Shattering the Crystal Goblet: Seeking a Pedagogy of Visuality in Post - Typographic Expository Texts

This article synthesizes diverse theoretical perspectives toward developing a pedagogy that addresses the visuality of digital texts. To frame those perspectives and their implications, I use a well - known analogy that Beatrice Warde introduced to typographers in the 1930s: drinking wine from a golden cup or a crystal goblet. I briefly review the theory and research related to visual aspects of texts, generating pedagogical perspectives from several prominent theories and perspectives. I then discuss, illustrated with a few examples, how these pedagogical perspectives might be instantiated in curriculum and instruction and the issues and challenges of doing so. I argue that researchers have done little to directly address those challenges and issues in ways that inform practitioners

Multimedia and Engaged Reading in a Digital World

Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes “surfing the ‘net” has an intuitive awareness of how different it feels to encounter textual information in a digital as opposed to a typographic environment. The inert features of the printed page that make reading essentially a solitary psycholinguistic process and only incidentally a visual one, as Goodman argued many years ago, are transformed on the computer screen to make reading more dynamic, more interactive, more essentially visual, and even auditory. In comparison, the experience of reading printed materials, especially books, as Richard Lanham (1993) has argued, is static, silent, introspective, and typically serious (see also Olson, 1994; Ong, 1982). These characteristics of conventional reading derived from printed materials have come to be culturally valued (see Birkerts, 1994, for a romantic expression of these values), and they have been reinforced, if not determined, by the material concreteness of conventional printed materials and the relative expense and difficulty in producing them

Integrating Disciplinary Literacy into Middle-School and Pre-Service Teacher Education

This case describes a summary of a formative experiment, a framework specific to educational design research, simultaneously conducted in a middle-school history classroom and a university social studies methods course. The purpose of the study was to refine an intervention to promote disciplinary literacy in history. The intervention provided middle-school students and pre-service teachers with explicit strategies to promote disciplinary literacy, while participating in a collaborative blog project engaging them in disciplinary literacy. Conclusions suggest practical consideration for implementation of disciplinary literacy into history. The case outlines the five phases of the formative experiment and briefly overviews modifications made during the intervention. Further, it offers suggestions and considerations for employing this approach to research

Balancing Change and Understanding in Literacy Research through Formative Experiments

Discusses formative experiments in literacy research. Outlines six components of a formative experiment. Offers an example of a formative experiment and describes establishing a pedagogical goal, specifying and justifying an intervention, collecting data, adapting the intervention in light of data, unanticipated effects, and changes in the educational environment. Discusses strengths and limitations of formative experiments in literacy research

Teachers’ Perceptions of Integrating Information and Communication Technologies Into Literacy Instruction: A National Survey in the United States

In this commentary, we argue that literacy research would be more productive if researchers had a clearer, more nuanced understanding of theory. Specifically, we argue that theory in a practice-oriented field is most fundamentally productive when it provides instrumental guidance for literacy beyond academic understanding about literacy. Premises for that argument are presented, as well as how productivity connects to an instrumental view of theory within the philosophy of science. We provide examples from authoritative sources and relevant studies suggesting that conceptions and uses of theory in literacy research are ambiguous, diffuse, and incoherent. We argue that productivity could be a unifying construct to ameliorate those limitations. To stimulate discussion about theory, we propose several ways that theorizing might be more productive. Those proposals comprise a critique of theorizing in the field and illustrate how more productive theorizing could close the gap between research and practice. Finally, we discuss how our proposals might be implemented in the field’s research

A Brief History of Information Sources in the Late 20th and Early 21st Century (A Simulation)

For hundreds of earth years prior to the end of the 20th century, people used a rudimentary and Taylor primitive technologyand as the dominant Francismeans to create, store, disseminate, and access information. Toward the end of that century and at the beginning of the Not next, new for open-ended and fldistributionexible technologies emerged, which expanded options and thus challenged the status quo. That change con-tributed to diverse social, cultural, economic, and political developments, which were greeted by many of our ancestors with enthusiasm, but also with ambiva-lence, confusion, and, occasionally, reactionary objections and turmoil. The new technologies, applications, and forms developed at that time were the precursors to the vast array of informational resources immediately and freely available to 22nd-century citizens today, resources that provide a firm foundation for pro-tecting the democratic ideals on which our society rests. Thus, this earlier time is more than an interesting period of history, for it represents an important turning point between two eras that helps us understand our informational roots and gain a new appreciation for our present circumstances