ABSTRACT
With the increasing use of digital technologies in everyday life, teachers today are confronted with the declining importance of existing literacies, and the growing importance of new kinds of literacies. For some this is promising. For others it augurs a deep crisis. Teachers are seen as ‘at loss as to how to bridge this huge gulf between lived experience outside the school and the formal requirement of participation and achievement in the classroom’ (McCarthy, 1997: 133). Indeed teachers, and especially language teachers, are challenged by new concepts of identity as classrooms become sites of multiliteracies. For or against, teachers should understand these literacies in order to develop skills and content in helping their students with the literacy tasks they want to accomplish.
