For many years, literacy was defined as the condition of being able to read and write and it is an adequate definition for most people. However, it becomes apparent that we need to explore our definition of literacy in order to explain the reading and writing not only of printed texts but of electronic texts.
Until now, teachers could use reading and writing activities to printed materials. However, with the help of computer, reading and writing is possible to make electronically.
Computers made progressive atmosphere, which are used to create text, to send and receive electronic mail, by presenting all kinds of texts onscreen instead of in printed books, and by accessing large databases of texts.
Clearly, for pupils is necessary to make a lot of experiences by including electronic manner of reading and writing which is offered by teachers.
This raises the question of how learners can be prepared to read and write electronically, which we will explore detaily.
READING ELECTRONICALLY
Electronic books
Some of the earliest reading materials available on the computer were adoptions of existing print texts. The first major impact were the American companies Discos and Broderbund
These were simply collections of books which had been converted to work from CD-ROM [1] . Of course they were not just placed on a CD, but were enhanced to harness the power of the computer. Each CD contained a multimedia book which was read aloud by the computer while sound effects and music complemented the story. The books presented many options, such as varying speeds of reading, explanations of words and even options to have the book read in a different language. The idea was that, as a child's reading ability grew, he/she could use the computer just to say the word he/she could not read.
Later, British companies such as Sherston Software began to produce much smaller "Talking Books". The simplicity of the Sherston system meant that these books had a major impact in UK schools, especially when the best-selling British reading scheme, Oxford Readind Tree, adopted the system to produce electronic versions of its books. [2]
Most electronic books produced for school use have similar facilities. They all provide onscreen text, illustrated with pictures. By clicking on certain icons the text is read aloud or the pictures are animated. They all also provide the facility for the reader to click on individual words or phrases to hear these read aloud.
The results suggested that talking books do help young children to learn to read traditional texts and particularly helped children to understand the meanings of the stories. Medwell [3] found that children who used the electronic versions of the books learned more than children who used print version, bur that the most learning was achieved by children who read the print versions with their teacher and then used the electronic versions by themselves. This suggest that, although electronic books can help pupils progress in reading, they complement rather than replace the role of the skilled teacher of reading.
READING TO LEARN WITH COMPUTER
In many ways, information text was made for computerised presentation. Most readers do not read information books in the linear way they approach fiction text and use an approach centred on the contents or index page, from which link are made to other pages. Having such text on a computer simply this approach more efficient. Rather than having to physically turn the pages of a book, the reader can just click on a link to move to the relevant information.
After all, selecting, copying and pasting material from a CD-ROM or the internet is a lot easier than having physically to write out material from a book. There are a number of tried and tested strategies for helping pupils avoid straight copying when they use information books.
Crucial to avoiding copying is the thinking that pupils are encouraged to do before they begin to use information sources. You should get your pupils to think about what they already know about a topic before they develop some questions to which they would like to find answers. This then lessens the possibility of them approaching information sources looking to record everything they find..
Also when pupils are reading information text, you need to make sure they read actively. One strategy to help this is to get them to mark text which they think is significant. In printed text this can involve the use of highlighter pens and there is usually an equivalent to this for screen-based text. In Microsoft Word this involves clicking the Text Highlighting button, selecting a highlight colour and then using the mouse to select the appropriate text. More than one colour can be used in the same document, thus allowing information relevant to a number of questions to be picked out.
Another active reading strategy is for pupils to restructure the information they read into one of a variety of other forms. Pupils might go to information sources armed with a word processed grid which they keep open in a window on the screen while they browse information sources in another window. The grid both guides them in their information search and helps them structure the information they find for subsequent reporting.
PROBLEM-SOLVING WITH TEXT
There is a range of textual problem-solving activities, reffered as DART [4] all of which have been shown to be useful ways of encouraging pupils to interact purposefully with printed texts. Activities in this range include cloze, where pupils have to work together to suggest possible words to fill deletions in a text, and sequencing, where a group of pupils have to work out a meaningful order for a text which has been cut into sections and mixed up.
What these activities have in common is that they involve group discussion of disrupted texts and their main aim is to recreate meaningful text.
An early attempt to adapt activities like this to electronic text was the computer program known as Developing TRAY. [5]
This program was written initially for use with secondary slow-reading pupils. The names derives from the idea of a print gradually coming into focus in a photographer's developing tray. Starting with a screen showing only punctuation and a series of dashes to represent letters, the pupils gradually reconstruct the extract, initially by buying letters then by predicting words or phrases as the text becomes clearer.
A number of research studies, both at secondary(Johnston, 1985) and primary(Haywood and Wray, 1988) levels, [6] have suggested that experience with Developing TRAY involves the use of high-level problem-solving skills, analysis of data, decision -making about strategies, the creation and interpretation of meaning and hypothesis forming and testing.
TRAY is now more than 20 years old, which for educational software is old indeed, but the fact that a modernized version is still available is testimony to its abiding usefulness in developing pupils reading.
It is usually found now as part of text problem-solving suites of programs(often given such as "word detectives") which include computer versions of other DARTs.
A more recent addition to teachers technological armoures is the interactive whiteboard which has a great deal of potential in the teaching of reading. The whiteboard allows the information appearing on a computer screen to be projected onto a much larger surface but when it is there it can be interacted with-text can be added with a pen, moved, annotated or deleted. This means that the interactivity which is characteristic of electronic text can now be carried out as a shared activity with large groups of pupils.
A simple example of this is the sequencing activity briefly mentioned earlier. Normally this is done with sections around, experimenting with possible orders until they find one they can agree on. Because of the size of the text and the need to handle the sections, it is normal for this activity to involve three or four pupils at most. With an interactive whiteboard, however, the sections of text appear in large type on the board and each can be moved around using the board pen. This makes whole-class discussion of a text in this way possible.
Literacy software is beginning to appear to exploit the potential of the interactive whiteboard. One package, Easiteach [7] (Wray and Medwell, 2003), supplies teachers with a large range of t exts for shared work, and the software includes tools such as highlighter pens, instant cloze text makers and a range of word and phonic banks.
WRITING ELECTRONICALLY
For a number of reasons, writing was one of the first aspects to be significantly affected by the development of personal computers and other new technologies. The vast majority of the writing that gets done in the world, at least the commercial world, today is done through the medium of information technology. The sheer prominence of screen, as opposed to paper, based writing means that we need to familiarize children with the skills and possibilities of this new medium if they are to use it confidently in their lives. But ICT [8] also makes possible a number of beneficial approaches to the teaching of writing. Evidence suggests that the use of computers as tools for writing can significantly enhance children's understanding of, and competence in, all forms of writing.
ICT has, therefore, a dual role in teaching and developing writing. On the one hand, it can effectively help children learn how to write in traditional forms. On the other, it extends these forms by adding new possibilities for writing.
USING WORD PROCESSORS
Many teachers have been impressed by the way even quite young children quickly learn how to use word processing programs on the computer, and seem to be able to improve the quality of their writing by doing so. What is it about word processors that leads to this improvement?
To answer this question we need firstly to look at the ways in which our understanding of the process of writing has changed over the last few years. Perhaps the most significant feature of this change has been the realization that to expect children to produce well thought-out, interesting writing, correctly spelt and punctuated, grammatical and neatly written, at one sitting is to expect the impossible.
Even experienced adult writers do not work that way, and will confirm that any writing other than the most trivial goes through several drafts before it is considered finished. Many teachers encourage their pupils to approach writing in this way, that is to write drafts which can then be revised, shared with other readers, discussed and edited before reaching their final versions.
The use of the word processor as a writing tool reinforces this drafting process. Writing on a computer screen does not have the permanence of writing on paper. Everything about it becomes provisional and can be altered at the touch of a key.
A significant reason why children may find it difficult to really accept the idea of writing as provisional when it is done on paper is the fact that, if they wish to change their writing, this will usually involve re-writing it. The sheer physical effort of this will persuade some children to adopt a much more studied , once and for all approach to their writing. With a word processor, however, alterations can be made on the screen and there is no need to re-write. This facility for immediate error correction allows children to approach writing more experimentally. They soon become prepared to try things out and alter them several times if need be.
They also begin to be able to live with uncertainty. If, for example, they are unsure of particular spellings, they can try an approximation and check it later, without breaking the flow of their writing ideas. "We'll do the spellings afterward" becomes a familiar strategy.
Another significant feature provided by word processing is the facility to electronically cut and paste text. Sections of text can easily be moved around the piece of writing. This allows writers to re-sequence their writing with little effort and to experiment with different sequences.
Most word processors also have the facility to search through texts for particular words or markers and then replace them with other words. This can assist children's writing in a variety of ways. Firstly, it allows them to change their minds easily. If, for example, they have written a story about a boy called Pete and suddenly decide they really want it to be about a girl called Mary, these details can be altered throughout the text by a couple of key presses.
Secondly, it provides a way of dealing easily with consistent misspellings. If, for example, a child regularly spells "occasion" as "ocasion", or "should" as "should", he can be asked to check these words after finishing his writing. Having ascertained the correct spelling, he can then use the word processor to alter every occurrence of the misspelling at one go.
Most word processors allow the user to decide whether each individual occurrence should be altered. Usually the user has to press Y or N as appropriate. This can be useful if there are words the child regularly confuses, such as "there" and "their" or "hear" and "here". Being asked to consider each one in turn encourages children to become more aware of the contexts in which each one is appropriate.
A further use of the search and replace facility is to eliminate some of the distraction caused when children search for the spellings of words they are unsure of. These can be entered at first using a marker (such as ***). When the first draft is done, the children can then find the correct spellings and use the replace facility to change their markers.
Children's word processed text can be rearranged in various ways on the computer. This makes it possible for their writing to emerge looking very much like that in real books, with consequent benefits for their motivation to write. The aspect of this which is usually discovered first is justification.
9The ability to rearrange text can be taken further by altering the format of the text. If the writing had been done for a class newspaper, it could be formatted with narrower columns. Most word processors also permit writing to be produces in a variety of type styles or fonts, from Script to Gothic. So the story might be produces as:
Once there was a dragon called Ace. He was a friendly dragon. Ace met a boy called John and the dragon said, will you have a flight with me? Because if you do and you win I will take you for a ride. Yes, said John. I will have a flight against you. John won the flight and the drago took John for a ride to the moon. They came back with straw so they did not hurt themselves.
Such features can enhance children's writing a great deal, and all have the effect of making children enjoy writing more.
Word processors can also be used as teaching devices in the context of children's writing, with consequent improvements in quality. An example of this can be seen in the following piece written by two pupils.
Today we went out side to look for little creatures and we found an ant and one was red and Jamie russ found a big black spider and daniel jones caught it is his pot and we also caught a centipede and it was red and it went very fast and mrs wilkins caught a earwig and two caterpillars but one caretpillar escaped from the yoggat pot and we found some slugs and they made a slimy trail on the white paper.
Their teacher asked them to read the piece to her, and they were struck by the over-use of the word "and". The teacher used to search and replace facility of the word processor to exchange the "ands" for markers, and asked them to look at the writing again.
This revision produces the following finished article:
Today we went out side to look for little creatures and we found ants. One of them was red. Just then Jamie Russ found a big black spider. Then Daniel Jones caught it in his pot. We also caught a centipede. The centipede was red like the ant. The centipede went very fast like the ant. Mrs Willkins caught an earwig and two caterpillars but one escaped from the pot. Then we found some slugs and they made a slimy trail on the white paper.
The improvement in quality is quite clear. This may have happened without the use of the word processor but is doubtful if the process would have been so simpe, or the pupils so eager to do it.
SHARED WRITING
A word processor can be used as a medium for shared writing, although, of course, the presentation device used will need to be sufficiently large for the writing on it to be read easily by the whole class. This requires either a very large computer screen (21 inch), a data projector to project the computer image into a large screen or wall, or an electronic whiteboard.
Here are a few examples of possible shared writing lessons that you might adapt for your own purposes.
1. Word level work
Objective: To spell regular verbs endings -s, -ed, -ing.]
Set the word processor to display a large font, e.g.28 point, and type in the following list words: care, come, face, give, glue, hope, ice, joke, like, live, love, make. Type ing after the first few, using a different font. Explain the rule about dropping the final 3, and delete the spaces between the word and the suffix. Finally delete the e as well, giving a dynamic demonstration of how the joining of stem and suffix and the deletion of the final e are part of the same action. Do this with a couple of examples.
give ing give ing giveing giving
hope ing hope ing hopeing hoping
Now let individual children come to the computer to carry out same action. If you have a talking word processor, you can listen to the sounds of the words and then compare them to some common spelling mistakes such as "coming" and "hopping".
2. Sentence level work
Objective: To identify common adverbs with an -ly suffix.
Set the word processor to display a large font, e.g. 28 point, and type in the following list of -ly adverbs: quickly, slowly, swiftly, rapidly. Highlight the "ly" and then increase the size.
quickly quickly quickly quickly
Let some pupils try this with other words. Such animations are a good way of fixing certain letter strings in pupils minds.
3. Sentence level work
Objective: To recognize the function of verbs in sentences, and to use verb tenses in writing.
Use a large font size and write some simple sentences without their verbs, for example:
Alexander all the chocolate bars.
Ask the pupils what is missing? Where should the missing word go? What possibilities are there for this missing word or phrase? Type one suggestion into the sentence, using a font which stands out. Use copy and paste to reproduce the same sentence five or so times. In each sentence, use a different verb or a variation on the same verb.
Alexander ate all the chocolate bars.
Alexander grabbed all the chocolate bars.
Alexander hated all the chocolate bars.
Alexander will eat all the chocolate bars.
Alexander eats all the chocolate bars.
Alexander has eaten all the chocolate bars.
Discuss all the different meanings that this creates. Pupils should now be in a position to write their own versions of this changing sentence.
As an extension to this activity, you could try adding adverbs (identify adverbs and notice where they occur in sentences and how they are used to qualify the meanings of verbs). Does a different position affect the meaning of the sentence?
Alexander quickly ate all the chocolate bars.
Quickly, Alexander ate all the chocolate bars.
Alexander ate all the chocolate bars quickly.
4. Sentence level work
Objective: To investigate clauses through understanding how clauses are connected.
Have on the screen/whiteboard some examples of jumbled sentences, that is sentences in which the main and subordinate clauses do not match.
Walking slowly along the road, Libby finally forces herself out of bed.
When Mum shouted upstairs, James suddenly heard the hoot of car behind him.
Discuss these sentences and demonstrate how, using "drag and drop" or "cut and paste", they can be sorted out.
Try moving the subordinate clause to a different position in the sentence and discuss any changes to the meaning that this causes.
Walking slowly along the road, James suddenly heard the hoot of a car behind him.
James suddenly heard the hoot of a car behind him, walking slowly along the road.
Group work with word processors
Pupils can:
Identify different categories of words, e.g. highlighting all nouns pink, all pronouns green, etc.
After existing text using, for example, alternative adjectives, verbs, synonyms, etc and using differet coloured text for any changes;
Use cut and paste to reinstate the correct order of a short story in which the order of the paragraphs has been changed;
Use the "Find and Replace" function to replace overused words such as "said" and "nice";
Use the "find" function on its own to search for common spelling patterns, e.g. all word ending in "ing" or containing "ea"
HYPERTEXTS
New technology also makes possible a kind of writing could not be done using traditional print and paper methods. We have all become very familiar, through our use of the internet [10] , with the texts which characterize the world wide web-hypertexts [11] . Traditional texts are usually designed to be read in one way. They are linear, with a well defined start and a well defined end. Hypertexts, one the other hand are designed to be non-sequential. By using links the reader can navigate to different parts of the text and the sequence in which the text is read is determined by the reader. The reader is put in control of his/her own reading of the text to a greater extent and passive reading is all but impossible. This active involment with a text's shape and meaning blurs the traditional distinction between reader and writer, but it does, in turn, make the job of the reader more complex.
Readers may be familiar with pictures and diagrams in traditional texts, but hypertexts, being computer-based, can also include segments of audio, video and other moving graphics, all of which contribute some extra potential meaning to a text.
If the reading of hypertexts poses extra problems for the reader, then the writing of successful hypertexts also poses difficulties for the writer. But involving pupils in creating their own websites, for example, can significantly enhance their abilities to read critically and effectively the new texts they are presented with through ICT.
Like conventional writing, a hypertext requires planning. A collection of pages randomly linked together provides neither pleasure nor enlightenment for the reader. Nor will it allow the writer to transmit all his/her ideas fully to the reader.
In planning a conventional essay the writer builds a linear trail for the reader: the points shoult follow each other in a straight and logical line. But a genuine hypertext involves planning spatially, thinking about which pages should be linked to each other or to external sources. A useful way of beginning to create this kind of text is to draft out on paper an outline of how the text might develop. You can encourage pupils to do this graphically by drawing their main introductory screen in the middle of large page, and then sketching out the subsidiary pages and indicating the links by arrows. They can then draw on a separate sheet the design for each page as a story board.
Hypertext is a mixed medium. It can involve varying fonts, sizes and colours. It can also use graphic elements such as photographs, clip art, scenned drawings, etc. Even more importantly, the writer needs to think about breaking up the pages into blocks of text, each of which relates to other blocks but which could , potentially, stand by itself.
In hypertext, writers compose small units of text and link them together. On the one hand this eases the stress of writing, allowing the writer to work on discrete units, rather than a single long text. On the other hand, it means that hypertext writers need to pay particular attention to "arrivals" and "departures" - the first sentences their readers encounter in arriving at a text block and the last sentences they encounter as they leave. Each text block, of whatever length, needs to be shaped like a mini-essay, with a beginning, a middle and an end.
DEVELOPING ELECTRONIC LITERACY IN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS
The electronic texts is increasing and educators begin to consider the activities aimed to develop electronic literacy and to integrate into educational contexts. These activities should meet four criteria.
First, they should relate to conventional print-based literacy in meaningful ways. For the present, printed materials still dominate written communication and should remain the prime concern of educators.
Fortunately, as the examples that follow illustrate, it is not difficult to address literacy for printed and electronic texts simultaneously.
A second criterion is that activities designed to promote electronic literacy should involve authentic communication and meaningful tasks for students and teachers. Again, it has been my experience that activities highlighting the unique features of electronic reading and writing tend to meet this criterion.
Third, activities should engage students and teachers in higher levels of thinking about the nature of printed and electronic texts as well as about the topics of their reading and writing. Activities that combine printed and electronic texts usually allow students and teachers to compare fundamental differences in these media.
Fourth, activities should engage students and teachers in ways that allow them to develop functional strategies for reading and writing electronic texts. Electronic literacy can be fostered in ways that will also enhance children's ability to learn to read printed texts. Electronic texts can provide support that beginning readers need in order to focus on meaning and at the same time help them learn to identify words. For example, Reitsma (1988) had six- and seven-year-old children read texts on a computer; children could request the pronunciation of unfamiliar words during reading.
In this experimental condition, children's reading fluency increased more than did two comparison groups of print readers and was equal to that of children who had been given explicit guidance by a teacher who heard them read aloud. This study did not specifically address comprehension, but it is reasonable to expect that students are more likely to focus on the meaning of the text when given timely help with unfamiliar words. Children and their teachers also see that electronic texts can facilitate higher levels of independent reading and understanding.
Further, by engaging in such activities, they experience reading electronic texts that are interactive, that respond to their needs, and that use symbolic elements not found in printed texts. The long-term effects of reading such texts on reading ability are unknown, but would supply an interesting research question.
An example from the middle grades comes from a year-long research project my colleagues and I have recently completed. We wanted to know how students' reading and writing would be affected by having them enter book reviews on the computer as an alternative to required book reports.
These reviews would form a collection of data organized so that search and retrieval would be possible. Students actually helped organize the data; they helped us design a form on the computer screen that contained fields for a variety of information they thought would be useful in searching for a book. This application seemed to enhance authentic communication in classroom reading and writing activities and encouraged more independent reading. It also familiarized students with the use of procedures and strategies for seeking out textual information in a computer database. In a current NRRC research project, we are extending this intervention by investigating whether having students create multimedia book reviews increases the amount and diversity of their independent reading.
For example, Frances Teague, professor at English Department at the University of Georgia, has built her undergraduate Shakespeare course around the use of electronic texts. Throughout the course, students have access to powerful functions for searching texts that are provided by computer terminals linked to a file server containing all of the known works of Shakespeare. She engages her students in a variety of activities revolving around their ability to search rapidly for key words in Shakespeare's works. Her students complete term papers based on their discoveries about, for example, where and when Shakespeare typically has a character employ a weapon such as a sword. As newer technologies such as CD-ROM become more affordable and widely available, many schools will have access to information contained in voluminous databases of text and to powerful and flexible tools for finding information across a variety of texts simultaneously.
At the graduate level, she provided students with first-hand experiences in reading and writing electronic texts in a course she teaches entitled "Topics in Computer-Based Reading and Writing." The textbook that she currently use in the course (Bolter, 1991) is written both as a conventional textbook and as a hypertext. Part of the course focuses on a comparison of students' experiences and reactions to reading both forms of the text. She requires from students to write a paper for the course and encourage them to write their paper as a hypertext using a word processing program designed for that purpose. Students also enjoy reading Afternoon (Joyce, 1987), a serious novel written as a hypertext, and we use it as a focus for a discussion about the potential of hypertexts as an artistic medium for writers. Students' comments suggest that their experiences with electronic texts in the course expand their conceptions of literacy. An interesting line of research would be to investigate how students approach the writing and reading of hypertexts.
THE FUTURE OF ELECTRONIC LITERACY
If we think the future of electronic literacy it seems is difficult to predict.
Maybe the conception of literacy based on electronic text will take the place of the conception of literacy based on printed texts.
Such issue it wasn't seem as today as it might have only a few years ago. Indeed, Bolter [12] has argued that we are living in the late age of print. To Bolter, the history of literacy can be viewed in terms of a construct he refers to as the writing space, which is [13] "the physical and visual field defined by a particular technology of writing"
He contends that each new technology of writing creates a new writing space that exerts a powerful and pervasive effect on literacy. The genres and uses of writing within a culture are determined by [14] "the dynamic relationship between the materials and techniques of writing"
He concludes that the intellectual advantages of hypertexts are so compelling that they are destined to replace the book as the dominant form of written communication.
A future in which electronic texts play a more dominant role will require that we rethink some common notions associated with a literacy based on print alone. For example, it is much more difficult to identify a single text as a distinct physical entity in an electronic medium. What is the text when a reader explores divergently a large database of textual information that may originally have been separate works by separate writers or editors? We are aware that two readers do not experience and comprehend a single printed text in exactly the same way. This awareness is a consequence of focusing on the reader in understanding the reading process. Electronic literacy, however, extends this diversity to the text itself.
Books and other printed materials are not likely to disappear within our lifetimes even if the technologies supporting such a change were to become widely available. In literate cultures, books tend to evoke powerful aesthetic and emotional responses independent from their content. It is not likely that this deep-seated attachment to printed books will easily disappear regardless of the intellectual advantages of electronic texts.
Nonetheless, the inexorable pace at which electronic forms of written communication are expanding strongly suggests that educators must become familiar with the essential nature of electronic texts. Only then will we be able to lay the foundation for developing an electronic literacy that will prepare us for the future.
CONCLUSION
As is was defined, literacy is the condition of being able to read and write. For most people this definition is adequate. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that educators and educational policy makers must now expand their definition of literacy to include the reading and writing not only of printed texts but of electronic texts.
As educators look for new ways to help children become more literate, and as electronic technology becomes more advanced and more available, expanding our ideas about what it means to be literate seems almost inevitable. Until recently, educators could safely confine reading and writing activities to printed materials.
However, reading and writing can be done electronically with the aid of a computer. Computers are being used to create and revise texts, to send and receive mail electronically, to present instructional texts on-screen instead of in printed books, and to access large databases of texts. And electronic texts are becoming more prevalent as computers become an integral part of everyday experiences such as working, shopping, traveling, and studying.
Educators must include electronic forms of reading and writing in their conception of literacy; as part of that process, I suggest that they consider three questions: (1) How are electronic texts different from printed texts? (2) How can students be prepared to read and write electronically? and (3) What issues related to electronic reading and writing are likely to become important in the future? In this paper, I offer information, drawn from my own research as well as that of my colleagues who share my interest in technology and literacy, that should be helpful in answering these questions.
I argue here that current conceptions of literacy should be expanded to include electronic reading and writing. This type of literacy, which might be called electronic literacy, is different from conventional print-based literacy. As I will show in subsequent sections, these differences represent more than subtle differences in the context and purpose of reading and writing. Instead, electronic texts have unique characteristics that make them fundamentally different from conventional texts.
The whole idea of electronic literacy may require deep and perhaps disquieting adjustments in our conceptions of literacy, some of which may even be threatening to those with a life-long affinity for printed materials.
However, I am not suggesting that electronic literacy is more important than conventional print-based literacy or that it should replace our traditional notions of what literacy means - at least not in the immediate future. I am simply saying that educators must include the reading and writing of both electronic and printed texts in their definition of literacy as well as in their approach to helping children become literate.
