The New London Group is a group of ten people who came together to work on issues of literacy pedagogy and how the world is supposed to address the change of this literacy due to globalization, technology, and increasing cultural and social diversity. They also coined the word multiliteracies, which is a new type of literacy based on what I've just mentioned.

The main point of this article is to extend the pedagogy of literacy farther than what it is currently defined as most of the time. The authors defined it as, "...restricted to formalized, monolingual, monocultural, and rule-governed forms of language" (1). The authors describe how "the languages are needed to make meaning are radically changing in three realms of our existence: our working lives, our public lives (citizenship), and our personal lives (lifeworlds)" (2).

The worklife in this world is changing and the authors argue, that as educators, we need to be aware of that change and teach it. Skill levels, types of work, etc are changing from the Ford-like production line to "fast capitalism" type jobs. The language for these new jobs are changing as well because of new social changes and new equipment is being used. Work places have changed to much more informal places with more informal relationships. All of these examples of change show that this new literacy must be taught in schools in order for students to eventually fulfill employment. "These new workplace discourses can be taken in two very different ways-as opening new educational and social possibilities, or as new systems of mind control or exploitation" (3). The authors talk about how the definition of success has to change too; away from just economic terms.

Citizenship and our public lives are drastically changing as well. After the 80s the authors say that there were many changes. These changes sound really political to me. Media has also changed our lives. The last big change is that our lives are becoming less private and more public. Boundary lines between various "communities" (ex: Italian-American community, LGBT community) are blurring. People are parts of more than one communities, move between them, etc.

"Every classroom will inevitably reconfigure the relationships of local and global difference that are now so critical. To be relevant, learning processes need to recruit, rather than attempt to ignore and erase, the different subjectivities, interests, intentions, commitments, and purposes that students bring to learning" (8). That quote describes what should be happening now in schools. The authors also discuss the fact that there are limits on how much schools alone can do with teaching this new multiliteracy. Schools have to discuss "fast capitalism, emerging pluarlistic forms of citizenship, and of different lifeworlds" (10).

The term "design" is used to describe managers, teachers; as designers. Also, design science is starting to be used to look at different professions like teaching or office work. They like using this word because it doesn't have a negative feeling like "grammar" or other subjects. Also, design has multiple meanings so it fits many words. Order of discourse describe the way that each discourse relates or speaks to each other. "...Available Designs-that take the form of discourses, styles, genres, dialects, and voices to name a few key variables" (11). Available design is a part, or sub-group of order of discourse. The authors then discuss what designing is. To me it sounds like creating new things based off of your knowledge. Designing does not simply just re-use available designs though. Redesigning is yet another term that the authors describe. A good definition for that is "the resources that are produced and transformed through Designing" (13).

Teachers need to use a sort of metalanguage, a language that describes language, to talk about this new pedagogy/design. The primary purpose of this language is to "identify and explain differences between texts, and relate these to the contexts of culture and situation in which they seem to work" (14). This metalanguage used to describe linguistics is supposed to focus our attention on "representational resources". (Look at table on page 17)

All in all this article describes different ways to name things. It looks at Visual, Audio, Spacial meanings and creates a new language for it because of the changing public, work, and school life that we live in today.

QUESTIONS:

I didn't understand the first paragraph about citizenship/public life. It was about politics. I didn't follow much of it.

Available designs confuse me. Are they ideas and then designing shapes them? -->Look at chart on page 13.