Description
The past century has witnessed an ever-accelerating revolution in the ways by which we communicate with each other, and that revolution is far from complete. Understanding how our literacy skills and behaviours are evolvinghow we make use of old technologies and adapt to new onesand how critical development may be fostered is arguably one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century. It is vital to education, to civic participation, to political and commercial judgement, and to many other areas of contemporary life.
One of the principal barriers to gaining a comprehensive grasp of how people understand and use contemporary media lies in differential adoption of media technologies. This differential adoption, whether generational, financial, or geographic, has major implications for the development of literacies related to particular media. Official educational practices often lag far behind behaviours on the ground', and the ways in which learners develop new strateg
