In the 1990s, with rapid advances in technology, The ‘New London Group’ met to discuss the effects of globalisation and considered ways in which literacy pedagogy might address the changes. The group consisted of ten academics, including James Gee and Allan Luke. Working together, they developed the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’ (Cope & Kalantzis 1996); this describes the multiple ways we communicate through technologies. The multiliteracies framework emphasises that ‘meaning-making is an active and dynamic process’ (Cope & Kalantzis 1996: 74) and that when engaged in active design; the designer is also a meaning maker who is involved in analysis. Thus, production and analysis of multimedia, multimodal text, becomes two sides of the same coin, one feeding into and relating to the other. In order to be able to produce a text, the producer needs to be able to critically reflect on the choices made in terms of modes, media and the way in which these are constructed in the design process.

A related concept is that of the ‘produser’ (Bruns, 2006), which refers to the way in which the production of digital texts is very much related to usage/consumption of digital texts. This can be seen in Case Study 1 and Case Study 3, in which the children’s production of video texts drew on their knowledge of films and instructional videos, gained through their viewing experience outside of school. These examples point to the importance of digital literacy practice in classrooms which views both analysis and production as significant in the development of the range of skills and knowledge required for the new media age.

For References see 3.7.5 References/Links to Further Resources