ABSTRACT
As I write, my teenage daughter is thoroughly absorbed in using the family PC (I am relegated to using a laptop), and she is dextrously moving from window to window, using instant messaging (IM) to talk to online friends and, at their suggestions, clicking about to visit a range of web sites. She has her online diary (weblog) open, carefully shielding it from my view. She deals in texts with multiple layers, with icons, music, hyperlinks, and images; her mobile phone is by her side. She often laughs as she types, seeing witticisms, reading visual jokes, seeming to feel closer to her online friends than she is to me, just a meter or so away. She is involved in a range of complex literacy activities that take her focus beyond her immediate environment. I am drawn to the idea that this is very important, and I seek to understand more about what skills she and her peers are developing. I want to understand these new literacy practices, and I believe that such understandings might help us implement a more meaningful pedagogy for digital education. I have written elsewhere (Davies, 2004, 2005), as have others (Ito & Okabe, 2004; Schofield Clark, 2005), about the importance of perpetual contact to many of the digital generation, and it is through this endeavor that many teenagers are learning through social practices online. Polak (chap. 10, this volume) is clear about the motives of gURLS on the sites she has investigated: to build community. Her gURLS, like the teens I have been observing, are looking to share values, interests, and a space to be with like-minded others.
