ABSTRACT
We are in a period of significant change in terms of writing; the supremacy of the written word for communication, which has held sway for centuries, is being challenged by multimodal forms of text, in particular the visual (Kress, 2003, Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, Jewitt, 2008). Children are surrounded by images that convey meaning in often powerful ways, ways that can complement words but that can also go beyond words, carrying their own meanings, meanings that are more open to interpretation. These images are strongly rooted in the cultures of the young, often produced, received, and exchanged by electronic means, making them less accessible to the older, more traditionally (typographic) text-orientated generation. The meaning-making processes that children use when working with new texts may also be less familiar to adults. Texts are more fluid and interwoven, and boundaries and roles begin to blur as digital opportunities facilitate collaboration and textual change (Merchant, 2009). Children often multitask with onscreen texts—several screens will be open at once, full of images as well as words, both moving and still; messaging flows alongside looking, reading, scrolling, hyperlinking, selecting, assembling, and creating new texts. The nature of composition has already changed from almost exclusively a process largely dependent on generating new typographic text from scratch, often emulating recognizable forms and formats, to the widespread practice of synthesis, fashioning text from words, images, and sounds from a variety of sources in a fluid and playful fashion. As new technologies emerge, so do new possibilities for communication; new composition practices and products evolve and our understandings of what constitutes ‘text’ must grow. A challenge for educators is to keep pace with learners as they increasingly draw on their own social (electronic) contexts for ‘textual’ inspiration.
