Positives and Possibilities  (Related to “Functioning” in Baron's scheme)

• Personal textual “freedom”--to generate, change, modify, store, design

• Extension of individual composing, via networking, into the world of writing and reading—email, messaging, hyperlinking, Weblogs--every person a node on the world network

• New paths of literacy opened by technical potential for personal creation of multimedia—visual parts of communication become as important as text

Problems or Challenges  (Related to “Authentication” and “Access” in Baron’s scheme)

• A stable, reliable, and trustworthy system for identifying texts (and writers) as authentic is still emerging (some progress here in scholarly uses, but general uses still wide open; visuals especially can be totally deceiving or fantasy-based; who knows you’re a dog? etc)
   

• In spite of changes, barriers to equitable use still exist, putting persons at a disadvantage
   

• Educational systems must begin to educate for the new literacy more extensively, consistently. Particular areas in question are:
   

  • balance between crucial traditional skills and newer ones (spelling, grammar, usage)

  • assurance of fairness and personal responsibility (cheating)

  • integration of older text-based proficiencies with multimedia composing skills (words and images)