The new literacy tools demand that we rethink literacy and help all students become media literate.

These new tools are redefining the way we communicate - in our homes, in the workplace, and in our local and larger communities. Literacy in our culture must now include not only the tools of print but also the tools of the new media.

Patricia Aufderheide, Associate Professor of Communication, American University, writes about the necessity of becoming media literate in a report of The National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy: "Media literacy, the movement to expand notions of literacy to include the powerful post-print media that dominate our informational landscape, helps people understand, produce, and negotiate meanings in a culture made up of powerful images, words, and sounds....

A media-literate person - and everyone should have the opportunity to become one - can decode, evaluate, analyze, and produce both print and electronic media. The fundamental objective of media literacy is critical autonomy in relationship to all media. Emphases in media literacy training vary widely, including informed citizenship, aesthetic appreciation and expression, social advocacy, self-esteem, and consumer competence" (Aufderheide, l993).

The changes are evident in every sector of society. What Work Requires of Schools, by the Secretary of Labor's Commission on Acquiring Necessary Skills, is emphatic about changes occurring throughout the workplace. "[The computer] has reconfigured the world of work as have perhaps no other inventions since electricity or the assembly line. It has created not only a new industry; it has redefined the way thousands of different kinds of work are now carried out" (Brock, W. E., et al. l991).

Literacy in the workplace is more interactive and collaborative, and requires the use of multiple technologies for effective communication. The authors of the SCANS report implore educators to prepare children for the new literacy: "If you do not, you will be failing your students and your community as they try to adjust to the next century" (SCANS, 1991).