I have just returned from The New Literacies Conference, sponsored by The Department of Language and Literacy at UBC, and The Faculty of Education at The University of Victoria, and supported by SSHRC. It addressed themes of new and digital literacies in the 21st century.
In recent decades “literacy” has taken on new and varied definitions and has become an even more complex and contested site as “new literacies” become prominent aspects of our lives, particularly for youth and children. This conference takes up these issues within a Canadian context, where researchers are currently poised to play a vital leadership role in exploring the connections among local and global new literacy practices, defining what it means to be literate in the 21st Century, and sharing their work with a broad range of educators and policy makers.
A blog 0f the event includes my presentation and reports on the wide-ranging debate and discussion.