ABSTRACT
Recognition of the communicative, visual, and performing arts as integral components of literacy instruction is rich in its history and evocative of a new phenomenon that is radically changing literacy education. The long, full history includes the uses of technologies such as radio, television, films and videos (Baines, 1997; Trier, 2008); the use of illustrations and graphics in texts (Lapp, Flood, Brock, and Fisher, 2007); the use of trade books that often work equally well as reading materials and pieces of art (Kiefer, 1997); and Amazon’s new reading machine, Kindle, which changes the way we can store and read print materials. We should add to these material forms of technology the longstanding complements to the written word of drama, dance, and instrumental music. All these both evoke powerful tales of their own but also deepen and extend meanings of written texts as well as notational systems, such as that used for music and choreography (Heathcote, 1980; Heathcote and Bolton, 1995; Wagner, 1999). Important, too, are the growing and widespread uses of multimedia and mixed media in music and the performing arts as well as in other aspects of life, work, and play.
