This book reports the authors' research in electronic literacy, chronicling the development of electronic literacies through stories of several individuals with varying backgrounds and skills. The goal is to begin tracing technological literacy as it has emerged over the last few decades within the United States. The authors selected 20 case studies from the larger corpus of more than 350 people who participated in interviews or completed a technological literacy questionnaire during the past five or six years. The participants were recruited primarily through school settings, calling first on colleagues and students, then on identified participants through the recommendations of these initial volunteers. The book is organized into seven chapters that follow the 20 participants in their efforts to acquire varying degrees of technological literacy. Each of the chapters situates the participants' life-history accounts in the cultural ecology of the time, tracing major political, economic, social, and educational events, factors, and trends that may have influenced - and been influenced by - literacy practices and values.
Each of the literacy histories in this project is richly sown with information that can help those in composition and writing studies situate the processes of acquiring the literacies of technology in specific cultural, material, educational, and familial contexts. The authors hope that these case studies will provide some initial clues about combinations of factors that affect - and are affected by - technological literacy acquisition and development. They feel that the value of the first-hand accounts is that they present, in abundant detail, everyday literacy experiences that can help educators, parents, policymakers, and writing teachers respond to today's students in more informed ways.