Flipping back through the pages of Kathleen Tyner's new book, LITERACY IN A DIGITAL WORLD: TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION, I am amazed at how many of the pages are filled with underlining, marginal notes and stars marking significant paragraphs. Despite the inherent limitations of ink on paper, this book opens up a rich and fluent conversation with one of the U.S. media literacy movement's finest thinkers. I have learned a lot from the hours I spent in her literary spell.
With the publication of LITERACY IN A DIGITAL WORLD, Kathleen Tyner has given us not just a critique of the past but a vision of the future. Together they provide an invaluable bridge over which we all can travel to the next millennium. -- Elizabeth Thoman, President and Founder, CENTER FOR MEDIA LITERACY
If anyone is qualified to write the book on media education in the USA, it is Kathleen Tyner. So I picked up her latest book and found it a wonderful rare thing. A book of theory that is eminently readable, a history of literacy that is fascinating, and -- possibly most important -- the first insightful analysis of the media education situation in the USA.
One US media educator has said that when media education people in the USA meet, they tend to circle the wagons and shoot in. In Chapter 7, Treading Water: Media Education in the US, Kathleen tackles that problem head on with this statement: "In typical determinist fashion, U.S. media education has focused on the media of media education...in contrast, the emphasis of international educators is on the education component."
She traces the development of media education in the USA, comparing it with those of other countries like Australia, Britain, and Canada. And she presents hope for the future of US media education with an analysis of new approaches to teaching media education. US media education has moved ahead in a series of starts and stops over the past 20 years. Kathleen's book should give it the boost it needs right into the next millennium.
This is really an important and wonderful book, which I urge everyone interested in media education to buy. I know that it made me turn off the phone, turn off the television and settle down to read it through carefully. Congratulations Kathleen, and thank you! -- John Pungente, Editor, Clipboard: A Media Education Newsletter from Canada, Winter 1999
Literacy in a Digital World, takes the pulse of media literacy in the context of new and emerging communication technologies and assesses the multiple literacies in evidence in the 1990s: print, computer, informational, critical and media literacy. The history of alphabetic literacy and the evolution of the newer literacies form an important base for contextualizing the arguments about the educational applications of computers and multimedia.
At a time when education is under siege and digital technologies are being uncritically accepted by schools, Literacy in a Digital World offers many invaluable insights for effective technological understanding and survival. Tyner's practical knowledge of the field has combined nicely with her important new research in this complex domain. -- (Barry Duncan, Mediacy, the newsletter for the Association for Media Literacy (Ontario, Canada), Winter 1999)
The growing prominence of electronic and digital media in communities and schools raises complex questions about the nature and consequences of literacy in a culturally diverse society. In education, emphasis on the cultivation of reading and writing skills has given way to a host of alternative conceptual, theoretical, and pedagogical approaches to literacy. This volume provides a clearly written overview of visual, informational, and media literacy, and focuses on the authors and professional cultures associated with each of these subfields. It describes how each group has dealt with problems of representation and legitimation, emphasizing the need for cross-disciplinary and international collaboration and synthesis. The text also describes in detail how educators are using print, video, photographs, and computers to foster literacy, defined as "the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and produce information." This volume will interest media educators and researchers, information specialists, teacher educators, and students seeking an introduction to the field and examples of how new technologies and literacy practices can be integrated into the elementary, secondary and postsecondary curriculum. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -- J.A. Gamradt, CHOICE, March 1999
