Excerpts and paraphrased findings from Jane Agee and Jeanette Altarriba, "Changing Conceptions and Use of Computer Technologies in the Everyday Literacy Practices of Sixth and Seventh Graders," Research in Teaching English 43:4 (May 2009) 363-96.

1. They note that Kress (Literacy in the New Media [London: Routledge, 2003]) says "The traditional page . . . offers a clear, well-organized path.  All that is required of the reader of the traditional page is to follow the path and to interpret and transform what is on the page.  With the new screen path, readers are offered 'a range of possible reading paths, perhaps infinitely many' (p. 162).  The task of the reader in front of a screen of text is to 'establish order through principles of relevance of the reader's making, and to construct meaning from that" (p. 162, quoted on 365.  As more and more varieties of "page" emerge (email, IM, "tweets," blog posts and Facebook page entries), this rate of change will increase the complexity and difficulty of young readers' tasks.  Implication: New freshmen at Goucher will present us with more varied kinds of reading skills, depending on what mix of multi-modal reading "pages" they are used to operating.  In past decades, all writers were weak, proficient, or advanced with a similar set of print-based skills, but future writers will have strengths in some "page domains" and weaknesses in others.  It is probably not reckless to predict that print-page skills will become weaker by the year.
2. According to Yan's research (2006), complex social skills develop more slowly than technical complexity.  Students in the fifth and sixth grade can master high levels of computer-based skills but are relatively ignorant about the social domain of the Web (367-8).  Implication: New freshmen may continue to demonstrate disproportionately high technical skills and low social skills.  The social context in which academic prose occurs, the "reporter of analytical conclusions to an audience of colleague-analysts," may become increasingly hard for such students to imagine, and they may need more direct, personal socialization in the ways and reasons why Goucher faculty use writing.
3. Wilder and Dressman (2006), and the current research of Agee and Altarriba, suggest that "New Literacy" skills like Web navigation, evaluation of Web based resources, and writing for Web readers, "remains contingent on one's level of proficiency in Old (print text-based) Literacy" (W&D 224, quoted by A&A 369).  Scholastic and Yankelovich (2008) found that younger students preferred printed books to e-texts, but they observed "a steep decline in reading for the upper elementary years to the high school years" (370).  Implication: New freshmen will need to be evaluated as readers of printed texts, as well as being evaluated as writers, in order to determine whether they have the print text-based skills to begin learning at all three major skill levels we teach (103, 104, 105).
4. The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that Instant Messaging (IM) was the preferred form of communication among 75% of teens who had online access (i.e., to email, as well) and to 65% of total teens (269-70).  More than ordinary phone calls or emails, these students are immersed in the vocabulary, grammar, spelling and (lack of) punctuation that are characteristic of IM.    Implication: assignments, including the Writing Placement Essay, may need to specify to writers that they should use the conventions of print literacy and not those of IM.  We may need to identify and specifically "un-teach" the various abbreviations of print literacy which IM values, but how will we persuade students that a more efficient (and higher prestige) medium's conventions should be abandoned for a slower, if more universally understood and more accurate, form of writing?
5. "One of the strongest conceptions to emerge from the interviews with the sixth and seventh graders was that reading on a computer screen was difficult and uncomfortable.  All sixth graders preferred reading a book or magazine to reading on a computer.  In the interviews, both sixth- and seventh-grader students cited lack of mobility, brightness of the screen, pop-ups, unreliable information, and font size as problems with computer reading.  They preferred books or magazines because they were more portable, interesting, and easier to read" (386).  Implication: Our migration to electronic access of books and journals in the library may decrease their use, the length of each incident of use, and the retention of ideas remembered from each incident of use.  Writing courses which make extensive use of web-based materials also should emphasize the use of print, especially printed drafts for editing, rather than trying to force students to become entirely "paper free."
6. Sixth graders rarely used computers for purposes other than assigned schoolwork, whereas seventh graders often use computers to research assignments even when their use is not required (283-5).  Nevertheless, students in neither grade reported often using computers at school, whereas the seventh graders often used computers in their homes (387-8).  Home computer access was near universal in the group of students studied in A&A, a factor they acknowledge as a significant variable for economically disadvantaged students.  The economically disadvantaged students' lack of familiarity with New Literacy skills may be compounded by lower exposure rates to print text-based literacy.  Implication: when we are getting to know students in the early days of the course, we need to determine directly and indirectly what their home access to computers and other technologies has been, and what resources they have in their rooms at Goucher.  EOP students, especially, may be at risk.
7. Proficient and advanced seventh-grade readers showed marked preferences for IM and gaming over the rates of participation found for sixth-graders of the same skill levels, which led A&A to conclude that higher print-literacy skills enhanced New Literacy skills.  Basic readers in both grades showed relatively lower levels of IM and gaming use, suggesting that their lower print-literacy skills slowed their development in  the domain of electronic text. (377-9 & 388-90).  Implication: New Literacy conventions, such as those used in IM, may be deeply implicated in students print-text-literacy skills.  For that reason, our attempts to lead them from NL conventions to print conventions (see above) may meet with considerable resistance.  Moreover, we also may detect in incoming freshmen classes a sharp division between basic readers, with diminished New Literacy skills and diminished print-literacy skills, and the proficient and advanced readers, whose skills in both "New" and "Old" literacies may be significantly higher than those of the basic readers.  This may be most noticeable in English 103 and 104.