overview | structure | concepts | applications | supplementals
Part I: Education and Interdisciplinarity
The book opens with an article from
Jay David Bolter, "Theory and Practice in New Media Studies," which
critiques the ways in which academic humanists approach new media theory and
practice. Ultimately, Bolter claims that what we need is "a hybrid, a fusion
of the critical stance of cultural theory with the constructive attitude of
the visual designer" (30).
In the next chapter, George
P. Landow argues that a "hypertext-as-educational-paradigm ultimately has
more importance to institutional innovation than do hardware and software means"
(41). He emphasizes the value of hypertext theory and poststructuralist theory
in making us more self-conscious about the paradigm we use for educational and
other forms of hypertext (43).
In Chapter 3, Jon Lanestedt discusses
some of the problems associated with "digital media infrastructures in
support of educational processes in higher education" (66). He seeks to
illustrate how new digital media in the realm of education are a potential object
of interdisciplinary study, reflection, action, and development (83). He also
makes a case for a closer relationship between "media studies, pedagogy,
and informatics" (84).
In Chapter 4, Gregory L. Ulmer questions
notions of voice in electracy. He argues that "the pedagogical tone of
literacy will not do for electracy (which is to the digital apparatus what literacy
is to print)." In essence, we must invent "the categorical order
of electracy." Ulmer proposes the use of the remake as a way to "move
writing into electracy" (91).
Andrew Morrison, in Chapter 5, suggests
that we should "reconceptualize electracy in the plural, not just as electronic
literacies, or multiliteracies, but as multimodal, multimediational digital
discourses, or electracies" (120). He discusses the HyperLand project in
Zimbabwe, which investigated electronic literacy and "cyberplace"
(116).
See the summary for part 1, 2, 3, and 4.
