Literacy Is No Longer Defined Simply As the Ability to Read and Write

Hypermedia Environments and Literacy Development

Robert Pritchard and Susan O’Hara

Professors of Education, SacramentoStateUniversity

Societal changes and international access to information have increased the importance of using technology as a tool for thinking, learning and as a means of communicating in discipline-specific ways. What role do you think technology will play during the next five years as you teach your content area or grade level? Before reading any further, think of one way you might use technology as a teacher. As you read this letter, keep your initial thoughts in mind and see how they compare with what you read about technology and learning.

Literacy is no longer defined simply as the ability to read and write. Logical thinking, critical problem solving and technological savvy are integral aspects of contemporary literacy. Today’s teachers in today’s classrooms are faced with the challenge to integrate technology in their lessons in effective ways that enhance the learning of content and the development of academic vocabulary. The integration of hypermedia and web-based environments into your curricula is one way you can address this challenge.

Researchers in literacy education have in fact articulated the need for all students to become more familiar with learning in hypermedia and web-based environments (Au & Raphael, 2000; Kinzer & Leu, 1997; Leu, 2005). A hypermedia environment is an environment that supports linking graphics, sound, and video elements in addition to text elements. The World Wide Web is a hypermedia environment since it supports graphical hyperlinks and links to sound and video files. The ability to use these environments encompasses many of the technology skills students need as they graduate from high school and work toward future careers. In addition, their use facilitates academic vocabulary development, an essential element of literacy development.

When developing their vocabulary, your students will benefit from environments that provide contextualized, authentic learning opportunities and engage them in tasks where they use words to communicate in meaningful ways (Stahl, 1999). When your students are interacting in hypermedia environments, or are engaged in the authoring of their own hypermedia environments, they are developing and reinforcing their vocabulary as they make connections among text, images, video, sound and animation. This process encourages students to construct meaning and to make connections to their prior knowledge. These activities also promote the use of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies as students decide how to represent information and what associations to make between the text they are reading and the multimedia component they are utilizing (Carlo et al, 2003).

Hypermedia environments, which merge hypertext and other media components, afford teachers the ability to place their students in interactive, contextualized learning environments where they can encounter realistic problem situations and choose pathways and strategies to problem resolution (O’Hara & Pritchard, 2006). Such learner-centered instructional programming changes the role of students from passive recipients of information to active learners choosing instructional resources and methods. Thus, all classroom teachers would benefit from understanding how to use these environments to provide cognitively challenging opportunities for their students.

References

Au, K. H. & Raphael, T. E. (2000). Equity and literacy in the next millennium. Reading Research Quarterly, 35, 170-188.

Carlo, M.S., August, D., McLaughlin, B., Snow, C., Dressler, C., Lippman, D., Lively, T., & White, C. (2003). Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms. In A Focus on Vocabulary Forum. Dallas, TX: Pacific Resources for Education and Learning.

Kinzer, C.K., & Leu, D.J. (1997). The challenge of change: Exploring literacy and learning in electronic environments. Language Arts, 74(2), 126-136.

Leu, D. (2005) Developing New Literacies Among Multilingual Learners in the Elementary Grades. Paper presented at the Technology in Support of Young Second Language Learners Colloquium. William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Palo Alto, California.

O’Hara, S., & Pritchard, R.H. (2006). Hypermedia authoring as a vehicle for vocabulary development for English learners. The California Reader, 40, 11-16.

Stahl, S.A. (1999). Vocabulary development.Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.