1. Rethinking Literacy Education in
New Times:
Multimodality, Multiliteracies, &
New Literacies
Bruna Fontoura
Bruna Luiza
Giovana Perini
Marina Garcia

2. Literacy
• Literacy: the ability to read and write (Oxford
Advanced Learners)
• Literate: able to read and write. (Merriam
Webster)

3. Situating ‘new’ literacies
• The plural word ‘literacies’ demonstrates how
now there are many models of literacy.
 “Thinking about literacy as a universalized,
autonomous entity undermines its diversity and
multiple uses and understandings.”

4. Situating ‘new’ literacies
• The word ‘new’, emphasizes that there are
new approaches, methods and theories.
 more emphasis on cultural practices
 less of a divide between oral and written cultures
 an expansion of definitions from print logic,
reading and writing, to screen logic, designing,
redesigning, remixing

5. Multiliteracies, Multimodalities and
New Literacies
• New literacies demand different resources.
Like visual, sound, written, movement,
animation...
• Individuals make meaning from different
modes.
• It is based on student needs and
competencies.
• The role of their race, culture, religion, and
social class in their literacy learning.

6. Multiliteracies, Multimodalities and
New Literacies
• Multimodality corresponds to the technique
that people use different modes to make
meaning;
• Multiliteracies consists in “the notions of
design, available designs and redesign” are
crucial to the way we make meaning in
modern texts;

7. Digital Literacies
• Digital literacies consists in research and
theory that come from the new;
• “Digital literacies unable us to match the
medium we use to the kind of information that
we are presenting and to the audience that we
are presenting it to.”
• Digital readers and writers have to be critic
according to the type of text it is presented in
mediums to social interaction;

8. New Literacies in New Times
• Characteristics of literacies research:
 New technologies offer a way to predict new
literacies;
 It is essential to civic, economic and personal
participation in the world;
 It adjusts according to the technology
changes;
 It is multimodal and multifaceted;

9. New Literacies in New Times
• It is a new way that teachers are using to
stimulate collaborative works in wikis, blogs,
etc.;
• The students start to think and analyze more;
• The writing of participates of this new
approach are better and they show skills to
use different types of writing according to the
genre and the audience;

10. The processes of reading and writing
‘on screen’
• the actual processes of reading and writing
‘on screen’;
• the integrative and interactive nature of
reading and writing with new texts; and,
• changes in patterns of communication as a
result of social networking.

11. The integrative and interactive nature
of reading and writing with new texts
• Using a blog, wiki or ‘Facebook’ type of
communication, the ‘text’ is produced with appropriate
layout for screen and can combine text, images,
graphics, photos or video with sound and music.
• We do not know how such processing of messages and
texts is affecting the way children learn, or if the
processes involved in activities such as texting,
blogging, or communicating online are developing
different cognitive abilities than those required for
reading and writing traditional print-based texts. These
unknowns are challenge for education.

12. • The interrelationship between reading and writing in
producing texts and how students need to understand
the meaning-making potential of different modes.
• For educational purposes we need to distinguish
between the technical skills of using digital
technologies and the cognitive processes of
interpreting and communicating meaning. To offset an
over-emphasis on technical skills, educators and
researchers need to focus on both using technologies
and meta-understanding of technology.

13. The Impact of Social Network
• Social practices of literacy: changed and
expanded with the Web 2.0 technology;
• Many implications for classroom pratice;
• These modes of communication could be used
inside class, in learning;

14. The Impact of Social Network
• Blogs, nings, wikis, twitter, features of mobile
phones or Facebook applications within
classroom programs;
• Learning Participatory
• Sydney Research: students become more
collaborative;

15. The Impact of Social Network
• There was:
Problem-solving
Students investigate a topic
Negotiate the way they would create and
construct a product to demonstrate their
learning

16. Conclusion
• Enabled by the accessibility of new technological
tools, which were not available even a decade
ago;
• Mastey of the tool in education: is not the
outcome but how we use it;
• Digital communications technology: the way
communicate become more than a tool;

17. Conclusion
“While research has not been able to fully
establish the impact of multimodal
communication, it is essential that educators
learn to use these different modes of
communication for classroom learning.”
(page 8)

18. Reference
ROWSELL, J.; WALSH, M. Rethinking Literacy
Education in New Times: Multimodality,
Multiliteracies, & New Literacies. Brock
Education. v. 21.n 1. Fall 2011. p. 53-62.