it is access to information and the ability to use information effectively that increasingly enables individuals to seize lifeís opportunities, not access to land, labor, or capital.  Moreover, as networked, digital technologies provide greater and more rapid access to larger amounts of information, the efficient use of information skills such as reading and writing become even more important in competitive workplace contexts (Gilster, 1997; Harrison & Stephen, 1996).

 Information skills such as reading and writing are important within organizations that specialize in technology and information services, of course, but they are also increasingly important within all types of workplaces.  Because trade barriers are falling and international trade is expanding, many workplaces are undergoing a radical transformation (Bruce, 1997a; Drucker, 1994; Gilster, 1997; Mikulecky & Kirkley, 1998).  In a global economy where competition is more intense because competing companies are more numerous, workplaces must seek more efficient ways of conducting business if they hope to survive.  Often, they seek to transform themselves into high performance workplaces, workplaces that are more competitive, more efficient, and more responsive to the needs of their customers.  These new types of workplaces are characterized by several elements, each of which has important implications for the nature of literacy instruction.

 One aspect of this change involves moving from a centrally planned organization to one that relies increasingly on collaborative teams at all levels, often with members who seldom are located in the same physical space.  These teams assume greater initiative for planning ways to work more efficiently and effectively.  Instead of decisions emanating from the top of an organization, teams within lower levels of the organization are increasingly encouraged to identify and solve important problems that lead to more efficient means of producing goods or providing services.  Companies appear to work more efficiently and effectively when the closest, most direct connections exist between customers and those who produce goods or provide services.

 The change to a high performance workplace requires organizations to place a premium on people who possess effective problem-solving skills.  As collaborative teams seek more effective ways of working, they are expected to identify problems important to their unit and seek appropriate solutions.  This has important consequences for schools who will need to provide students with greater preparation in critical thinking, analysis, and problem solving. Students, when they leave school, will need to be able to identify central problems, find appropriate information quickly, and then use this information to solve the problems they identify.

 Another aspect of this change appears to be the increased value in effective collaboration and communication skills that are critical to success within a decentralized, high performance workplace. The changes from a centralized to a decentralized workplace requires collaboration and communication skills so that the best decisions get made at every level in an organization and so that changes at one level are clearly communicated to other levels. We will need to support the development of effective collaboration and communication skills if we wish to prepare children for their futures in a workplace where these skills are so important.

 A final aspect of this change is that effective information access and use will be increasingly important to success. Individuals who can access information the fastest, evaluate it most appropriately, and use it most effectively to solve important problems will be the ones who succeed in the challenging times that await our children.  This will make informational literacy a crucial determinant of success. We must prepare our students for the effective use of new information technologies that will become increasingly available as we change from an industrial to an information society.

 As we consider the economic context in the new millennium and the consequences for literacy instruction, it appears that problem solving, information access, evaluation of information resources, and communication will be important elements in the workplace.  It is likely these aspects will be increasingly important to shaping the nature of literacy instruction in the classroom.  In the information age in which we live, individuals, groups, and societies will succeed to the extent they are able to access the best information in the shortest time to identify and solve the most important problems and communicate this information to others.

 This analysis, of course, is based a view of economics and literacy that is liberating, not one that is oppressive.  Alternative views are possible, suggesting that new technologies and literacy are deliberately manipulated for economic gain or political control (Selfe & Selfe, 1996; Virillo, 1986; see also Bloome & Kinzer, 1999), usually by those seeking to maintain and expand hegemony.  Literacy typically serves those in power, not those out of power (Graff, 1981; Harris, 1989; Levi-Strauss, 1973, Shannon, 1996).  Both views are probably justified since historical realities compel one to recognize that societies do not long survive without also valuing peace and justice and societies that value peace and justice do not long survive without actively protecting their interests.

 Regardless of how you interpret this tension, we believe that information economies, global competition, and the changing nature of work are some of the most powerful forces driving the changing nature of literacy instruction.  They prompt very real consequences for literacy education as we seek to prepare our students for their future.  They also contribute to the increasing convergence of literacy instruction with the use of networked ICT in classrooms. These new technologies of literacy provide powerful preparation in developing the skills central to success in an information economy: accessing the best information, doing so in the shortest time, using this information to identify and solve the most important problems, and then communicating these solutions to others.  Global economic competition provides important impetus for the convergence of literacy instruction with the use of networked ICT in the classroom.
 

 Public Policy Initiatives by Governments around the World to Ensure Higher Levels of Literacy Achievement

 Governments around the world are keenly aware of the consequences of global economic competition for their citizens.  They have responded by implementing public policies to raise literacy achievement in an attempt to better prepare their children for the challenges that lie ahead.  Simultaneously, they have responded with initiatives to also provide new ICT resources to schools, preparing children for the literacies of the future.  These simultaneous steps by nations around the world are, we believe, the beginning of the convergence we anticipate for literacy instruction with networked technologies for information and communication.

 Around the world, many of us see the pressure to raise literacy achievement as a national phenomenon and limited strictly to reading. In the U.S. it is often seen as focused solely on early reading achievement, often through greater emphasis on more systematic approaches to phonics instruction.  The increasing attention paid to literacy achievement is not just a national phenomenon and it is not limited to early reading achievement.  The pressure to ensure higher levels of literacy achievement is a global phenomenon, driven largely by economic competition and a desire by governments to prepare their citizens for new economic realities. It is happening in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Ireland, the U.S. and many other countries.

 Moreover, the movement to raise literacy standards is much more complex than an attempt by political conservatives and religious fundamentalists to enact a simple back to basics or phonics first approach, though these elements certainly exist in countries such as the U.S. (c.f. Goodman, 1999).  Even though the reading community is not always aware of it, public policies to raise literacy achievement are always a part of a larger set of educational policies.  Today, these almost always include efforts to infuse information technologies into the curriculum, providing additional impetus to the changing definition of literacy instruction.  Countries around the world are rapidly implementing public policy initiatives designed to raise literacy levels at the same time they infuse technologies of information and communication into their classrooms.  These concomitant forces serve to foster the convergence of literacy instruction with networked technologies for information and communication.

 In the U.K., for example, education has been identified as the top priority of the Labour government.  The first white paper of this government, "Excellence in Schools," lays out in detail how higher standards for literacy are to be developed and achieved in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland (Secretary of State for Education and Employment, 1997).  The reason for this is clearly linked to global competition in an information age: "We are talking about investing in the human capital in the age of knowledge. To compete in a global economy...we will have to unlock the potential of every young person" (p. 3).

 These standards have now been published by the Department for Education and Employment at "The Standards Site" along with several recent policy initiatives including "The Literacy Hour", a "National Literacy Strategy," and a "National Year of Reading". For the first time, the national standards include standards in the effective use of information technologies, or IT (Department for Education and Employment, 1998). IT is also included within the National Curriculum for the first time.  Finally, a National Grid for Learning (NGfL) has been launched in 1998 to provide a national focal point for learning on the Internet by teachers and children.

 Similar policy initiatives are taking place in Finland.  Here, the national government appointed an expert committee in 1994 to prepare a national strategy for education, training, and research in an information society.  This report, "Education, Training, and Research in the Information Society: A National Strategy" (Ministry of Education, 1995) outlined the important role the educational system could play in helping Finland to compete in a global information economy.  It served as the impetus for a number of initiatives from the Ministry of Education including a three-year program launched in 1996 to teach students effective use of IT and ICT in schools.  This program includes developing new teaching methods for the use of IT and ICT, connecting all schools to the Internet before the year 2000, providing new computers to schools, and providing teachers with a five-week course of study in the effective instructional use of new information technologies (The Ministry of Education, Finland, 1997; R. Svedlin, personal communication, January 8, 1998).

 Ireland, like other nations, is also launching two policy initiatives: a National Reading Initiative and a Schools IT 2000 initiative. The National Reading Initiative will include the appointment of a National Coordinator, provision for remedial services in every school, a tripling of adult literacy funding, increased funding for remedial teachers, and a program of development for literacy related software (Press Release, 1998).

 The Schools IT 2000 initiative (Department of Education and Science, Government of Ireland, 1998) is being implemented because "Knowledge and familiarity with new technologies will be an important dimension of employability in the information society" (Irish Ministry of Education, 1998). Schools IT 2000 encompasses a number of policy initiatives intended to prepare children for a competitive, global, information economy.  These include: (a) a Technology Integration Initiative to provide over 15,000 computers and Internet connections in 1998 with additional funds available during subsequent years; (b) a Teacher Skills Initiative to provide training in ICT for over 8,000 teachers; (c) a Schools Support Initiative to develop ScoilNet, an Internet site to provide information and support for educators; and (d) a School Integration Project to provide funding for at least 40 model schools which will demonstrate the effective use of ICT in the classroom.

 Important policy initiatives are also underway in Australia.  In Australiaís federal system, educational policy is the responsibility of individual states.  Thus, it is especially noteworthy that the national government has been actively involved in educational policy initiatives, focusing on raising literacy achievement and on integrating information technologies into the schools.  National leadership on these issues demonstrates how critical they are to the nation as a whole.

 In 1996, the first national survey of literacy achievement in 16 years was conducted in Australia. According to the Federal Minister of Schools, the results indicated "About a third of primary school children cannot read or write at an adequate standard..." (Kemp, Media Release, September 15, 1997).

 As a result, Commonwealth, State, and Territory Education Ministers met and agreed to this broad principle: "That every child leaving primary school should... be able to read, write and spell at an appropriate level" (Ministry for Schools, Vocational Education and Training, Preface). Moreover, the combined group of education ministers agreed to a set of literacy benchmarks (Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs,1998) and a National Plan was initiated to improve literacy levels with support from commonwealth, state, and territory governments.  Achievement will be measured against the national benchmarks and results will be reported annually.

 In May of 1998 the federal government also circulated for comment a set of "Common and Agreed National Goals for Schooling in Australia" (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training, and Youth Affairs, 1998) which included an emphasis on both literacy and IT.  In particular, it noted that, "When students leave school: they should have skills in analysis and problem solving and the ability to become confident and technologically competent members of the 21st century society..." (Appendix 1).  Moreover, the federal government is now circulating for comment a document outlining a national strategy for becoming more competitive in a global information economy, "A Strategic Framework for the Information Economy: Identifying Priorities for Action" (Ministry for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, December 1998).  This document outlines ten action priorities.  The second priority focuses on the role of schools in preparing children in IT: "Deliver the education and skills Australians need to participate in the information economy" (Ministry for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, December 1998).

 Finally, the federal government along with commonwealth, state, and territory education departments have developed a central Internet resource for educators at all levels, the Educational network of Australia (EdNA). This extensive resource provides a range of information resources for children, teachers, professors, researchers, and policy makers.

 New Zealand is also beginning public policy initiatives to raise literacy achievement and to integrate ICT into the curriculum.  At the end of 1998, the government announced that it intended to develop a National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy to enable every nine-year-old to read, write, and do math proficiently by 2005 (Literacy Strategy Underway, 1999). As part of this effort, it has recently appointed a National Literacy Taskforce to assist the government in developing this strategy.  In addition to the need to be competitive in the global economy, the impetus for this is the need to close the gap between good and poor readers. The 1990 Reading Literacy Study by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) found a large gap between the highest and lowest levels of reading achievement in New Zealand. In addition, New Zealand had the biggest gap in achievement between children learning in their home language and children who were not.

 Simultaneous with these initiatives in literacy education, the national government has released a policy paper describing strategies for supporting the use of ICT in New Zealandís schools, "Interactive Education: An Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Strategy for Schools" (Ministry of Education, 1998). This document defines the focus for national initiatives for ICT: building infrastructure and improving the capability of schools to use ICT effectively in the curriculum.  It describes several new initiatives the national government will take in 1999: developing an on-line resource center for schools, teachers, and children; providing support for professional development so schools can plan for and implement the use of ICT more effectively; and supporting model ICT professional development schools.  The reason for these initiatives is, again, related to global competition:

 New Zealand schools aim to create a learning environment that enables students to develop the attitudes, knowledge, understandings, and skills to enable them... to succeed in the modern competitive economy ... (Ministry of Education, 1998, Introduction)

 In the U.S. with a long history of state and local control over educational policies and with the recent past characterized by intense partisanship at the federal level, national policy initiatives have been difficult to implement in education.  Most of the public policy initiatives for raising literacy standards have taken place at the state level. Many states have recently established standards or benchmarks, often in conjunction with new, statewide assessment instruments.  Many states have also initiated polices to infuse more IT and ICT in the classroom.

 At the federal level, policy initiatives have been more diffuse in origin and many have attracted bitter partisan debates.  These have resulted in recent legislation such as The Reading Excellence Act (Goodman, 1999), the appointment of a National Reading Panel for Reading, and the development of Standards for the English Language Arts (IRA & NCTE, 1996), each marked by substantial controversy.

 At the federal level, initiatives in the area of IT and ICT have also been somewhat difficult because of various political issues.  A major development, however, has been the establishment of the "Universal Service Support Mechanism for Schools and Libraries," a policy initiative known informally as the "E-rate program."  This program is funded by Congress under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and administered by the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD) of the Universal Service Administrative Company, a not-for-profit organization established by the FCC for this purpose.  The program has also had its share of controversy.  Starting in 1998, it began to annually distribute about $1.25 billion in financial support to schools and libraries for Internet access, based on indicators of financial need.

 In addition to local and state initiatives, this program has contributed in important ways to the rapid infusion of Internet computers within the K-12 classrooms of the U.S.  In the fall of 1997, 27 percent of the classrooms in the U.S. had at least one computer connected to the Internet; in the fall of 1998 this had nearly doubled to 51 percent; and projections call for nearly 100 percent of classrooms to be connected in the fall of 2000 (National Center for Education Statistics, 1999)

 Telecommunications companies are seeking to reduce the revenue stream for this program, financed largely from a surcharge to their customers.  Nevertheless, it appears this program may survive the intense partisan politics of Washington. D. C.  What is surprising is that so many initiatives, however tortured their history, have emerged at the national level in the U.S. during the past five years.  Clearly, the federal government actively seeks to raise childrenís performance in literacy and to provide support for IT and ICT to schools.

 Many nations around the world, aware of the need to prepare students for the challenges of a competitive global economy are developing public policy initiatives to raise literacy standards and infuse IT and ICT into the curriculum.  While each nation approaches the issue in its own fashion, what is striking is the common effort in this direction.  Especially salient are those nations with a long tradition of local control.  Even in countries such as Australia and the U.S., the federal governments are beginning to develop important national initiatives to raise literacy levels and prepare children in the use of information and communication technologies.

 Public policy initiatives such as these, and many more that will undoubtedly follow, will affect the nature of literacy instruction in profound ways.  We have only just begun to see the effects of these changes in the classroom.  We believe these initiatives will contribute, in important ways, to the increasing convergence of literacy instruction with the use of networked, information and communication technologies such as the Internet.
 

 Literacy as Technological Deixis

 There is also a third force we believe will be central to defining the nature of literacy instruction in the next millennium: Literacy is regularly changing as new technologies for information and communication continuously appear and as new envisionments for exploiting these technologies are continuously developed by users. It is becoming increasingly clear that we are in a period of rapid, technological change; technologies in nearly every field are undergoing fundamental change on a regular basis.  This is especially true for the technologies of literacy (Leu, in press a).

 It seems that nearly every day we encounter a new technology of literacy, one with which we are unfamiliar.  New versions of Internet browsers, new versions of operating systems, new upgrades of word processing programs, new e-mail software, new forms of chat software, new forms of mailing list or bulletin board software, new video conferencing or telephonic software, new forms of presentation software, the list goes on and on. And consider how different this list will look only ten years from now, let alone hundreds of years from now. It is clear that the technologies of literacy are rapidly changing.

 To make the point another way, consider the changes to the forms and functions of literacy experienced by many students who are graduating from secondary school during the current year.  Fifteen years ago, few students needed to know how to use word processing technologies; ten years ago, few students needed to be able to access the rich resources of CD-ROM technologies, five years ago, few students used Internet and e-mail technologies. Now, however, each of these technologies is an important part of the curriculum in many schools.  One can only wonder at the dramatic changes in ICT ahead for children who begin their school careers in the future.

 Leu (1997a, in press) argued that we have entered a period of literacy as technological deixis. During this period the forms and functions of literacy rapidly change as new technologies for information and communication emerge and as new envisionments for their use are constructed by users.  The term deixis is a word used by linguists and others (Fillmore, 1972; Murphy, 1986) for words like now, today, here, there, go, and come.  These are words whose meanings change quickly, depending upon the time or space in which they are uttered.  If I say "now" as I write this draft, it means my current moment during the end of 1998.  If you say "now" when you encounter this example, it means the moment in time when you read these lines.  While to Gertrude Stein "A rose is a rose, is a rose," now is not now, is not now.  Its meaning depends upon the temporal context when it is uttered.

 Literacy is also deictic. Both the forms and functions of literacy have regularly changed over time.  This will continue into the future but at a much faster pace.  As literacy increasingly becomes technological deixis, we will see greater convergence of literacy instruction with networked technologies for information and communication.  The changing constructions of literacy within new technologies will require us to prepare children to keep up with these changes.  Networked technologies for information and communication will quickly become the best means for accomplishing this.

 There are four sources for the increasingly deictic nature of literacy: (a) transformations of literacy because of technological change; (b) envisionments of new literacy potentials within new technologies, (c) the convergence of literacy instruction with networked technologies of information and communication; and (d) the use of increasingly efficient technologies of communication.  The first source has already been noted: The rapid changes in ICT technologies repeatedly alter the nature of literacy. New technologies transform previous literacies, redefining what it means to become literate (Reinking, 1998).

 In addition, there is also a second source, the envisionments we construct as we use new technologies for literate acts.  Bruce (1997b) notes that the impact of technology is not just a one-way street.  He argues that technology changes literacy but that literacy also changes technology in what he describes as a transactional relationship.  Individuals who use new technologies often envision new ways of using them and, in their envisionments, change the nature of literacy (Leu, Karchmer, & Leu, 1999).  Envisionments take place when teachers, children, and others imagine new possibilities for literacy and learning, transform existing technologies to construct this vision, and then share their work with others.  We see examples of these envisionments when teachers alter a more direct instructional model of technology for literacy learning into a more student-centered model (Labbo, Phillips, & Murray, 1995-1996).  We also see examples of literacy envisionments when teachers develop curricular resources with Internet technologies and then share their work with others to support literacy and learning.  These include:
 

• Harriet Tubman & The Underground Railroad, a site developed by Patty Taverna, Terry Hongell, and Patty's second grade class at Pocantico Hills School in Sleepy Hollow, New York. This site contains an extensive collection of instructional ideas and resources for studying Harriet Tubman and her important work in the US.

• Treasures of the Sea: Exploring the Ocean Through Literature, a series of Internet resources and experiences developed by Hazel Jobe, a Title I reading teacher in Lewisburg, Tennessee.

• Earth Day Groceries Project, an environmental project organized around Earth Day developed by Mark Ahlness, a third-grade teacher in Seattle, Washington;

• SCORE Cyberguides, a collection of Internet resources for individual works of literature contributed by teachers and directed by Don Mayfield and Linda Taggart-Fregoso of the San Diego schools;

• The Read In!, a day set aside for exchanging literature experiences and communicating with authors over the Internet;

• Book Rap, literature discussion groups run over the Internet and coordinated by Cherrol McGhee, a teacher at the Hillview State Primary School in Queensland, Australia;

• The Looney Lobsters a "travel buddies" project where participating classes share and communicate about regional literature.

Leu, Karchmer, and Leu (1999) referred to these changing envisionments as "The Miss Rumphius Effect" since teachers, like the title character in the book by Barbara Cooney (1982), envision a better world and then act on that envisionment, regularly transforming Internet technologies and constructing new instructional worlds for literacy and learning.
 
 

Insert Figure 1 About Here

Transformations of literacy because of new technologies and envisionments of new forms of technology are the primary sources for the increasingly deictic nature of literacy.  In addition, however, two factors increase the pace at which change takes place: convergence and the use of increasingly efficient technologies of communication.

Convergence speeds up the rate at which literacy changes. As more and more classrooms enter the world of networked ICT, the changes to literacy will take place at a more rapid rate.

Thus, while the increasingly deictic nature of literacy contributes to convergence, convergence also contributes to deixis.  The interaction between these two phenomena increases as literacy instruction increasingly takes place within networked ICT.  This interaction will increase the rate at which changes to literacy occur.

There is also a second factor that speeds up the rate at which literacy changes: new technologies for information and communication permit the immediate exchange of even newer technologies and envisionments for their use.  This increases up the already rapid pace of change in the forms and functions of literacy, increasing the complexity of the challenges we face as we consider how best to prepare students for their literacy futures.  Thus, the already rapid pace of change in the forms and functions of literacy are exacerbated by the speed with which new envisionments and new technologies are communicated (Leu, in press a).

We believe the deictic nature of literacy will present important challenges to all of us in the years ahead.  As we seek to prepare children for their literacy futures we must recognize that the literacies of today will not be the literacies of tomorrow (Leu, in press b).  Rapidly changing definitions of literacy will alter our work in important ways.  One might, for example, anticipate that literacy will not be measured simply by our ability to comprehend, analyze, and communicate.  Instead, we expect literacy will be increasingly defined around our ability to adapt to the changing technologies of information and communication and our ability to envision new ways to use these technologies for important purposes.

The deictic nature of literacy will be an important factor moving us toward the convergence of literacy instruction and networked technologies for information and communication such as the Internet.  These technologies will permit us and our students to keep up with the new technologies and the new literacies that will appear.  They also provide us with opportunities to learn from others about how best to use these technologies in our classrooms.
 

What Will Literacy Instruction Be Like In The Future?

Understanding these three cultural forces helps us to develop informed speculation about the nature of literacy instruction in the years ahead. Global economic competition, public policy initiatives by governments around the world to ensure higher levels of literacy achievement, and literacy as technological deixis make certain consequences more likely than others for literacy education in the years ahead.  Two consequences are clear from this analysis: (a) literacy instruction will be even more important than it is today; and (b) literacy instruction will undergo fundamental change as it converges with the use of ICT.

Increasingly, lifeís opportunities will be defined by oneís ability to quickly locate useful information to solve important problems and then communicate the solutions to others.  As a result, many nations around the world are setting higher standards for literacy achievement for children and for teachers.  They are also taking aggressive policy actions to achieve these standards.  It is likely this movement will become a continuous process as countries compete, driven by economic and political needs to prepare children for a global economy based increasingly on information.

As some countries achieve gains in literacy achievement, others will seek to meet or exceed these achievements in order for their citizens to compete globally.  In each country, this process will result in the bar regularly raised higher and higher, with standards in the future that will far exceed the standards of today. Achieving higher standards of literacy will become a continuous process, not a single event, as countries seek to prepare children for constructing the futures they deserve. Literacy and literacy instruction will be even more important in the future than they are now. We expect students in the future will achieve levels of literacy that are difficult to imagine today, and that definitions of literacy will be different from those now in use.

We should also note there are alternatives to this vision of literacy and literacy instruction becoming even more important than it is today.  One might argue that digital, multimedia technologies of information and communication will make reading and writing less important, not more important. According to this argument, viewing images, video, and animation as we listen to audio will replace the need to acquire information from written text.  While there can be no doubt that multimedia information sources are quickly replacing information previously presented solely in traditional text, we believe that reading traditional text will continue to be a prominent aspect of literacy for two reasons: speed and information management.  We read text far faster than we can listen to the same information presented with audio technologies or viewed with video technologies.  Moreover, databases are far more effectively constructed and efficiently accessed around textual information, not images, sound, or video.  In a world where speed, retrieval, and comprehension are central to success, reading traditional text is likely to become more important, not less.

Writing will also remain important in our literacy futures for similar reasons. We can acquire information faster by reading a written text than by listening to a spoken text. Also, written messages may be stored in a manner that permits faster retrieval when they are needed (Dillon, 1996).  If you have any doubts that written communication skills will continue to be important in the future, consider the continued attempts to develop technologies that accurately convert speech to text.  The enormous effort devoted to this holy grail of information technology provides compelling testimony to the continuing importance of composing written text.  Certainly the nature of compositions will change, but written language will continue to be important in our futures.

While reading and composing will continue to be important in our futures, the nature of literacy will change dramatically and continuously.  The greatest change will come from the new technologies for literacy that will regularly appear and be integrated into the literacy curriculum.  As we have seen, developed nations around the world are taking important, initial steps to integrate technologies of information and communication into the curriculum.  These beginning steps will rapidly accelerate as nations seek the best ways to educate their citizens. The same forces that drive rapidly increasing standards for literacy will drive teachers and children to learn how to effectively use these new technologies for literacy at higher and higher levels of proficiency.

Again, there are alternatives to the vision of the increasing use of ICT in schools.  Some, for example, have argued against the need for these technologies in education (Oppenheimer, 1997; Roszak, 1994; Stoll, 1995) or for literacy (Birkerts, 1994; Rochlin, 1997).  Many of these skeptics point to the lack of hard data on the learning gains ICT generate.

While hard data do exist on the efficacy of digital technologies for literacy and learning in several meta analyses of older technologies (Burns & Bozeman, 1981; Bangert-Drowns, Kulik & Kulik, 1985, 1991; Kulik, Kulik & Bangert-Drowns, 1990) as well as preliminary studies of newer, networked technologies (Follansbee, Hughes, Pisha, & Stahl, 1997), we believe the need for experimental data is, in some sense, a moot issue. Leu (in press) makes a simple argument against those who do not believe sufficient evidence exists to invest heavily in the use of ICT technologies in classrooms:

Who needs hard data on the beneficial outcomes of new technologies for literacy or learning when it becomes clear these technologies, or their related successors, will be the technologies of our childrenís futures? While some would argue we must wait until compelling data are available; I would argue that to wait for these data will make them useless since new technologies will have appeared by then. If it is already clear that workplaces and higher education have become dependent upon networked information environments such as the Internet, who has the luxury of time to wait for a consistent body of research to appear, demonstrating their effectiveness?  Research might be better spent exploring issues of how to support teachersí efforts to unlock the potentials of new technologies, not demonstrating the learning gains from technologies we already know will be important to our childrenís success at lifeís opportunities.
 

Thinking about the What of Literacy Instruction

There are other changes in our instructional futures.  What will children learn about literacy in the future?  We expect that instruction will pay greater attention to the literacies of information, problem identification, critical thinking, strategic knowledge, effective communication, speed, and continuous change.

While literacy instruction has often emphasized narrative, literary forms in the past, pressures are likely to build to include more informational experiences earlier in the literacy curriculum.  As nations seek to prepare children for their information futures, it would not be too surprising to find greater emphasis devoted to the literacies of information.

Along with this shift, it is likely that much greater attention will be devoted to supporting the literacies of problem identification. What are interesting and important problems to explore?  Why are these problems important and not others?  What obligations do I have to others in the way I frame problems to be explored? An important part of our informational world will be the ability to define important problems whose solution will make all of our worlds better.

As access to information networks expands, the ability to critically evaluate the enormous amounts of information that are increasingly available becomes paramount (Enochsson, 1998).  What is the best information for my purposes?  How can I tell?  Has this person reasoned well?  How should I approach this problem?  Is the information clear that I provide?  How will others interpret the information I provide? In a networked world where anyone can publish anything, it will become increasingly important to know how to evaluate the accuracy of information.

As information resources become more complexly networked, strategic knowledge will become an even more important part of our literacy curriculum than it is today. Browsing, data base, and search technologies that regularly change will require far greater strategic knowledge than is required within more limited and static, traditional texts.  Students will need to continually develop sophisticated strategies to successfully navigate information networks that appear to be expanding exponentially.  How can I locate the information I require?  How can I publish my information so that others will be able to locate it when they require it?  Becoming literate will require our students to acquire new and increasingly sophisticated strategies for acquiring and publishing information within these complex and continually changing contexts for information.

Because we will be exchanging far vaster amounts of information with others, effective communication skills will become increasingly important, too.  If you have developed an important solution to a problem, you will be very interested in communicating your information in the most effective manner. And, as we communicate more often with colleagues who come from other cultural contexts around the world, we will need to continue to develop culturally sensitive ways of communicating.  How can I share this information most effectively with others?  What backgrounds do the recipients of my message possess?  How will this influence the manner in which they interpret my information?  Effective communication will become increasingly important in our literacy futures.

In a world of vast information resources, the literacies of speed will also become increasingly important concerns. The speed it takes to acquire information will become an important measure of success within various technologies.  Quickly finding, evaluating, using, and communicating information will become instructional issues.  How can we help children learn to work with various information technologies efficiently?  Which strategies, in which contexts, for which tasks allow us to acquire, use, and communicate information most efficiently?  These, and related questions will become important in our instructional futures.

Finally, the literacies of change will be an essential aspect of our any literacy curriculum.  How can one keep up with the literacies demanded by the rapidly changing technologies for information and communication that will be a part of our future?  It may be that the ability to learn continuously changing technologies and new envisionments for literacy may be a better target than literacy itself (Leu, in press a).  What is clear is that literacy will no longer be an end state.  Instead, it will become a continuous learning process for all of us.  Being literate will be an anachronism.  Becoming literate will be the more precise term, since each of us will always be acquiring new literacies as new technologies for literacy regularly appear.
 

Thinking about the How of Literacy Instruction

These are all predictions about the what of literacy instruction.  Another central issue is how children will learn about literacy. One could argue for an image of instruction based on individuals acquiring the new literacies through a direct instructional approach.  Digital technology has been especially well suited to providing direct instruction, with individuals progressing as they are able to demonstrate performance on specific skills.  This has been true from the time of Atkinson and Hansen (1966-1967) to the present-day technologies for Integrated Learning Systems. These approaches to literacy instruction will probably always be with us.  We doubt, however, these approaches will ever play a major role in literacy education. We see a very different view of the future.

We expect social learning strategies will be central to literacy instruction in the future.  Increasingly, children will be supported in learning how to learn about literacy from one another Labbo, 1996; Labbo & Kuhn, 1998).  As networked information resources become more extensive and complexly structured, and as ICTs continue to change with some frequency, no one person can be expected to know everything there is to know about literacy.  The technologies of literacy will simply change too quickly and be too extensive to permit any single person to be literate in them all.  Each of us, however, will know something useful to others.  This will distribute knowledge about literacy throughout the classroom, especially as students move above beginning stages. One student may know the best strategies for publishing a report on the network while another knows the best way to use a new video conferencing technology.  We will need to support children in learning how best to learn from others.

Because social learning strategies will become increasingly important, we believe there will be far more collaborative learning experiences than exist in many of todayís classrooms.  Collaborative learning experiences such as cooperative group learning, Internet Workshop, Internet Project, and others still to be envisioned will provide opportunities for children to learn from one another about important strategies for using information resources effectively as they learn about the world around them  (Leu & Kinzer, 1999; Leu & Leu, 1997, 1999).  Helping children to learn effective literacy strategies from one another will prepare them for their futures where workplaces increasingly require these collaborative learning skills.

Collaborative learning experiences such as these will increasingly transcend national boundaries. New technologies for information and communication allow us to look far beyond our individual classrooms and make new connections. This permits us to see the world in new and more powerful ways. It is this type of world, where we are all more closely connected, that we need to keep in mind as we prepare our students for their literacy and learning journeys.

Within these contexts for literacy learning, where social learning strategies are favored, we will need to pay special attention to children who rely solely upon independent learning strategies. In the past, independent learning strategies have been favored in school classrooms; in the future it may disadvantage children where collaborative strategies become essential for keeping up with changes in the technologies of literacy.

Finally, it is likely we will see the eventual convergence of literacy and learning in subject areas. We have already argued for the convergence of literacy instruction and networked technologies for information and communication such as the Internet.  We think it is likely to see a similar convergence of literacy and learning in subject areas.  As information resources are networked and as literacy becomes more tightly defined around ICT it becomes more difficult to separate subject area learning. It also becomes more difficult to separate literacy learning from subject area learning.  Increasingly literacy learning will take place within the information contexts whose boundaries disappear in a connected world of information.  This will mean that we will see new and continuously changing definitions of what it means to be engaged in an authentic literacy task.  For many classrooms today, for example, reading a work of literature and responding within an individual journal is no longer authentic.  Instead, literacy often consists of correspondence and videoconferences with other classrooms around the world about inquiry projects children have published on the Internet.  Even this definition of an authentic literacy task, however, will quickly change in the years ahead.

Challenges to Change

We have described our view of the cultural forces that are likely to the shape the nature of literacy instruction in the next millennium.  We have also described the broad outlines of the story we expect to see.  The details of this story, however, will be determined by our collective responses to several important challenges to change.

Change is always difficult, and educational systems are widely recognized for being resistant to change (Cuban, 1987; Luehrmann, 1985), especially changes in technology use.  We expect three important challenges to have the greatest impact in refining the picture we have painted for the nature of literacy instruction in the future: (a) challenges related to budget considerations, (b) challenges related to professional development, and (c) challenges related to using technology in ways that will make all of our lives better.  In large part, the ending to our story will be determined by our responses to these issues.

The Budgetary Challenge

Central to our vision of the future is an important budgetary challenge all countries must face: Never before have educational systems been faced with the expenses of their literacy futures.  The capital investments that are required in a world of continuously changing technologies of literacy may slow the vision for literacy instruction we describe.  This will be a special challenge for schools and nations who face extraordinary financial pressures, where the important issue facing a child is where the next meal will come from, not how to obtain access to the Internet.

As we seek to meet this challenge for all children, we should also recognize that one common view of these expenses may not be correct. The common view is that budgetary considerations have to do with hardware issues, purchasing computers for use in school. This is not the area that poses the greatest budgetary challenge.

Hardware costs continue to fall at a rapid rate. Several brands of computers are currently available, advertised in newspaper flyers on weekly basis, that provide a monitor and color printer, and a configuration including a 2.5 gigabyte hard drive, a 300 MHz processor, 32Megs of RAM, a 32x CD-ROM Drive, a high density floppy disc drive and a 56K modem, all for less than $600. We expect these costs to continue to decline or to stabilize but offer more features and speed.

A more difficult budgetary challenge is increasing or reallocating instructional supply budgets to provide necessary software, monthly telephone/cable/Internet provider connection charges, printer ink and paper, diskettes for each student, and maintenance costs.  Current instructional supply budgets are limited and, in favored school systems, must purchase everything from writing paper to classroom and library books, transparencies, photocopy paper, manipulatives, finger paint and other instructional items.  Without increased supply budgets to account for technology-related needs, computer hardware might well be available but remain unused.  All schools will encounter difficult decisions as they decide how best to allocate limited instructional budgets as new technologies continue to appear and merge with current instructional tools.

Issues related to infrastructure, in developed as well as developing nations, also provide a challenge in an era where budget trade-offs must be made to allow for needed capital expenditures. This is true for even the most advantaged nations.  In the U. S., for example, a recent State of the Union Address acknowledged that "too many of our schools are so old they're falling apart, or so over-crowded students are learning in trailers" (Clinton, 1999); there are estimates of a required $100 billion dollars to address deferred maintenance in U. S. schools (e.g., see Loveless, 1995);  and principals receive questions about the relative value of expenditures on technology while children are being asked to each bring one roll of toilet paper or a large bottle of liquid soap to their school in order to help out with the supply budget (Barbara Ide, personal communication, January, 15, 1997).

Clearly, the budgetary challenges are immense as we move toward merging new technology into changing definitions of literacy. The 1997 PCAST report suggests that $13 billion be spent annually (corrected to reflect 1996 dollars) for technology-related expenditures in the K-12 schools of the U.S.  Will schools and nations allocate the necessary resources to meet expenses such as these?  The answer is uncertain.  There is, though, some indication that many countries are beginning to recognize the costs of raising standards and infusing ICT within the curriculum. The international reports, detailed in a previous section of this paper, show the political will is developing to provide the necessary funds.  For many nations, there is a collective realization that it is simply more expensive, in the long term, if the budgetary challenge is not met in the short term.
 

The Professional Development Challenge

As in all educational endeavors, a committed, knowledgeable teacher is the most instrumental factor in effective instruction. This will be especially true as new technologies for information and communication regularly appear and converge with literacy and literacy instruction.(Leu et al, 1998). The repeated changes we envision in the nature of literacy instruction will require continuous staff development to support teachers in the effective use of new technologies for information and communication. Never before have we been faced with the professional development needs that will occur in our future. Will we be able to continuously support teachers when the definition of effective literacy instruction regularly changes?  The answer to this question is not yet clear.

The challenges will be enormous.  Consider, for example, the results of a recent survey in the U.S. where only 1 in 5 full-time public school teachers reported feeling very well prepared to integrate educational technology into classroom instruction (U.S. Department of Education, 1999a).  Moreover, schools in the US planned to spend only 20% of the amount recommended by the US Department of Education for staff development with technology (CEO Forum, 1999).  Districts are only spending about 6 percent of their technology budgets on staff development as opposed to the recommended 30 per cent (US Department of Education, 1999b).

We also need to keep in mind that this commitment to support staff development must be both substantially larger than it is today and also continuous.  We have argued that literacy can be viewed as a deictic term.  We feel that a similar argument can be made for literacy instruction.  New approaches as well as new content will regularly emerge as new technologies for information and communication appear.  We are just beginning to see some of these changes, changes that will repeatedly occur in our futures.

Perhaps an even greater aspect of this challenge will be the response of teacher education programs within universities and colleges.  Teacher education must begin to include the new literacies of networked information and communication technologies within methods courses.  Most importantly, those of us in reading and literacy education must begin to lead the way in these efforts, bringing our special insights about literacy education to these new contexts for literacy and learning.  Looking at the current situation one can not be especially sanguine.  Few teacher education programs currently provide this preparation and many that do provide preparation in technology use tend to provide it as an isolated course, seldom with the reading or literacy methods courses. As the recent report from the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education noted, "Not using technology much in their own research and teaching, teacher education faculty have insufficient understanding of the demands on classroom teachers to incorporate technology into their teaching" (N.C.A.T.E., 1997).  The recent CEO Forum report (CEO Forum, 1999) also notes that only half of the states in the US require computer education for licensure. Of these, only two (North Carolina and Vermont) require students to demonstrate their ability with technologies within a portfolio.  Unless we begin to rethink the commitment we have to staff development and teacher education, our ability to prepare children for the literacies of their future will be severely limited.

Literacy instruction used to mean a lecture-based approach about instructional procedures merged with a didactic textbook (at the preservice and inservice levels), and a generally controlled, largely skills-based approach at the reading acquisition stage for children.  Now, literacy instruction at all levelsóPreK through  collegeómeans incorporating a much more authentic and learner-centered approach.  In the future, with the aid of interactive, multimedia technologies, it will come to mean even more learner-based instruction, with learners controlling their own destinations and roads to achieving their goals.

Using technology in classrooms poses special challenges to teachers, beyond those normally seen when a new curriculum, textbook, or approach is attempted.  Usually, a change in curriculum requires that the teacher learn the new material and how to use it.  Little else need change, howeveróthe teacher is still the expert in the classroom; instruction proceeds at the direction of the teacher.  With the influx of a computer and an Internet connection, however, it is likely that many children will be more sophisticated than their teacher in using these technologies.  Further, the use of Internet and hypermedia environments make it possible for children to guide their own learning as their needs and interests are piqued and to raise unanticipated questions that the teacher might not be able to answer.

A shift from teacher as all-knowing expert in a teacher-centered classroom to participant/facilitator in a student-centered classroom can be threatening, yet is necessary if optimal uses of technology are to occur.  For example, Honey and Moeller (1990) found that high-technology use teachers had student-centered beliefs and demonstrated these beliefs in their classroom practices.  Low-technology use teachers had more teacher-centered beliefs, but they also stated a personal fear of technology, especially in terms of how technology might diminish their authority.

Professional development programs will need to address teachersí instructional beliefs and philosophies as well as their knowledge related to technology use (Leu & Kinzer, 1999; Reinking, Labbo, & McKenna, 1997).  Most importantly, teacher education and staff development will have to begin to model the technologies of literacy in the manner in which they present information (N.C.A.T.E, 1997). This is the approach taken recently in work completed at Vanderbilt University by Kinzer, Risko, and their colleagues (Kinzer & Risko, 1998; Kinzer, Singer Gabella, & Rieth, 1994; Risko, 1995; Risko, Peter, & McAllister, 1996) using multimedia, cased-based instruction. This approach, regularly extended to new technologies as they appear, will provide an important solution to the challenge of classroom integration.

The instructional resources used in teacher education programs are likely to change in the future.  We see this taking place at a few institutions now as some textbooks used in teacher education programs are beginning to provide more currently authentic experiences through videotapes, WWW sites and suggested Internet uses, and as calls occur for integrating technology within textbooks and other instructional materials (e.g., see Labbo & Reinking, this volume).  They are also beginning to incorporate listservs where preservice teachers from across the country can speak to peers who are reading the same textbook and grappling with similar issues related to their emerging knowledge about literacy instruction.  Even more profound changes in the forms of information presented during teacher education will have to take place, however, if we hope to prepare teachers within the new technologies of literacy.

Preliminary evidence (Murphy & Camp, 1998; Prestidge, 1998; Williams, Goldman, Singer Gabella, Kinzer, & Risko, 1998; Williams Glaser, 1998b) suggests new technologies can be effective during teacher education and staff development efforts. We expect that preservice and inservice education will continually incorporate information and communication technologies into instructional practice and will do so in ways that go beyond simple use of technology in professional development to teaching preservice and inservice teachers how to integrate technology into their curriculum. This will be essential if we expect to begin to meet the continually changing challenges of professional development and to address calls from various powerful interest groups who are making recommendations that "hiring standards for teachers and administrators should include technology integration proficiency by fall 2000 and they should be mandatory by 2002." (CEO Forum, 1999).
 

The Challenge To Make All of Our Lives Better

Internet and related technologies are often viewed as facilitating personal and collective freedom.  For example, writers can post any message without being censored, thus facilitating creativity and the free movement of ideas.  Learners have access to unrestricted information in ways never available to them in the past.  However, these liberating features of technology have also given rise to concerns about safety issues in classrooms, as children can encounter inappropriate WWW sites either on purpose or by accident.  Thus, although hypertext and Internet environments are beneficial in addressing issues of background knowledge and access to information, challenges to such freedoms are being raised.  For example, Bloome and Kinzer (in press) have pointed out that while filtering software exists that can restrict access to sites deemed inappropriate, these restrictions reify power relations between teachers and learners, run counter to the learner-centered classrooms that are being increasingly advocated, and raise issues of freedom and censorship that will need to be resolved.

Issues of privacy will also come to fore as in no other time in our past.  For example, the most recent computer chip announced by Intel has sparked protests and calls for a boycott of all Intel products from consumer advocacy and privacy groups.  This outcry has been sparked by Intelís announcement that the Pentium III chip will by default transmit its unique serial number (and thus track users) internally and across the Internet.  Even if consumers turn this feature off, it turns itself back on  each time the computer is restarted (Tennessean, 1999).  Such tracking of personal computer use, as well as general privacy issues surrounding e-mail and other information transmitted and available to third party monitoring have raised legitimate concerns from advocacy groups and have also energized critics who wish to slow down computer implementation in our schools (and, perhaps, in our society in general).

An additional challenge to making all of our lives better concerns issues of equal access to information and to the technology that allows such access.  We note that there is still a large discrepancy between groups who have access to information and communication technologies and groups who do not.  This takes place on multiple levels, nations who are unable to afford the costs of ICT for their children, cultural groups within a nation who do not share in the access to ICT, families who are unable to support children at home with ICT, exceptional populations at schools who may have access to ICT limited, even individual children within individual classrooms containing ICT sometimes have more limited access than others, often in ways that are not always visible (Leu & Leu, 1999). Technology has the capability to make all of our lives betteróbut only if persons in positions of power and those who have policy-making capabilities ensure that issues of access and equity are addressed.

One of the subtle, but important, ways in which access may be denied is through linguistic or cultural dominance by nations who dominate networked information resources (Leu, 1997b).  In the past, languages and cultures have been dominated by nations possessing superior military and economic power.  In our ICT futures, the potential exists for languages and cultures to be dominated by nations possessing superior information resources and superior vehicles for communication.  We already see this happening.  Currently, the vast majority of Internet sites and Internet traffic takes place to and from locations in the United States.  Will this eventually result in our global village only speaking one language, only thinking within one cultureís view of the world, only accessing information shaped by one reality?   One worries about the consequences of globally networked information resources for the diversity that defines our world.  Will we lose the rich heritage of diverse languages and cultures that characterize our world, permitting varied and unique interpretations of the reality we inhabit?   Will the Internet mean that English will become the only language of international communication?  Will the Internet be a vehicle for the dominance of U.S. popular culture?  One hopes not, but the signs are already becoming clear that we may quickly lose our linguistic and cultural diversity if we all inhabit the same information and communication space on the Internet.

An alternative vision of our world is possible.  It is possible to support equal access to the new forms of literacy in our futures.  It is possible to use ICT to develop richer understandings of the diverse world in which we all live.  It is possible to use these new opportunities for literacy education to bring all of us together in ways that have never before happened. The technologies of information and communication possess special opportunities to help everyone better understand the unique qualities in each of our cultural traditions.  No other instructional resource available in our classroom has ever been as rich in its potential for developing an understanding of the diverse nature of our global society. The question is whether we have the vision and the will to accomplish this.

There are some indicators that lead us to anticipate that access will become more equitable in the future.   Each time there is a price drop in hardware more people are able to afford them.  Commitments by churches, public libraries, community centers, and schools that are making computer labs available to parents and children after hours, are extending access to traditionally disadvantaged groups.  Such trends, we feel, will continue, as will pubic policy initiatives to provide greater equity.  Just as public education was thought to be a necessary prerequisite to a better quality of life, which led to a guarantee of education for all, policy makers are beginning to realize that access to technology will be a prerequisite to quality of life and employment opportunities.  Whether or not a guarantee of access to technology for all will occur remains to be seen, but we do feel that availability in school classrooms will become common.  Thus, even though the challenges noted above (and others that we are not able to envision) will be with us for some time, we feel confident that they will be metóthe major cultural forces noted in the opening sections of this paper will result in increased uses of technology in all aspects of literacy.
 

Final Thoughts

We have attempted to describe the future course of literacy instruction by presenting a broad outline of the direction in which we appear to be heading -- the convergence of literacy instruction with the Internet and other networked technologies for information and communication. We worry greatly that the literacy research community has not paid sufficient attention to the profound changes taking place in the touchstone of our field.  We worry that those of us who have developed our research careers around the book may be the last to respond to the fundamental changes taking place in our world.  To continue to ignore these changes will severely limit our ability to support teachers and children on their important journeys.

We are certain the page-by-page details of our story will change as the years go by, but we hope the broader outlines of this work will invite colleagues to expand their conceptions of our literacy future. We will have succeeded to the extent this article initiates investigations about how best to integrate the Internet and other ICT within literacy instruction.  We are convinced a central issue in our future will be how best to integrate the continually changing technologies of literacy into classroom instruction.
 
 

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 Figure Caption

Figure 1. An example of a literacy envisionment: Harriet Tubman & The Underground Railroad, developed by Patty Taverna,Terry Hongell, and Patty's second grade class in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
 

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 Author Note

We want to thank the following colleagues for pointing us to important resources and for the many important insights they graciously shared in response to earlier drafts: Ted Grace, William Henk, Rachel Karchmer, Christa E. van Kraayenoord, Tom Nicholson, Mary Salibrici, Gerry Shiel, Keith Topping, and the undergraduate and graduate students who are members of the Literacy mailing list (listserv). Each has helped us to see these issues in new ways.  None, however, should be held responsible for any of our errors.
 

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Donald J. Leu, Jr. is professor of education and director of graduate programs in reading education at Syracuse University's School of Education.  His most recent research explores the new literacies in K-12 classrooms resulting from Internet and other technologies.  He may be reached by mail at Syracuse University, 200 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244 or by e-mail at djleu@syr.edu.
 

Charles K. Kinzer is an associate professor of education in the Department of Teaching and Learning and a research scientist in the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University.  His research interests include the potentials of technology in the literacy education of pre-k-8 children as well as in preservice and inservice teachers.  He may be reached by mail at 330-GPC, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN or by e-mail at charles.k.kinzer@vanderbilt.edu.