Multiliteracies for a digital age

288 Pages·2004·1.303 MB·English

by  Associate Professor Stuart Selber Ph.D

STUART A. SELBER
Multiliteracies
for a Digital Age
SWR
Studies in Writing & Rhetoric
Studies in Writing & Rhetoric
Other Books in the Studies in Writing & Rhetoric Series
Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction Teaching Writing as a Second Language
in American Colleges, 1900–1985 Alice S. Horning
James A. Berlin
Women Writing the Academy: Audience,
Writing Instruction in Nineteenth- Authority, and Transformation
Century American Colleges Gesa E. Kirsch
James A. Berlin
Invention as a Social Act
Something Old, Something New: Karen Burke LeFevre
College Writing Teachers and Classroom
A New Perspective on Cohesion in
Change
Expository Paragraphs
Wendy Bishop
Robin Bell Markels
Variables of Composition: Process and Response to Reform: Composition and the
Product in a Business Setting Professionalization of Teaching
Glenn J. Broadhead and Richard C. Margaret J. Marshall
Freed
Gender In®uences: Reading Student Texts
Audience Expectations and Teacher Donnalee Rubin
Demands
The Young Composers: Composition’s
Robert Brooke and John Hendricks
Beginnings in Nineteenth-Century
Rehearsing New Roles: How College Schools
Students Develop as Writers Lucille M. Schultz
Lee Ann Carroll
Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-
Dialogue, Dialectic, and Conversation: First Century: The Importance of Paying
A Social Perspective on the Function Attention
of Writing Cynthia L. Selfe
Gregory Clark
Language Diversity in the Classroom:
From Intention to Practice
Toward a Grammar of Passages
Edited by Geneva Smitherman and
Richard M. Coe
Victor Villanueva
A Communion of Friendship: Literacy,
Across Property Lines: Textual
Spiritual Practice, and Women in
Ownership in Writing Groups
Recovery
Candace Spigelman
Beth Daniell
Mutuality in the Rhetoric and
Embodied Literacies: Imageword and a Composition Classroom
Poetics of Teaching David L. Wallace and Helen
Kristie S. Fleckenstein Rothschild Ewald
Writing Groups: History, Theory, Evaluating College Writing Programs
and Implications Stephen P. Witte and Lester Faigley
Anne Ruggles Gere
Minor Re/Visions: Asian American
Computers & Composing: How the New Literacy Narratives as a Rhetoric of
Technologies Are Changing Writing Citizenship
Jeanne W. Halpern and Sarah Liggett Morris Young
Multiliteracies for a Digital Age

Multiliteracies
for a Digital Age
Stuart A. Selber
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Carbondale
Copyright © 2004 by The Conference on College Composition and
Communication of the National Council of Teachers of English
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
07 06 05 04 4 3 2 1
Publication partially funded by a subvention grant from The Conference on College
Composition and Communication of the National Council of Teachers of English.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Selber, Stuart A.
Multiliteracies for a digital age / Stuart A. Selber.
p. cm. — (Studies in writing & rhetoric)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching—Data processing. 2. Report
writing—Study and teaching (Higher)—Data processing. 3. English language—
Rhetoric—Computer-assisted instruction. 4. Report writing—Computer-assisted
instruction. 5. Computer literacy. I. Title. II. Series.
PE1404 .S365 2004
808′.042′0285—dc21
ISBN 0-8093-2551-9 (alk. paper) 2003011875
Printed on recycled paper.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. >
For the Selbers, Liebermans, and Latterells,
but especially for Kate

Contents
Preface xi
1. Reimagining Computer Literacy 1
2. Functional Literacy: Computers as Tools, Students as
Effective Users of Technology 30
3. Critical Literacy: Computers as Cultural Artifacts,
Students as Informed Questioners of Technology 74
4. Rhetorical Literacy: Computers as Hypertextual Media,
Students as Re®ective Producers of Technology 135
5. Systemic Requirements for Change 183
Epilogue 234
Works Cited 239
Index 261