Interesting article that raises the provocative suggestion that in today's digital culture it may be the teachers - not the students - who are illiterate. I wish it explored this more, but instead the article tails off into an odd mixture of reaction and reservation. I'm not sure it was intentional, but the writing illustrates the author's point perfectly. Discussing a multimedia project, the article notes that "Another educator said she was troubled by the prospect of summing up a feminist's complex life story in four photographs." But the reaction from a new media reader would be: "What? What's so troubling? It tells a story, no more or less complete than a string of text." What new media users understand that the previous literati doesn't (and this is a crucil, important point): words are intermediaries. They stand for things, and sometimes, in the way of things. They are *not* direct knowledge.
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