Digital Reading In This Study And Reading By Design

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We view digital literacy through a multimodal design lens and focus on work by the New London Group (1996) and scholars such as Carey Jewitt (Jewitt & Kress, 2003) and Gunther Kress (2003). To approach online reading with this mindset, we need to define some terminology pertinent to our case studies. By multimodal, we mean the use of different modes of communication to create an effect, the point being that each mode offers certain potential meanings that another might not offer. For example, Naruto is the story of a teenage ninja in which actions/gestures play as much of a role in meaning as visuals and dialogue do. The point is, these modes work in concert with one another.

The term reading path plays a central role in multi-modal theory. Reading path charts a reader's trajectory through a text and it exists as much with printed texts as it does with digital texts. The challenge for online Cheap Cartier Jewelry readers lies in the composition of the webpage: Where does the reader first look on the screen and where does that lead him or her? As Kress (2003) noted, the ...
... reading path of printed texts is well established, and although you can certainly move around a text, the trajectory is linear. With digital texts, however, the reading path is "to-be-constructed" by the reader (or by the image or nature of the multimodal text; Kress, 2003). When reading online, you do not know where you will end up at the end of the reading event.

Skills needed to engage multimodal texts require readers to understand the significance of sound and visual narratives as much as written narratives. Kress (2003) described the difference "between designed and displayed text and continuous print as the difference between 'showing' and 'telling'" (p. 152). Peter and Patty understand that online reading allows greater access to different genres of texts and more information. For instance, Peter looks up key facts about Naruto by going to Wikipedia and websites about Japanese folklore or websites featuring information about chakra, the mystical source of Naruto's powers. Patty enjoys the number of forms and genres of texts offered within the world of Webkinz, whether it is puzzles, games, shopping, or participating in the kinzchat room with other players. Kress (2006) suggested that as online materials increasingly dominate printed media, there is a need for students to become familiar with, and use, met languages that demonstrate a critical awareness and understanding of digital texts. Using multilit-eracies and new literacy theories to view adolescent reading practices fosters an understanding and appreciation of the nuances of digital reading.

According to the New London Group (1996), "multiliteracies also creates a different kind of pedagogy, one in which language and other forms of meaning are dynamic representational resources, constantly being remade by their users as they work to achieve various cultural purposes" (p. 64). By dynamic representational resources, the authors mean pedagogy that acknowledges diversity and acumen with different modes of communication within printed and digital Replica Cartier Jewelry texts. A multiliteracies framework provides educators with a way to revisit conceptions of language, to include linguistic modes along with visual modes, acoustic modes, etc. Modes such as visual, aural, gestural, spatial, and linguistic are incorporated into interfaces designed to convey a message to the reader. Readers of digital texts, like Peter and Patty, instinctively know that part of the digital reading process is seeking out information in texts to add to their knowledge in a particular area.

The New London Group (1996) offered the conceptual framework of multimodality to explain how learners access available designs in their appreciation and understanding of texts. Working from the perspective of text designers, students may use available designs in linguistic, gestural, visual, and spatial modes, and in turn redesign it however they see fit to make it more meaningful. This designing process can be described as one that "transforms knowledge by producing new constructions and representations of reality"