by Jennifer Coote
Introduction
Addressing a conference of media ecologists, Canadian academic and author E McLuhan, Vital Speeches of the Day, Aug 09, calls for a radical change in education systems to cope with the social and cultural onslaught of the ever evolving new media technologies. Today s students are already familiar with multi modal texts which combine to manipulate or inform the user’s views of their world. Immersed in these “literacies,” they are like those auditors of the olden oral poets who enthralled their hearers and transported them to a new mode of being. Young students are likewise sensitised to “inhabit” their learning rather than to take an objective and rational view.(continue…)