ABSTRACT
In calling this book Virtual Literacies, we intend to signal our shared interest in the ways in which a diversity of literacy practices are involved in the social construction of online spaces. These practices could be seen as being virtual from a number of points of view; however, the literacies that initially attracted our attention were those used to mediate social interaction in virtual worlds and video games. But while virtual worlds have been an important context for our own work (Gillen, 2009; Merchant, 2010), in developing the seminar series on which this book is based, we were also keen to look at the similarities and differences between these worlds and a variety of other online spaces and their related practices—particularly those that are beginning to attract the attention of children and young people in their homes, in schools, and elsewhere. Our collaboration with teachers and classroom researchers has helped us in the exploration of these new forms of literacy, which, while diverse and often intricately interwoven with print literacy, were united by the fact that they were being used to create online spaces—spaces that in turn encouraged new kinds of communicative interaction. Current usage of the word virtual seems to us to be a useful way of trying to capture and describe these developments, and although we have no ambition to add to the burgeoning list of kinds of literacies (see Barton, 2007), it does seem important here to explore the concept of virtuality1 and why it is a central theme in this work. Therefore in this chapter we focus our efforts on some important groundwork, firstly by exploring contemporary understandings of the virtual, and secondly by tracing some of its historical antecedents.
