Multiliteracies Portals: 2005 Web portal | Moodle | Desire to Learn | 'Multilit' Yahoo Group | Resources page
Vance's projects: CALL Resources & Site Index | Presentations & Publications | Webheads in Action


Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments

The Course Text

  The course textbook:

Multiliteracies for a Digital Age by Stuart A. Selber, February 2004, paperback, Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN# 0-8093-2551-9, $27.00 http://www.siu.edu/~siupress/titles/s04_titles/selber_digital.htm

An undergraduate review: Reactions to Multiliteracies for a Digital Age by Alison Bennett: http://people.emich.edu/abennet1/a444/multlit2.htm

"Given the intellectual and human dislocation that technology can produce, computers may even be counterproductive in many educational settings" (p.5)

Computer competency requirements such as the one at Florida State promotes practical skills but "fails to offer perspectives needed for making rhetorical judgments. ... the requirment neglects ... (for example)

From Selber (2004) p. 25: The conceptual landscape of a computer multiliteracies program

Category Metaphor Subject Position Objective
Functional Literacy computers as tools students as users of technology effective employment
Critical Literacy computers as cultural artifacts students as questioners of technology informal critique
Rhetorical Literacy computers as hypertextual media students as producers of technology reflective praxis

Functional Literacy

Competing visions of functional literacy

Computers as tools

From Selber (2004) p. 45: Parameters of a functional approach to computer literacy

Parameters Qualities of a functionally literate student
A functionally literate student ...
Educational goals uses computers effectively in achieving educational goals
Social conventions understands the social conventions that help determine computer use
Specialized discourse makes use of the specialized discourses associated with computers
Management activities effectively manages his or her online world
Technological impasses resolves technological impasses confidently and strategically


Use the navigation at the top of this page or your browser's BACK button to return to a previous page

For comments, suggestions, or further information on this page
contact Vance Stevens, page webmaster.

Last updated: August 24, 2005

©opyright 2005 by Vance Stevens