+ Page 7 + --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ####### ######## ######## ########### ### ### ## ### ## # ### # Interpersonal Computing and ### ### ## ### ## ### Technology: ### ### ## ### ### An Electronic Journal for ### ######## ### ### the 21st Century ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ## ### ISSN: 1064-4326 ### ### ### ## ### October 1996 ####### ### ######## ### Volume 4, Number 3-4, pp.7-26 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology Additional support provided by Georgetown University University of Maryland Baltimore County Northern Arizona University This article is archived as BARNES IPCTV4N4 on LISTSERV@LISTSERV.GEORGETOWN.EDU -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LITERACY SKILLS IN THE AGE OF GRAPHICAL INTERFACES & NEW MEDIA Susan B. Barnes Fordham University ABSTRACT Graphical interfaces that use icons to execute computer commands are influencing traditional literacy skills. By adding a new visual language to the reading process this technology alters print-based reading skills because it adds visual thinking to verbal reading skills. The introduction of new media, such as hypertext and multimedia, further reinforce this trend by adding visual elements to texts. To date, educators have mixed reactions to the influence of new media on traditional literacy skills. However, some educators fear that computer technology will require people to learn additional skills to become literate, as a result, a huge gap will be created between people who are techno-literate and techno-illiterate. This article describes some of the literacy issues raised by the introduction of graphical interfaces and new media in education. INTRODUCTION Last night, I observed a college student attempting to use a simple word processing program for the first time. The program was Microsoft Word 4.0 operating on the Macintosh. She was trying to follow the step-by-step instructions written in a workbook. I watched as the student pointed and clicked the mouse, pecked and typed at the keyboard, and then highlighted and inadvertently erased most of her work. After tying for two hours to operate the machine, she complained that the workbook was boring to read and the screen confused her. It became obvious to me that she did not like to read and she was trying to figure out how to work the program from the graphical icons displayed on the screen. Finally, she asked: Why isn't this computer as easy to use as my telephone? Why can't I just press a few buttons and make it work? The student sitting next to her tried to explain that a computer is not like a telephone, instead, it is similar to learning a new language. In contrast to widespread advertising campaigns that describe computers as user-friendly, computer users need to learn new literacy skills. In the early days of computing, people had to learn programming languages to operate the machine. For example, when the personal computer was first introduced, users had to know some basic programming commands because these machines had command-line interfaces that required users to type in letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. To become computer literate, students and teachers had to learn text- oriented programming commands. + Page 8 + In 1982, the Association for Computing Machinery listed the following as requirements for teachers to be considered computer literate: * Be able to read and write a simple program * Have experience using education software and documentation * Have a working knowledge of computer terminology * Be able to discuss the history of computers * Be able to discuss the moral or human impact issues (Martin & Heller, 1982, p. 46). Today, after the widespread use of Macintosh and Microsoft's graphical interface called Windows, people no longer need to learn programming languages to operate a computer. Instead, people can point and click on visual icons to make the machine work. This new technique is called the user-friendly method of computing. Paul Heckel (1984) describes this approach as follows: The critical problem of making average people literate, was to teach them to read skilled writers already existed. But in the computer age the major problem is just the reverse--it is to make the software designer a skilled communicator, not to make the average person computer literate. (p. 3) The goal of designing user-friendly software is to make the computer easy to use. Provenzo (1986) states: "with the recent widespread proliferation and use of microcomputers, there has emerged an increasing demand for user-friendly languages and programs, a development similar to the increased number of books published in the vernacular during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries" (p. 12). Introduced in 1984, the Apple Macintosh was the first successfully marketed user-friendly computer with a graphical user interface. The basic philosophy behind the Macintosh is that it is easier to learn from pictures than from words. Graphical interfaces do not require the user to memorize commands, but rather enables the user through software programming to point to an object on the screen and click on an iconic command by using a mouse or pointing device. There is no doubt that this method makes the computer easier to operate. However, the user-friendly method of computing has altered the definition of computer literacy. According to Seymour Papert (1993), *computer literacy* has come to be defined, especially in the context of School, as a very minimal practical knowledge about computers. Someone who had so minimal level of knowledge of reading, writing, and literature would be called illiterate; the same considerations ought to lead us to call someone who has an equally minimal knowledge about computers computer-illiterate (pp. 51-52). Instead, we tend to consider anyone who can turn on a computer and point and click on an application program with a mouse to be computer literate. + Page 9 + In addition to changing our concept of computer literacy, user friendly graphical interfaces are altering literacy skills in general. The use of graphical interfaces raises four major literacy issues. First, graphical interfaces influence traditional literacy skills. Educators (Halio, 1990; Levy, 1990, November) have observed that writing graphical interface environments have an impact on writing skills. Moreover, Richard A. Lanham (1993) argues that graphical interfaces change the reading process. By changing reading and writing skills, graphical interfaces could alter the future of language. Second, educators are beginning to address the differences between traditional media and new media created using graphical interface technology. These differences can be discussed in terms of the features of print-based culture described by Eisenstein (1987, 1983). These features include dissemination; standardization of information; rationalizing, codifying and cataloguing of data; fixity and cumulative change of information; and amplification and reinforcement of messages. Currently, new media, such as hypertext and multimedia, tend to reverse many of these characteristics of print. As a result, new media could influence the future of language and culture. Third, although educators (Barrett, 1989, 1992; Landow,1991, 1992a, 1992b; Lanham, 1993; & Tuman, 1992a, 1992b) all agree that new media are different from traditional print-based media, they have mixed opinions of their impact on literacy and education. Some argue these technologies expand a student's ability to communicate ideas, while others argue that they are harmful to traditional learning skills. Finally, educators (Barnes, 1996; Phillips, 1994) are concerned that computer technology will add additional skills to the concept of literacy and create a chasm between people who are techno-literate and those who are not. As a result, the ultimate influence of new media will be the creation of a society of technological haves and have-nots. GRAPHICAL INTERFACES AND TRADITIONAL LITERACY In January 1990, a debate started over the potential impact of graphical interfaces on traditional writing skills. A writing professor at the University of Delaware, Marcia Peoples Halio, observed that students writing with graphical interfaces do not write essays as well as students working in command-line interfaces, such as MSDOS. Halio (1990) describes the writing style of students composing on Macintosh computers as follows: As to style: paragraphs were brief, resulting in a lack of development of thought; and sentences, too, were short, obviating the need for complex punctuation. Word choice tended to be simple, spiced with slang and colloquialisms, accentuating the simplistic and generalized nature of the thought. As I looked closer at the writing, I became aware that many of the students were affecting a sort of pop-style of the kind found in advertising or in the mass media. (17) Students were observed to write differently with Macintosh computers. They loved to play with the type faces on the machine and emphasize words by using different kinds of type styles. An argument developed against writing with the Macintosh because it was noticed that students get distracted by the graphic capabilities of the + Page 10 + computer, as a result, they do not concentrate on their writing skills. Levy (1990, November) states: Halio's ultimate complaint is that the Macintosh fast-lanes students into a pop culture form of expression (p. 74). The bitmapped display of text and graphics on a computer screen enables students to merge pictures with text. Consequently, students devote much of their energies into what papers *look like* rather than perfecting the prose (p. 74). Prior to Halio's observation educators believed that word processors provided students with a powerful new tool for producing traditional texts. Computers could assist students in the writing process by helping them find better ways to communicate, organize their ideas, and edit papers. According to Tuman (1992b): What Halio reported was not that computers do not always help this process, or that they may hurt it. Research suggesting as much had long been in circulation; instead, what she reported was something more troubling, and more controversial namely, that the computer technology itself (specifically, the type of computer one was using) had a significant impact on the quality of what one wrote. (p. 109) Halio's observation aroused controversy. Her admittedly limited research methodology was immediately attacked and she received hundreds of letters from Macintosh-based writing teachers. A counter argument against Halio was launched by the Macintosh professors. It claims that graphical interfaces enable students to develop ideas in both textual and visual formats. Thus, graphical interfaces increase a student's ability to express ideas. Limiting oneself to words alone is a kind of poverty (Levy, 1990, November). Underlying this debate is the idea that computer technology will alter the future of literacy. Halio's observation has profound implications for the realignment of the relationship between words and pictures. Tuman (1992b) states that it dramatizes the conflict between print and on-line literacy soon to be played out across the culture at large (p. 110). On-line literacy provides student authors with graphic design tools that were previously only available to professional artists. With on-line literacy, the abstract world of verbal expression and meaning can now be expanded to include graphic elements and pictures. Halio's ultimate fear is that the visual orientation of on-line writing will create a new type of post-literate communication that replaces the traditional strengths of logic with visceral forms of graphic persuasion. Ultimately, writing skills will suffer because a machine designed for on-line literacy undermines some of the guiding principles of print literacy (p. 111). While educators disagree about the impact of graphical interfaces on traditional writing skills, there is no doubt that this type of interface alters traditional reading skills. David Jay Bolter (1991) describes reading from a computer screen as follows: + Page 11 + Readers must move back and forth from the linear presentation of verbal text to the two-dimensional field of electronic picture writing. They can read the alphabetic signs in the conventional way, but they must also parse diagrams, illustrations, windows, and icons. Electronic readers therefore shuttle between two modes of reading, or rather they learn to read in a way that combines verbal and picture reading. Their reading includes activating signs by typing and moving the cursor and then making symbolic sense of the motions that their movements produce. (p. 71) On-line readers of computer screens notice the visual elements in texts, however, print-based readers do not. Despite the considerable presence of visual elements in printed text, they tend to go unnoticed (Landow, 1992b, p. 49). Readers of printed texts have so completely internalized the alphabet that it is transparent in the reading process. Richard A. Lanham (1993) states: The late Eric Havelock, in his pioneering work on the Greek alphabet, stressed that an alphabet that could support a high literate culture had to be simple enough to be learned easily in childhood. Thoroughly internalized at that time, it would become a transparent window into conceptual thought. The shape of letters, the written surface, was not to be read aesthetically; that would only interfere with purely literate transparency. Reading would not, except in its learning stages, be a self conscious, rule-governed, re-creative act but an intuitive skill, a literate compact exercised on the way to thought. (p. 4) Lanham (1993) asserts that by introducing visual elements the computer screen destabilizes the reading process. Readers no longer look through the *transparent* printed type faces to read a written passage, but they look *at* the decorative page. Instead of just transparently reading language, readers now become more self-conscious of the text. On computer screens, the textual surface is now a malleable and self-conscious one. All kinds of production decisions have now become authorial ones (p. 5). Readers and writers of electronic texts can change the type styles, proportions, and ratios of visual elements displayed on the screen. For instance, the reader can increase the type size of a document to make the text easier to see. In contrast to printed texts that codify information as fixed sequences of discrete letters represented by symbols and sounds, computers reduce all information into the mathematical binary system of 1s or 0s. Text, pictures, photographs, and graphics can all be stored as binary information. As a result, the digital codification of information alters the relationship between written words and images. Digitized communication is forcing a radical realignment of the alphabetic and graphic components of ordinary textual communication (Lanham, 1993, p. 3). By altering the icon/alphabet ratio in texts, graphical computer screens change the process of reading. + Page 12 + ELECTRONIC VERSUS PRINT-BASED CULTURE Altering methods of reading and writing has larger cultural implications. Reading and writing have evolved over thousands of years, not just as a means of communication, but as a means of organizing and formulating knowledge (Tuman, 1992b, p. 13). For example, Elizabeth Eisenstein argues that the printing press was a force for cultural unification during the centuries when the modern nation states were being formed (Bolter, 1991, p. 233). Eisenstein (1979) states: typography arrested linguistic drift, enriched as well as standardized vernaculars, and paved the way for the more deliberate purification and codification of all major European languages (p. 117). Thus, the fixed standard written text led to national unification. In her book, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Eisenstein (1983) identifies fixity as a characteristic of print culture. She states: Of all the new features introduced by the duplicative powers of print, preservation is possibly the most important. To appreciate its importance, we need to recall the conditions that prevailed before texts could be set in type. No manuscript, however useful as a reference guide, could be preserved for long without undergoing corruption by copyists, and even this sort of *preservation* rested precariously on the shifting demands of local elites and a fluctuating incidence of trained scribal labor. (p. 78) But, what happens when text moves from the printed page to the computer screen? First, the digital text becomes unfixed and interactive. The reader can change it, become writer. The center of Western culture since the great Alexandrian editors of Homer has been the fixed, authoritative, canonical text. It now simply explodes into the ether (Lanham, 1993, p. 31). When the printed word becomes electronic, the text is no longer fixed and static. The permanence of the printed word is transformed into an ever changing array of characters that scroll across the computer screen. Today, the microcomputer is potentially as powerful and important a medium in the redefinition of contemporary culture as the printing press was to early modern European culture. In Understanding Media, McLuhan (1964) recognized the influence electronic media would have on the future of culture. Specifically, he understood the impact this technology would have on language. McLuhan states: Our new electric technology that extends our senses and nerves in a global embrace has large implications for the future of language. Electric technology does not need words any more than the digital computer needs numbers. Electricity points the way to an extension of the process of consciousness itself, on a world scale, and without any verbalization whatever. (p. 83) + Page 13 + According to McLuhan, electronic visual images have the potential to supersede traditional language. Computer screens with their ability to display graphics as easily as words, makes this concept a possible reality. Therefore, a potential cultural consequence of graphical interfaces is the disruption of word-oriented written language. VISUAL LITERACY SKILLS AND LANGUAGE Written language is disrupted because graphical interfaces introduce a new form of picture writing. Bolter (1991) asserts that icons constitute the computer's original contribution to our writing system. Although an icon may have a name, it is above all a picture that performs or receives an action, and that action gives the icon its meaning (pp. 51-52). He describes the process of picture writing as follows: With the help of the mouse, the user positions the arrow over particular images, clicks, and then drags. If the image is a file, it follows the user's dragging motion and moves to another folder or copies itself onto another disk. If the image is a program, the clicking twice will activate the program and change the screen accordingly. In other words these images are symbolic elements in a true picture writing. They do not merely remind the user of documents and programs: they represent documents and programs. Reorganizing and activating these elements *is* writing, just as putting alphabetic characters in a row is writing. (p. 51) People using graphical interfaces must first learn the picture writing system of the software before they can begin to perform other tasks. Once this skill is mastered, writers find themselves working in a medium that expands writing from a system of verbal language to one that involves nonverbal information. Consequently, computer writing is more complex, for it includes in its space a number of systems, both open and closed. Phonetic writing, graphs, diagrams, and icons can exist side by side on the computer screen. . . The computer space is always ready to incorporate new signs (Bolter, 1991, p. 54). Every sophisticated program presents the reader with a new vocabulary of data elements that have their own visual expression. These elements become topical units that the user combines to construct meaningful texts (p. 54). For example, HyperCard introduces the visual metaphor of a stack of cards. Text and graphics are placed on individual cards and the cards are then arranged in stacks. Stacks can be arranged in linear sequence or linked together for readers to interactively access. The computer system as a whole is a constantly expanding repertoire of such codes. While each such code is well-defined and stable, the collection is not. The elements of writing in the computer are always in flux (p. 54). By adding visual writing to the literacy process, graphical interfaces challenge the stability of language itself. Arnheim (1969), a pioneer in visual thinking research, asserts that language is a stabilizing perceptual medium. Although, he argues that visual thinking is the primary form of thought, he recognizes the role of language in + Page 14 + the classification, identification, and communication of ideas and concepts. Arnheim (1969) states: the function of language is essentially conservative and stabilizing (pp. 244). In contrast, the digital system of visual/verbal codification is a destabilizing method for viewing language. The digitization now common to letters and shapes creates a mixed text of icons and words in which static and immobile and dynamically mobile cognitive styles toggle back and forth into a new bi-stable expressivity (Lanham, 1993, p. 77). In electronic texts, language is no longer the central form of thinking. Readers of electronic texts must think both visually and verbally. Suzanne Langer (1957) describes the differences between visual and verbal thinking as follows: Visual forms: lines, colors, proportions, etc. are just as capable of *articulation*, of complex combination, as words. But the laws that govern this sort of articulation are altogether different from the laws of syntax that govern language. The most radical difference is that *visual* forms are not *discursive*. They do not present their constituents successively, but simultaneously, so the relations determining a visual structure. Their complexity, consequently, is not limited, as the complexity of discourse is limited, but what the mind can retain from the beginning of an apperceptive act to the end of it. (p. 93) In contrast to printing's tendency to standardize language, the graphical computer screen has the opposite effect. It opposes the standardization of language because it adds an expanding repertoire of picture writing to written language. This change requires people to think both visually and verbally. Graphical interfaces make readers pay attention to text, icons, images, and their relationships. Lanham (1993) states the Apple world, born in personal computers not mainframes, has from the beginning been dominated by the play impulse. It colored motive, style, mood, personality type. Apple's graphics- based computers were built upon, assumed, a transformed alphabet/icon ratio (p. 47). Developers of graphical interfaces assumed that learning from visual icons is easier than learning from text because this user friendly approach enables people with little experience to interact successfully with a computer. Although this approach makes computers easier to operate, we are now beginning to realize that this technology has the potential to disrupt the stability of written language systems. NEW MEDIA: HYPERTEXT & MULTIMEDIA In addition to destabilizing language, new media developed using graphical interfaces reverse the fixity of print-based media. As a system of reading and writing, electronic text is never fixed. Unlike the spatial fixity of text reproduced by means of book technology, electronic text always has variation, for no one state or version is ever final; it can always be changed. Compared to a printed text, one in electronic form appears relatively dynamic, since it always permits correction, updating, and similar modification (Landow, 1992b, p. 52). In any technique of reading and writing, structure matters more that appearance or convenience, and the electronic book, whether it is + Page 15 + embodied in today's boxy microcomputer or in a slim electronic notebook of the future, gives text a new structure. In place of the static pages of the printed book, the electronic book maintains text as a fluid network of verbal elements (Bolter, 1991, pp. 4-5). Structurally, electronic text becomes a network of relationships--or a hyptertext. Hypertext is a way of organizing information and navigating through electronic texts stored on individual computers and networks. When printed texts are transferred into electronic hypertexts they are transformed from static books into dynamic interactive networks of information. Hypertext information is accessed using both structured and individualized retrieval methods. As a result, hypertext supports a variety of different methods that arrange the *meta-hypertext* in different discourse structures. For example, hypertexts can be organized in highly cohesive text structures that support linear readings of the text. This type of hypertext structure automates the footnote and referencing mechanisms typical of paper-based learning, and it provides a linear view of human cognition (Shirk, 1992, p. 87). In addition to linear reading, hypertexts can also be arranged in the form of a web network structure that supports associative links between texts. This structure is most appropriate for promoting the kind of exploration that occurs during development of new ideas (p. 84). Thus, hypertexts can be arranged into an overall structure that supports both linear and associative reading of texts. Hypertext is more than a text-based information system because a hypertext data base supports structured and arbitrary links among a variety of digital media types including multimedia sources. When hypertext documents include links to animation, audio, and video data, they are sometimes called hypermedia. Many people use the term hypermedia interchangeably with multimedia. However, educators should be aware that there is a difference between hypertext and multimedia. Hypertext is a model for hypermedia that is designed using principles of text oriented literacy, in contrast, multimedia presents information primarily in the form of video and graphics. Proponents of hypertext argue that it is a valuable scholarly tool because it has the ability to connect information together in ways that support traditional learning skills. A case for hypertext . . . is frequently made in terms of freeing text from the confines of print. In a hypertext environment, information is liberated from its static presentation on the page. Modules are stored as a textbase and can be accessed in a sequence determined solely by the reader (Carlson, 1992, p. 59). As a result, hypertext provides students with an individualized student-centered learning tool. Because bodies of linked texts and images contain such a rich abundance of connections, using them can develop beginning students habits of linking ideas and contexts (Landow, 1992a, p. 196). Students using hypertexts become active participants in the process of reading and writing, actively participate in two related ways: they act as reader-authors both by choosing individual paths through linked primary and secondary texts and by adding texts and links to the [hypertext] (Landow, 1992b, p. 121). Additionally, unlike + Page 16 + users of other information systems, hypertext readers must remain mentally active. They are active because students have to decide which paths to select and what information to access. Nonlinear thinking stimulates processes of integration and contextualization that are not possible with print-based media. Similarly, using hypertext as an educational writing medium creates active and collaborative human interactions. Hypertext inevitably demands additional collaborative work from the student, collaboration between student and teacher, and between student and student. The student writer (or rather, reader-writer) always writes in the electronic or virtual presence of other documents by other students and faculty and hence is always writing collaboratively with them in a way not possible in the world of print technology (Landow, 1992a, p. 199). The active participation of hypertext reader-writers, Barrett (1992) argues, creates a new form of social interaction that turns hypertext into a socio-media. Hypertext forces us to look outward from the machine into the complex interaction of human relationships which define university and education, human relationships that are the real content of all educational technology (p. 9). Barriers Hypertext can add technological barriers to accessing texts. For example, students need to understand the electronic context, learn the visual symbols, and know the mechanics of accessing, reading and writing nonlinear texts (Barnes, 1994, p. 24). Moreover, students can get lost navigating in hypertexts. The same hypermedia program allowing a search through vast amounts of material has the propensity to lose the user in hyperspace (Brown, 1994, p. 40). People using these systems frequently do not know where they are, how they got there, and how to find the information they are looking for. Thus, learning to find information in a hypertext requires people to learn additional information access and retrieval skills. Additionally, educators argue that hypertext is troubling because it's a way of presenting documents on screen without imposing a linear start-to-finish order. Disembodied paragraphs are linked by theme . . . Teaching children to understand the orderly unfolding of a plot or a logical argument is a crucial part of education (Gelernter, 1994, p. 14). By separating texts into separate paragraphs, the overall logical sequence is lost. Stephanie Gibson (1996) discusses this point in her article "Is All Coherence Gone?" She states "linearity and sequentiality, characteristics associated with print force, or request, an audience to attend in a particular way. Non-linear possibilities crack open the relationship between user and text" (p. 9). Hypertext opponents are concerned that readers of hypertexts will ignore the story presented in a text. Stories will become incoherent bits of + Page 17 + information that a reader must make sense out of. As a result, hypertext will accentuate already bad media habits created by other media, such as television. Although, educators are critical of hypertext, it still remains a new medium that is grounded in the traditional skills of reading and writing. In contrast, multimedia promises to add television characteristics to formerly static print-oriented instructional materials. Many multimedia systems are based mostly on displaying various film clips to a passive user who does not actively navigate an information space (Nielsen, 1990, p. 10). Bolter (1996) states: "a typical multimedia application relies for its rhetorical effect principally on video and graphics and secondarily on sound" (p. 106). Words are used as captions for graphics, to identify navigation buttons, and communicate only what cannot be pictured easily. Video and graphics are used as the primary form of communication. The current generation of classroom computers are sold with multimedia features, including CD-ROM and digital video players. These machines become multimedia delivery systems that faculty can use to develop and deliver learning material (Cavalier, 1992). The introduction of interactive hypertext and multimedia systems into schools radically alters the use of instructional technologies in the classroom. Hartman, Diem and Quagliana (1992) state: The step from early, largely linear and highly-structured computer-based instruction systems to today's concept of interactive multimedia is a giant one in the evolutionary development of instructional technologies. The convergence of the television, computer, and publishing industries has created desktop systems that combine images, sound, and text, and the relative cost of these systems has decreased significantly. . . Software development tools such as HyperCard and ToolBook, which are easy to use and widely available, enable non- programmers to create cohesive applications that link various sources and types of information. (p. 175) Supporters of multimedia argue that it can be used to develop lectures and classroom materials in a manner analogous to the manner in which an article or book is prepared on a word processor (Cavalier, 1992). One benefit of multimedia is that it can be projected or displayed on computer screens to act as an audio visual teaching aid. It can also be stored on a computer for students to use as a review of the classroom lecture. Thus, multimedia can be used to create a variety of class-specific teaching and learning materials. Moreover, multimedia proponents argue that it represents a return to richer, pre-print modalities of expression, as if we are coming to our senses after the anesthetic of monochrome words (Cotton & Oliver, 1993, p. 88). + Page 18 + Multimedia offers the opportunity to reason, think, speculate, debate and learn in more concrete, multi-sensory terms than the abstract forms of written or mathematical expression. While some educators have embraced these benefits of multimedia, many have not. Critics of multimedia compare it to television. Levy (1990, June) states that multimedia's legacy will be the debasement of the remaining forms of communication in this country that have not already been debased by the perpetually widening gyre of television (p. 61). Some educators argue that multimedia makes the worst educational nightmares come true. While we bemoan the decline of literacy, computers discount words in favor of pictures and pictures in favor of video. . . . The idea of multimedia is to combine text, sound and pictures in a single package that you browse on screen (Gelernter, 1994, p. 14). Instead of reading a subject, such as Shakespeare, students watch actors performing. What's wrong with that? By offering children candy-coated books, multimedia is guaranteed to sour them on unsweetened reading. It makes the printed page look even more boring than it used to look (p. 14). Lanham (1993) states: I shocked a multimedia conference where these programs had just been demonstrated with full showbiz fanfare (darkened room, big color screen, sound so loud it made your chest cavity vibrate) by suggesting that these were intrinsically *mindless* products. Using arguments not unlike those developed by hypertext enthusiasts, they were billed as the brilliant new teacher of the future: self-paced, permissive learning, deep database of reference material for students, the invitation to infinite networking. Their primary developer described these programs as a cultural Noah's ark floating in a sea of illiteracy and bad teaching. The programs offered not a teacher or a curriculum or a book or a lesson plan, or even the table of contents for any of these. They supplied only the raw material, the parts list, for them. These programs employed every animated effect that multimedia can have except the animation of the human mind. (p. 218) In general, Lanham found that multimedia programs demonstrated poor educational design. However, the simple truth is that multimedia application design is hard. Today's students and even their parents have grown up appreciating the increasingly visual sophistication of modern advertising and television. . . . Today's students lose patience with visual juxtapositions they consider to be bland, trite, or insincere (Schlusselberg & Harward, 1992, p. 95). Creating an interactive multimedia project presents a very different set of design issues than a non-interactive book. A reader always knows where he or she is in a book beginning, middle, or end. A book is meant to be read linearly. Interactive media is meant to be viewed in any order the viewer wants. Viewers need visual cues to know where they are, and how to get where they want to go (Richmond, 1990, p. 183). + Page 19 + Producing marketable educational multimedia products is similar to both print publishing and video production. Both rely heavily on electronic tools: computers for word processing, graphics, page makeup and typesetting; paintboxes for video image manipulation and computers for generating, processing and mixing sound (Cotton & Oliver, 1993, p. 76). These same tools are used to develop multimedia projects. However, multimedia development also requires programming skills to set-up the interactive links and viewing paths. These projects are usually designed and developed by a team of people and they are very expensive to produce. Attractive video or complex graphics cost money (Schlusselberg & Harward, 1992, p. 96). Companies that produce multimedia training materials suggest that it takes an average of 200 to 300 man hours to create an hour of multimedia training (Harden, 1994, p. 30). (For a detailed description of developing multimedia products see _I Sing the Body Electronic_ by Fred Moody.) Most schools do not have the resources to develop this type of software in-house. Consequently, many multimedia products are currently being developed by commercial software companies. Software companies that want to reach the home and classroom educational markets, attempt to create products that are both educational and entertaining. These programs are called "edutainment." Many edutainment products use the model of video games rather than television to captivate their viewers. In video games, there are levels to conquer, treasurers to find, and villains to pursue. But the fun [in edutainment] of shooting at a space ship, usually comes as a reward for serious work: successfully solving a string of equations or correctly spelling a list of words (Armstrong, Yang & Cuneo, 1994, p. 81). Proponents of edutainment argue that in the future interactivity, graphics, sound, and video or multimedia will play an important role in the classroom (p. 82). However, a study of educational edutainment software revealed that students do not utilize educational software in ways intended by its designers (Caftori, 1994, p. 64). The study done at Old Orchard Junior High School (OOJH) in Skokie, Ill revealed that it is not enough to embed attractive characteristics in the software because these can easily become a diversion from the real goals. Education objectives cannot be met using glossy packaging alone and it sells short the capacity of computers to aid learning (p. 65). The study revealed that students were attracted to software games, but they would use them for entertainment and relaxation instead of exploratory learning. Moreover, there was no guarantee that students interacting with the software would explore further and learning would occur. According to educational software developer Alan Kay (1991), an educational system that tries to make everything easy and pleasurable will prevent much important learning from happening (p. 140). He + Page 20 + states: "when convenience is valued over quality in education, we are led directly to junk learning. This is quite analogous to other junk phenomena, pale substitutions masquerading for the real thing. Junk learning leads to junk living." As Neil M. Postman of New York University says, whether a medium carries junk is not important, since all media have junk possibilities (p. 141). Kay goes on to say, one needs to be sure that media incapable of carrying important kinds of discourse--for example television--do not displace those that can (p. 141). TECHNO-LITERATES AND TECHNO-ILLITERATES Replacing printed texts with hypertext and multimedia as instructional technology is very controversial. Cotton and Oliver (1993) argue that one reason why it is controversial is because the nature of these new media are a threat to educators. They state: For centuries the written word has had a central authority in society. Indeed, it could be strongly argued that our notions of rationality and valid argument are all bound up with modes of thought that are derived from writing as a medium. The only real challenge to the primacy of the written word has come from its more esoteric cousin, the mathematical expression. Both these media are extremely abstract and their mastery takes many years of education and training. While most people in modern society can read, write, and handle simple mathematics, the greatest concentration of mastery in these media is found in the elite professions, and is a source of some of their power and much of their authority. (p. 88) Geoghegan (1994) reports that only a small proportion of faculty are actively developing instructional technology applications. On the surface, this fact may appear to support the idea that educators are hesitant to integrate new media into teaching and learning. However, Geoghegan argues that over half of US faculty members in higher education use personal computers. Moreover, he asserts that the instructional technology problem is not attributable to faculty discomfort with the technology itself, nor to faculty disenchantment with the potential benefits of information technology to instruction (p. 4). Instead the problem of using this technology is based on the following: shortages of equipment and facilities; institutional support for the development and use of instructional technology; unrealistic expectations about the development, dissemination and use of instructional technology (this includes the realities of time, money and skills required to develop software); the social and psychological dimensions of technological innovation and diffusion, and a knowledge of how humans learn. + Page 21 + Despite large expenditures to integrate instructional technology throughout American higher education, this technology has not been generally adopted by mainstream faculty. Using marketing models, Geoghegan argues that a huge social gap has been created between faculty members who were early adopters of instructional technology and mainstream faculty members who are not using it at all. He then presents strategies to bridge the gap. However, I would argue that finding the time to keep literacy skills up-to date is the central issue. For example, when a communications department decides to upgrade their computer lab from six-year-old Macintosh computers to Windows 95 systems, the faculty will have to upgrade their computer skills. They must learn the graphical language of Windows 95, which is visually different from the Macintosh, and they must familiarize themselves with the new upgraded software programs. Once they are proficient with the software, all of the instructional materials they have developed for the Macintosh-based course have to be redone because they are incompatible or obsolete. The process of relearning computer skills and the time required to upgrade teaching materials, can be overwhelming. Computer technology is constantly changing and faculty members have difficulty maintaining their computer literacy. Consider the changes in computer technology over a ten-year period and their implications for literacy skills. In 1984, the Macintosh erased the boundaries between digital text and digital graphics by introducing graphical interfaces and desktop publishing programs. Ten years later, Apple added sight, sound, color, and motion to the world of digital information. In ten short years the Macintosh had been transformed from a small black and white desktop print-oriented computer into a multimedia powerhouse. During the March 14, 1994, Power Macintosh promotional event at Alice Tulley Hall, images projected on a large screen demonstrated the machines new features. For example, Apple showed a three-dimensional calculator where formulas were instantly mapped onto 3-D models that rotated. One by one, developers revealed their new features of sight, sound, color, and motion. Data was shown switching back and forth between spreadsheet and word processing programs. With the click of a mouse, numbers where transformed into charts. The charts could be animated, put into digital videos with sound, and inserted into word processing documents . During the demonstration, I quietly scribbled down a list of the skills you would need to communicate, using the new features of this machine. They include: traditional literacy, math, visual literacy, graphic design, electronic navigation skills, database skills, video editing, audio editing, and basic programming. Apple's future is a world where all media types--print, video, audio, television, and film- -become digital. With the Macintosh, it is just as easy to copy and paste a piece of digital video, as it is to copy and paste text. Moreover, the text and video can be combined in the same digital document. Why just read about Shakespeare, when you can simultaneously see the text and watch Mel Gibson play Hamlet? Multimedia computers now make this possible. But, if all forms of communication visual, verbal, image, sound and motion become digital, don't we now need to know how to communicate all of these various ways? The literacy required by new media is the most complex form of literacy we can imagine. It combines all of the methods humans use to communicate together into one medium. + Page 22 + Gerald M. Phillips (1994) argued that when people find out how many new skills they will need to learn to communicate with a computer, functional illiteracy with rise. In his article, A Nightmare Scenario: Literacy & Technology, Phillips states: In a world where technology and literacy marry, we can expect to see an increase in functional illiteracy. There are estimates that as many [as] 40% of the people in our society are currently functionally illiterate. The equivocal phrase appears to mean that people watch too much television and do not read so many books. We can expect functional illiteracy to rise when people discover what technological skills they must master to cope with the world in which they will live. (p. 62) Traditional illiteracy is already a problem in the United States. With the widespread use of visual media, such as television, we have seen declines in textual literacy skills. A newsletter I received last week from Representative Jerrold Nadler reports on this issue. He states that in New York City only 20.4% of students who complete high school earn a Regents diploma [the state proficiency exam], only 34% of third graders read at or above grade level and less than half of the students who began high school four years ago graduated this year (personal correspondence). In a society that is having trouble teaching traditional literacy skills, the addition of computer related literacy skills could result in an overall rise in illiteracy. Phillips (1994) asserts that computer technology adds additional skills to the literacy process. He states, whatever glowing words are said about the wonders of computer communication or multimedia, the bottom line is that the computer is a literate and linear machine. It employs binary mathematics and depends on grammar. When humans fail to follow the rules, the machine does not respond correctly (p. 52). In contrast to the idea of user friendly computing, people still need to learn some programming skills to understand the grammar of the machine. Thus, learning basic programming principles should be a requirement to be considered computer literate. Moreover, a failure to make programming a literacy requirement, creates a gap between people designing computer programs and those who buy them. People who are functionally literate in the use of application software programs such as spreadsheets and word processing tend to be illiterate in programming languages. As a result, the gap between the user--literate group and the designer group is expanding rapidly (Hey, 1991, p. 52). But, this gap becomes a huge chasm when the measurement is between software designers and people who do not) use a computer at all. For the great majority of Americans, computers and related digital technology are a foreign language; they have no access to its meaning and they cannot participate in its culture (p. 52). Computer literacy versus illiteracy and access versus no access to equipment is creating a social schism between techno-literates and techno-illiterates. The ultimate cultural consequence of new media could be the creation of a society of technological haves and have nots. + Page 23 + CONCLUSION Graphical interfaces that make a computer easier to operate are influencing the future of literacy. Although graphical interfaces expand a student's ability to communicate ideas by adding visual information, they simultaneously may be creating a new type of post- literate style of communication that substitutes emotional forms of visual persuasion for the strengths of logic. As a result, educators have mixed reactions to the introduction of new media in education. However, they tend to agree on one point. Each medium has its own profile of cognitive advantages and disadvantages, and each medium can be used to enhance the impact of the others (Greenfield, 1984, p. 178). Moreover, each medium is well suited to certain forms of communication and poorly suited to others, and if it is wrongly used it takes revenge (Arnheim, 1986, p. 306). The new media environments of hypertext and multimedia reinforce two very different communication models. Developers of hypertext view the technology as primarily supporting a print-based model of literate communication. In contrast, multimedia follows the visual trend of television and entertainment. Educators need to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of new media when they integrate them into the classroom. Alan Kay (1991), reminds us that users of media need to be aware, too, that technology often forces us to choose between quality and convenience (p. 141). Multimedia may be a convenient way to present information, however, the educational quality of these products is questionable. Moreover, in a society that has seen a decline in traditional literacy skills, sugar-coating learning could have disastrous social consequences. Despite the user-friendly facade of graphical interfaces, new media actually require people to learn more - not less. In fact, learning the literacy skills required to communicate using new media could overwhelm people into illiteracy. REFERENCES Armstrong, L., Yang, D. J. & Cuneo, A. (1994, February 28). The learning revolution. Business Week, pp. 80-88. Arnheim, R. (1986, October-December). The images of pictures and words. Word & Image, vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 306-310. Arnheim, R. (1969). Visual Thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press. Barrett, E. (Ed.). (1992). Sociomedia: Multimedia, hypermedia, and the social construction of knowledge. Cambridge: MIT Press. Barrett, E. (Ed.). (1989). The society of text. Cambridge: MIT Press. Barnes, S. B. (1996). The development of graphical user interfaces from 1970 to 1993, and some of its social implications in offices, schools, and the graphic arts. (Doctoral Dissertation, New York University, 1995). Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, UMI Number: 9609383. Barnes, S. (1994). Hypertext Literacy. Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century, pp. 24-36. (archived as BARNES IPCTV2N4 on LISTSERV@LISTSERV.GEORGETOWN.EDU) + Page 24 + Bolter, D. J. (1996). Virtual reality and the redefinition of self. In L. Strate, R. Jacobson, & S. B. Gibson (Eds.), Communication and cyberspace, pp. 105-119. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. Bolter, D. J. (1992). Literature in the electronic writing space. In M. C. Tuman (Ed.), Literacy on-line: The promise (and peril) of reading and writing with computers, pp. 19-42. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Bolter, D. J. (1991). Writing space: The computer, hypertext, and the history of writing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Brown, J. I. (1994). Lost in hyperspace. Multimedia Today, Volume II, Issue 4, pp. 40-42. Caftori, N. (1994, August). Educational effectiveness of computer software. T.H.E. Journal, pp. 62-65. Carlson, P. A. (1992). Varieties of virtual: Expanded metaphors for computer mediated learning. In Edward Barrett (Ed.). Sociomedia: Multimedia, hypermedia, and the social construction of knowledge, pp. 53-77. Cambridge: MIT Press. Cavalier, R. J. (1992, May/June). Shifting paradigms in higher education and educational computing. 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(1992). Multimedia: Informational alchemy or conceptual typography? In Edward Barrett (Ed.). Sociomedia: Multimedia, hypermedia, and the social construction of knowledge, pp. 95-106. Cambridge: MIT Press. Shirk, H. N. (1992). Cognitive architecture in hypermedia instruction. In Edward Barrett (Ed.). Sociomedia: Multimedia, hypermedia, and the social construction of knowledge, pp. 79-93. Cambridge: MIT Press. Tuman, M. C. (1992a). Literacy on-line: The promise (and peril) of reading and writing with computers. Pittsburgh, PA: The University of Pittsburgh Press. Tuman, M. C. (1992b). Word perfect: Literacy in the computer age. Pittsburgh, PA: The University of Pittsburgh Press. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES: Susan B. Barnes received her Ph.D. in Media Ecology from New York University and is currently an Assistant Professor at Fordham University in the Department of Communication and Media Studies. Her chapter Cyberspace: Creating Paradoxes for the Ecology of Self has recently been published in _Communication and Cyberspace_ edited by Lance Strate, Ron Jacobson, and Stephanie B. Gibson. Currently she is writing a book about Internet interpersonal relationships. sbbarnes@pipeline.com or barnes@murray.fordham.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright Statement Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century Copyright 1996 University of Maryland Baltimore County and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Copyright of individual articles in this publication is retained by the individual authors. Copyright of the compilation as a whole is held by the UMBC and AECT. It is asked that any republication of this article state that the article was first published in IPCT-J. Contributions to IPCT-J can be submitted by electronic mail in APA style to: Susan Barnes, Editor IPCT-J SBBARNES@PIPLELINE.COM or BARNES@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU