No abstract

Is there an achievement gap for online reading ability based on income inequality that is separate from the achievement gap in traditional, offline reading? This possibility was examined between students in two pseudonymous school districts: West Town (economically advantaged) and East Town (economically challenged; N = 256). Performance‐based assessments were used within a simulation of the Internet developed as part of a larger project. Seventh graders completed two online research and comprehension assessments, which evaluated four skill areas (locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate) and two knowledge domains in science. Students also completed an assessment of prior domain knowledge and a short Internet use questionnaire. Standardized state reading and writing test scores served as measures of offline literacy skills. Results indicated that there was a significant achievement gap favoring West Town students in offline reading scores, offline writing scores, and online research and comprehension scores. A significant gap persisted for online research and comprehension after we conditioned on pretest differences in offline reading, offline writing, and prior knowledge scores. The results of the questionnaire indicated that West Town students had greater access to the Internet at home and were required to use the Internet more in school. These results suggest that a separate and independent achievement gap existed for online reading, based on income inequality. Current estimates of this gap, which rely solely on measures of offline reading, may underrepresent the true nature of the U.S. reading achievement gap in an online age. Policy implications are explored.

and new social practices of literacy quickly emerge. Historically, literacy has always changed (Manguel, 1996), but over substantial periods of time. Today, however, the emergence of the Internet has brought about a period of rapid, continuous technological change and, as a result, rapid, continuous change in the nature of literacy.The Internet is the most efficient system in the history of civilization for delivering new technologies that require new skills to read, write, and communicate effectively. It is also an amazingly efficient system for rapidly disseminating new social practices for the use of these technologies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006). As a result, new technologies and new social practices rapidly and repeatedly redefine what it once meant, in a simpler world, to be able to read, write, and communicate effectively.To be literate today often means being able to use some combination of blogs, wikis, texting, search engines, Facebook, foursquare, Google Docs, Skype, Chrome, iMovie, Contribute, Basecamp, or many other relatively new technologies, including thousands of mobile applications, or "apps." To be literate tomorrow will be defined by even newer technologies that have yet to appear and even newer social practices that we will create to meet unanticipated needs. Thus, the very nature of literacy continuously changes; literacy is deictic. It is becoming increasingly clear that the deictic nature of literacy will require us to continuously rethink traditional notions of literacy. Note

donald j. leu, university of connecticut; charles k. kinzer, teachers college, columbia university; julie coiro, university of rhode island; jill castek, portland state university; and laurie a. henry, university of kentucky LITERACY AS DEIXIS 1. Global economic competition within economies based increasingly on the effective use of information and communication. 2. The rapid appearance of the Internet in both our professional and personal lives. 3. Public policy initiatives by nations that integrate literacy and the Internet into instruction.

to predict every line, on every page, that follows. Our contribution is not to make specific predictions about each line in that story. These inevitably will be proven wrong as change overwhelms our ability to anticipate it. Instead, we hope to develop a broad outline of the continuing story of literacy instruction that will take place in classrooms around the world. We hope our description will direct all members of the literacy community to focus their attention on networked information and communication technologies such as the Internet. We