Changing Technology and Literacy

Educational researchers and practitioners alike assert that the potential of new technologies for learning is likely to be found not in the technologies themselves but in the way in which these technologies are used as tools for learning. However almost every six months there is a new programme on the market, a phenomenon (described as a "moving target" (Valdez et al., 1999), p. 1). What then are the consequences for researchers and professionals who engage these programmes? Even as researchers begin to describe empirical evidence supporting the effects a particular technology has on an educational practice, that technology itself is changing and in some cases even becoming obsolete. In addition, teachers are faced with the burden of constantly adjusting lesson plans to accommodate the use of newer educational technologies. Leu (2000) notes as newer technologies of information and communication continually appear, they raise concerns about the generalisations made based on research from earlier technologies. Reading specialists therefore need to be cautious about generalizing findings from traditional texts to different forms of hypermedia because each technology contains different contexts and resources for constructing meanings and requires somewhat different strategies for doing so.