Sunday, July 9, 2006

Costanzo, "Reading, Writing and Thinking in an Age of Electronic Literacy"

Costanzo, William. "Reading, Writing and Thinking in an Age of Electronic Literacy." Literacy and Computers: The Complications of Teaching and Learning with Technology. Cynthia Selfe and Susan Hiligoss, eds. Research and Scholarship in Composition Ser. New York: MLA, 1994. 11-21.

In this overview, Costanzo provides a snapshot of C&W concerns and vocabulary in 1994.  He acknowledges the changes in the "tools of literacy" and the related shifts in the "nature of texts."  Centrally, the computer screen is the focal site of this change.  Costanzo refers to Haas' notion of the challenge in electronic prose related to "getting a sense of the text" (12) and reports that the distinctions for how hand and eye work with electronic texts has bearing on literacy.  Shifts from linear reading to hypertext also apply here. 

According to Costanzo, theories of reading have tipped in favor of Frank Smith's Understanding Reading and comprehension rather than Jean Chall's Learning to Read and decoding (12). Basically, computers introduce new factors affecting how we read; he mentions Selfe's concept of "layered literacy" here and also acknowledges a more complex visuality and related design considerations bearing on reading and writing activities.  Before wrapping up with three chapter summaries, Costanzo works through the areas related to response and collaboration--the network dimensions of computing (though he doesn't call it this): interactive fiction (16), enactive models for writing processes (17), and communal contexts/intertextuality (keeping with Vygotsky and Bakhtin) (17). He also introduces, briefly, Ong's secondary orality and matters of representation related to desktop publishing (democratization of tools) and access (19).

Electronic versus Printed Texts
Reading and Writing Electronic Texts
The Look of the Text
A Sense of Response
Historical Perspectives
Questions of Representation

"Whereas textbooks may describe the processes and teachers may give demonstrations, computers serve as enactive models" (17).

Related sources:

Haas, Christina. "Composing in Technological Contexts: A Study of Note-Making." Written Communication 7 (1990): 512-547.

Haas, Christina. "Does the Medium Make a Difference?: Two Studies of Writing with Pen and Paper and with Computers." Human-Computer Interaction 4 (1989): 149-169.

Smith, Frank. Understanding Reading. New York: Holt, 1971.

Posted by Derek Mueller at July 9, 2006 6:46 PM to Writing Technologies