ABSTRACT
Texting, blogging, Facebooking, tweeting — today we are accessing the world of writing in ways never before imagined. Our opening image (Figure 15.1) characterizes one way of communicating that has become commonplace, texting. It is an exchange between adolescent students regarding a piece of writing they were doing together. Using software such as Google Docs, these students were even able to write synchronously from different places. Whereas once writing was confined to paper and pencil, in many of today's classrooms mini-tablets, iPads, and laptops have become commonplace and afford “anywhere” writing as represented by Figure 15.1. Some teachers today are concerned with hard drives, Wi-Fi connections, fi rewalls, and battery life, whereas before they were concerned with having enough writing supplies for their students. For many children today, digital technologies mediate between their everyday practices of living in a Web 2.0 world and schooled writing. We share examples of this later in this chapter where we take on the idea of “new writing” (Merchant, 2005, p.51) to describe the ways in which digital media have informed the writing practices of twenty-first-century children. While doing so we situate such writing within a critical literacy framework. We argue that in reclaiming writing, we reclaim that which is important to students — their everyday literacies and their right to use these as they tell stories, share learning, and collaborate with others through critical inquiry.
