Introduction
A period of approximately 30 years from the late 1970s through 2006 frames the discussion in this chapter of out‐of‐school literacy practices. Young people born during this period can be seen as “natives” of the digital age. A key feature of this age is that “new media” enabled by digital computer technologies greatly increased the mobility, interchangeability, and accessibility of texts and signs while magnifying and simplifying processes for their production and dissemination. Video games, instant or text messages, blogs, zines, email, ipods, ichat, and Internet sites like myspace are digitized places that many young people inhabit. Importantly, these new media have enabled “new literacies” (see also Leander and Lewis, Literacy and Internet Technologies; Street, New Literacies, New Times: Developments in Literacy Studies; Schultz and Hull, Literacies In and Out of School in the United States, Volume 2). Another consideration for this period is its overlap and reciprocal...
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Mahiri, J. (2008). Literacies in the Lives of Urban Youth. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_52
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