Call for Papers for Special Issue of LLT

Theme: Literacies and Technologies

This special issue of Language Learning & Technology will focus on the ongoing shifts in relationships between technologies of written communication, literacy practices, literacy roles, and literacy communities. What does it mean to be "literate" in an age of electronically mediated communication? How do notions of "text," "reader," and "writer" change as new media, new communities, and new literacy practices take hold? What kinds of meaning-making abilities do people need in order to participate successfully in various kinds of communities that rely on forms of electronic communication? How do people acquire these meaning-making abilities? What is the role of educational institutions in fostering the needed kinds of abilities?

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Literacy and Technological Change

• Historical analysis of relationships between technologies of writing and literacy practices
• Social dynamics of change in literacy technologies

Reading or Writing in Electronic Environments

• The emergence of new discourse practices or new genres in computer-mediated communication (CMC)
• Socialization into electronic literacy communities
• Communicative, cognitive, or social strategies in CMC environments
• Acquisition of multimedia interpretation and authoring abilities

Politics of Electronic Literacy

• Issues of differential access to electronic literacy tools, instruction, or opportunities

Pedagogy of Electronic Literacies

• Goals of teaching electronic literacies within the curriculum
• Tasks and their framing
• Evaluation of learner performance

Please send an e-mail of intent with a 250-word abstract by April 30, 1999 to Richard Kern <kernrg@socrates.berkeley.edu>.