New Literacies-Comment from "Toward a Theory of New Literacies..."

In the article "Toward a New Theory of New Literacies Emerging from the Internet and Other Information and Communications Technologies" Leu et al define new literacies as "

The new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs include the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to the rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts that continuously emerge in our world and influence all areas of our personal and professional lives. These new literacies allow us to use the Internet and other ICTs to identify important questions, locate information, critically evaluate the usefulness of that information, synthesize information to answer those questions, and then communicate the answers to others" (pg. 1072).  It is interesting to me that Leu et al created a definition that included words such as "use and adapt," "rapidly changing" and "continuously emerge" for new literacies.  It is important as educators to remember that yes we are study these literacies and how to adapt our classroom but we must remember that our world and technology is rapidly changing and as new technology continously emerges we must use and adapt what we have to benefit the learners fo the 21st century.

Leu, D.J., Kinzer, C.K., Coiro, J.L. & Cammack, D. W. (2004). Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the internet and other information and communication technologies. In Ruddell, R. B. & Unrau, N. J. (Eds.). Theoretical models and processes of reading (5^th ed., pp. 1570-1613) Newark, DE:International Reading Association.