ABSTRACT
To understand the way in which layered literacies can include related and unrelated experiences, skills, knowledge sets, and ways of being, we might consider videogames in general and a case study of World of Warcraft (WoW). Unlike the general teen area the fishbowl was a completely enclosed space, and it housed the Xbox and Wii consoles for weekday videogame play. This chapter explains how a layered literacies approach to learning accounts for four specific elements: agency, apprenticeship and active spectatorship, cooperation and competition, and reflection-in-and-on-action. The agency the students in the fishbowl demonstrated is common to what researchers have found within the larger digital technology culture, giving educators additional ways to think about how to engage their students in interest-driven learning. Learning involves reflection. A layered literacies framework helps to connect students inside and outside-school experiences. If the focus remains on students meaning making, then the function of layered literacies remains the same, even if the literacies change over time.
