Everyday Literacies

We don't know anyone who has found 2012 to be among the better years of their lives. Certainly, it has not been a standout year for us personally. It has been a long and hard grind with plenty to worry about on the world scene. As always, one of the things that has made this year a lot less difficult for us than it might otherwise have been has been the collegiality, friendship, and solidarity we have shared with family, workmates, neighbours, and amigos around the world. We want to thank all of you who added to our lives during 2012 for being there, and we want to wish you all the very best for 2013. May you walk in the sunshine and have all good things (and only good things) fall on your heads.

As the year drew to a close we managed to meet a fairly tight deadline and get a new edited collection into production: a collection that brings together a selection of recent works published in our "New Literacies" book series with Peter Lang. It has been another good year for the series, with pleasing sales and some excellent new titles. Many thanks to our authors, and if you are reading this post and have an idea for a book on New Literacies we would be very pleased to hear from you. As always, we are deeply appreciative of the generous efforts of all at Peter Lang Publishing, New York, and look forward to a new year of collaborative activity with you.

The new collection is called "A New Literacies Reader" and will be published in print and digital formats. We have provided a substantial thematic Introduction to the book, which comprises 18 chapters organised in 5 sections, as follows:


Part 1: New literacies in classroom settings


1. Multimodal pedagogies: Playing, teaching and learning with adolescents’ digital literacies
Lalitha Vasudevan, Tiffany DeJaynes and Stephanie Schmier

2. Trajectories of remixing: Digital literacies, media production and schooling
Ola Erstad

3. You won’t be needing your laptops today: Wired bodies in the wireless classroom
Kevin Leander

4. Slammin’ school: Performance poetry and the urban school
Bronwen Low


Part 2: New literacies and semi-formal learning beyond the classroom


5. Influencing pedagogy through the creative practices of youth
Leif Gustavson

6. Engaging urban youth in meaningful dialogue through digital storytelling
Althea Nixon

7. Learning about circuitry with e-textiles
Kylie Peppler and Diane Glosson


Part 3: New literacies and teachers’ personal and professional learning


8. Machinima, Second Life and the pedagogy of animation
Andrew Burn

9. New wine in old bottles?: Remediation, teacher as bricoleur, and the story of Antaerus
Teresa Strong-Wilson and Dawn Rouse

10. Supporting pre-service teachers’ development: The place of blogging in the Get Real! Science teacher preparation program

April Huehmann, Joe Henderson and Liz Tinelli

11. New literacies and assessments in middle school Social Studies content area instruction: Issues for classroom practices
Margaret C. Hagood, Emily N. Skinner, Melissa Venters and Benjamin Yelm


Part 4: New literacies and popular cultural affinities


12. Language, culture and identity in fan fiction
Rebecca Black

13. Communication, coordination and camaraderie: A player group in “World of Warcraft”
Mark Chen

14. Youth participation: Learning and growth in the forum
Angela Thomas

15. Which South Park character are you?: Popular culture and online performance of identity
Bronwyn Williams


Part 5: Researcher perspectives on new literacies and learning


16. Learning about learning from a video game

James Paul Gee

17. Situated play: Instruction and learning in fighter games
Aaron Hung

18. Kongregating online: Developing design literacies in play-based affinity space
Sean Duncan

We want to extend special thanks to the authors for agreeing to be part of this project, and will be looking toward occasional similar projects in the future.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year to you all.