As a child, I was an avid reader who always preferred books with plentiful, rich pictures. After reading, I would launch into lengthy conversations with real or imagined partners -- drawing, writing, acting out, and expanding on the ideas, characters, and worlds I encountered. Now I prepare undergraduate preservice teachers at a small private liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, and I still like pictures and conversations. I teach literacy methods, content area reading, children's literature, and media literacy courses. In all my classes, we employ and discuss many visual and print media, a synthetic use of texts that is not only interesting for my students and me, but reflects the nature of contemporary literacy. I like pictures and conversations in scholarly works, too. I enjoy conference sessions best when they include plenty of visuals and discussion; I like it when journal and book authors provide illustrations, graphs, figures, and narratives to represent their ideas.

Just as writing didn't replace the oral tradition (despite Plato's warnings), new digital media and the new literacies they generate have taken their place with existing ones. These new literacies are highly complex, synthetic, and synergetic in nature (Lemke, 1998; Neuman, 1991), involving combinations of visual, auditory, and print information. I define “new literacies” as reading and writing across and with varied symbol systems (Semali & Watts Pailliotet, 1999, p. 6). By “reading,” I mean actively constructing meanings through varied interactions with diverse media; by “writing,” generating texts through multiple media forms and literacy processes. Mine is only one of many expansive new definitions of literacy that are emerging. In the coming months, the New Literacies department will present a wide range of interpretations about reading, writing, communicating, and literacy. It will offer diverse topics and issues, in order to explore the myriad possibilities of literacy in our post-typographic age.

There is an overwhelming array of scholarship about new literacies. I sometimes find myself wading through ideas for utilizing technology and teaching with popular media, new educational theories and terms, issues, rationales, and competing recommendations, all the while wondering how this will help me better instruct my students on Monday morning. I have a practitioner's bent toward educational research and writing, and I view educational theory and practice as interconnected, interdependent processes (Britzman, 1991). I strongly believe that we teachers are capable, reflective, critical, decision makers and “transformative intellectuals” (Giroux, 1988) who are interested in both the theoretical whys and practical hows of teaching. I also believe that no single perspective or procedure reaches all students or answers all questions. Therefore, this department will offer a multiplicity of theoretical views and innovative classroom practices, and present a span of ideas, teaching approaches, issues, and competing voices in order to assist readers in creating relevant views and practices of their own.

The notion of conversation embodies many of this department's aims. Good conversations require dynamic processes among participants; they are enjoyable, challenging, and interesting; they result in exploration, learning, and new understandings of ideas, situations, or people. Good conversations enable participants to make informed decisions and connect disparate topics; they spark curiosity and a thirst for more information; they occur in varied contexts. In the best conversations, all participants teach, learn, and benefit from exchanging ideas with those who both share their own views and hold differing ones. Good conversations also give rise to positive outcomes: personal growth, professional knowledge, and real life applications. I envision this New Literacies department as a place where truly great conversations will transpire.

Alice might enjoy New Literacies, and I hope you will, too. Our pages will be full of innovative visual, audio, and print information that will encourage discussion among literacy educators. I invite you to join the conversation.

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