ABSTRACT
Writing teachers today are living through a revolution in literacy brought about by the capability of computers to combine blocks of text-or verbal lexias-with graphic images, sounds, video, and other multimedia (see Landow, 1992, on lexias). We are forced-at times by our failures-to grapple with the potential relationships between the ubiquitous and chaotic new visual and the comfortingly familiar, more linear verbal. Awash in both good and bad examples-on the Web, but also on TV and, lest we not forget, still in traditional print-we are discovering that it is no longer enough to fragment our concepts of literacy, bracket off our traditional
blocks of text, and just stick to what we know. To condone and contribute to visual illiteracy contradicts our purpose of teaching effective and ethical written communication. Yet as we often tell ourselves, we are still trying to figure out how to teach just our traditional, single piece of the puzzle-nothing to sneeze at in its full complexity.
