Samantha is sitting at the computer, reading a story about a camping trip on the screen. With this particular software, when a child comes to a word that she does not know, she can click on it with the computer's mouse and hear it read aloud. Samantha frowns at a picture of a fierce-looking bear hovering near the tents at the campsite, and when she clicks on it she hears a noisy growl. She then reads aloud the words that appear on the monitor: “The bear quietly ran away.” The text, however, actually says, “The bear quickly ran away.”

Samantha could have used the audio feature to help her read the sentence correctly, but she didn't know that she had misread “quickly” and she therefore had no reason to make use of this capability of the software. In this regard, then, the computer will not teach Samantha how to read; instead, it merely has the potential to help her gain information about how language works -- a potential that probably cannot be realized if she works alone in front of the computer, in isolation from the larger social context of the classroom.

This vignette illustrates the importance of viewing classroom technology as only one tool among many that can be used to facilitate children's growth as meaning makers. The presence of computers in the classroom does not guarantee that children will make use of them in ways that foster their development as literacy learners.

In the first part of this article I offer a theoretical rationale for the use of technology in the classroom that focuses on two important aspects of literacy acquisition: the ability to consider multiple symbolic representations in the construction of meaning, and the ability to reflect on language. In the second part I illustrate how these theoretical principles might be enacted in the social context of the classroom, in order for children like Samantha to use the tool of technology to empower their learning. For the purposes of this article, I focus on one component of classroom technology: interactive electronic media such as graphics-enabled word-processing programs, “talking books,” e-mail, computer-assisted writing programs, and the World Wide Web, all of which allow the user to pursue multimedia representations -- such as images, sounds, or intertextual links -- in a nonlinear fashion.

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