hartman 2000 influence of media on liteacy

Read~ng Research Quarterly Vol. 35, No . 2

Aprili3lay,June 2000 El999 International Readlng Association

( p p . 2 7 6 2 8 2 )

What will be the influences of media on literacy in the next millennium?

Susan B. Neuman Temple Lhrvcrsrty, Phrladelphra,

Pennsylvunru, USA

?=arly supporters presented a halcyon picture of the public library at the turn of the last

century (Garrison. 1979: Van House. 1972). Building what amounted to the modern library system, philan- thropist Andrew Carnegie sought no less than a social and cultural trans- formation in society, hoping to uplift and enlighten the literary tastes of the masses, support education for the underprivileged, and provide a natural extension of free public education for all (Van Slyck, 1995). Carnegie's concept was to build a library characterized by free access, services for children, separate children's rooms. and cooperation with local schools. Tens of thousands of young readers benefited from his largesse, borrowing books for the first time free of charge.

Yet Carnegie's great libraries exacted their own kind of payment. not in cash but in demeanor. Early libraries were collections of good books, and librarians were their guardians. Activity at the library involved reading what librarians thought children should read, with

fiction and other entertaining books being regarded as frivolous and highly discouraged. Surrounded by tomes of great works. children were to adopt the appropriate behavior for reading in the library. They were to sit quietly, read silently, and never speak above a whisper.

As we consider literacy for the new millennium. what might the new philanthropists of the library en- vision for the future? How might technology change the ways in which children use resources, ex- change ideas with others, and en- gage in learning in such public spaces as the library? What will recreational and functional reading look like in the future?

The modern library in the 21st century

Even a decade ago, someone entering a public library in the U.S. could expect to find a scene highly reminiscent of Carnegie's original vision. One could find books, maga- zines, newspapers, and some educationally oriented audiovisual materials. The public library's collection would reflect the interests of the community, and the size of the collection would be largely determined by the size of the building. The most desired books could be unavailable for weeks, having been recently checked out. The young library user,

limited to what he or she could expect from that library facility and with a few exceptions through interlibrary loan, could use only the resources contained within its four walls.

In the future. that same young reader entering public libraries in the U.S. will expect and demand global resources. immediately and directly. The library of the future will become increasingly transformed from a fi-nite space with finite resources to a finite space with infinite resources. But children will no longer be sitting quietly at their tables turning the pages of a book. The library will look different, and children will be- have differently.

The library of the future will be characterized by open shelves, a term once used to reflect free access. Kow, however, it is used to describe the limited collection of books in the library and the more limited attention to circulation figures as indica- tors of library activity. Instead, there will be computer terminals everywhere, with keypads designed to match the age-appropriate hand size of children of different ages. Hits on various Web pages are now the norm for determining amount and type of library activity in the branch.

Public libraries of the future will not merely support young patrons; they will cater to them. Due to its massive resource capacity, the li-

brary will attract many nontraditional young users. But not unlike the past century, there will be continuing de- bate about how these resources are used. Many will decry the young children's interest in demanding the very lowest level of reading material in quality and taste. However, there will be something for everyone- some typically advantaged children will be using resources to their greatest capacity, while others will find their thrills in sexual kick-boxing and oddball chat rooms.

The demeanor among children in the library will change from the pensive and the quiet to the social playground, with large groups of children waiting to get on, or involved in, the Internet. Navigating for resources and sites will be easier with multiple interfaces designed around the fourth-grade level with plenty of pictures to convey ideas along with the print. Children will read, but in brief bursts as they move from picture to picture. Books will rarely be checked out; instead. children will favor CDs and videos.

The librarian of this coming century will no longer be a biblio- phile but a bit of a hacker and tech- nician, since equipment is always in need of repair. Rather than finding books for patrons or answering ref- erence questions, now his or her activity will be more of an online personal help service, although painful back ailments from leaning over people's shoulders may pre- vent long interactions. KO longer is there time to get to know the patrons' names, or even their faces for that matter, since most are always looking forward at a screen. Despite all efforts, he or she will not filter the content of what children are reading; in fact in the US, it won't be allowed since challenged by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Computer clubs have replaced story hours.

If we ask our current philanthropists what their vision of the public library might be, they proba- bly would say to transform society by providing greater access and thus ensure a more knowledgeable public than ever before. And perhaps children of the 21st century will be more sophisticated consumers of information and entertainment than ever before. But the ambiance of the dark public library with patrons quietly turning the pages of their books will be forever changed.

REFERENCES GARRISON, D. (1979). Apostles of culture:

The public librarian and American society 1876-1920.New York: Free Press.

VAN HOUSE, W. (1972). Public library user fees. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

VAN SLYCK, A. (1995). Free to all. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Peter Smagorinsky Universip o f Georgia. Athens, U S A

riting on the future of me- wdia and literacy brings to mind science fiction

movies from the 1950s, with flying saucers swinging across the screen on not-so-transparent strings, and aliens with names like Zoltan wear- ing aluminum foil space suits and speaking very formal English. That is. no matter what I say here, it is bound to look a little silly before long because it's hard to say how media and technology will develop in the next few decades. When I was a kid, media referred to those large reel-to-reel projectors that always seemed to eat our science class films. Even 5 years ago, few people had even heard of the World Wide Web, now a fixture in any home with a computer. And so forecasting

the future of media and its effects on literacy is tricky business. But I'll step into my time machine, crank the engine a few times, and give it a try nonetheless.

One thing that I think will change is the definition of literacy it- self, which historically has referred to at least a rudimentary ability to decode, comprehend, and produce written language. even by such limited means as a signature. When the world was a much simpler place. these definitions seemed adequate. Language served as the primary medium through which people con- structed systematic representations of their worlds, and written documents served as the basis for the structure and machinery of society: laws, his- tory, records. and so on. While literacy in terms of language is still prerequisite to active participation in much of modern life, it is now part of what Wertsch (1991) has called a "tool kit" of mediational means (p. 93). While language is still no doubt the "tool of tools" (Cole. 1996. p. log), other communicative and mediational means are being developed that play a strong role in fin de siBcle literacy and presumably will increasingly help one to live the good life in the new millennium.

Before looking too far ahead. I would like to review an argument I made a few years ago (Smagorinsky. 1995). At that time I had spent a lot of time visiting classes across the curriculum in a large public high school and had tried to understand how students made meaning as they moved from class to class, discipline to discipline. What I found raised questions about the notion that writ-ing across the curriculum is the most worthwhile goal for schooling, given that in many disciplines students produced highly meaningful texts consistent with disciplinary values and conventions, yet through media other than language. Students in an Equine Management and Production

What will be the influences of media on literacv in the next millennium? 277

class, for instance. needed to learn a wide range of knowledge and skills for breeding and maintaining horses. The culminating project for the se- mester was to synthesize all of their knowledge of horses in the design of a ranch that they might conceiv- ably own and operate at a profit. They combined multidisciplinary knowledge in order to design their ranches: geometry for designing an- gles, mathematics for developing feed mixes in the right proportion, physics to know how to situate buildings for drainage, weather to know how to build for local condi- tions (e.g.. one-story structures if tor- nadoes are a threat), economics for deciding what crops to grow for feed, and much more, including specific knowledge of how to accom- modate the needs of particular breeds of horses.

The project took over a month to conlplete and involved a long- term process of composition, including planning, drafting, revising, and the production of the final product that the students regarded quite seriously. Work was conducted col- laboratively, with students talking frequently with one another and their teacher about their designs. In short. the production of the horse ranch designs included all of the as- pects of writing that are usually the basis for viewing writing as an es- sential tool. The difference was that words were only used as labels. with the spatial configuration of images being the primary vehicle for constructing and representing meaningful ideas.

From this class and many others, I concluded that the concern of educators ought to be with conzpos-ing across the c u t ~ c u l u mrather than writing across the curriculum, given that writing does not have exclusive properties for enabling people to construct or represent meaning. Furthermore, in some disciplines writing is not the culturally appropri-

ate vehicle for mediating students' engagement with ideas.

As new media develop. I think they will increasingly afford new systems of representation. Recall that many of the original educational programs for computers looked very similar to what already existed in workbooks; that is, the potential of computers was poorly exploited because they were viewed as simply a different means for providing the same texts. Now. sofmare designers work with animation, sound, interac- tion, voice activation. image making, and who-knows-what-awaits in order to provide computer users with useful and entertaining tools.

If we assume that literacy serves to construct, preserve, and document frameworks for social practice-and to enable communication within those frameworks-then it is conceiv- able that computers and software will provide tools for a different kind of literacy. In that sense, then, school production may change. Instead of writing a research paper. for instance. students can create a multimedia pre- sentation that includes film footage. scanned images, music, voice-overs, and so on. In my view, the key question should be. in what ways does the process of composition both lead to new learning and provide a representation of that learning that follows appropriate cultural conventions? The developnlent of new technologies and media, while changing the tools and forms through which students compose, should not change that fundamental question.

REFERENCES COLE, M. (1996). Cu/iuralpsychology: A once

and future discipline. Cambr~dge, MA: Harvard Un~versity Press.

SMAGORINSKY, P. (1995). Constructing meaning In the disciplines: Reconceptualizing writing across the curr~culum as composing across the curr~culum. American Journal of Education, 103, 160-1 84.

WERTSCH, J.V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A soc~ocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Haward University Press.

Patricia E. Enciso O h i o State ITnrversry, C o l u m b u s , L1S/4

The theories and practices of literary interpretation are as old as Talmudic studies and as

new as poststructuralist linguistics and postmodern identity politics. Yet across the centuries. studies of literary interpretation have addressed the same intersections of reader, text, and context through questions that in- clude these: Who are readers? What should they read? What are the cir- cumstances of their reading? How? Why? Who benefits from these views of reader, text, and context?

Old and new approaches to literary education have been developed and critiqued in terms of these questions and in relation to the production of new literary forms. more fully artic- ulated theories of readerhext transac- tions. reconfigurations of philosophies of the self, and assertions of political power focused on containing particular texts and relationships to texts. In the coming century. I imagine these influences will continue to shape the scholarship and teaching of literary interpretation. In addition, reading and literary education will continue to wrestle with many of the same questions and problems that others have attempted to resolve over the past decades. I want to look to the past for a moment. to describe one prescrip- tion for reading education that illumi- nates many of the issues we will face in the next millennium.

On the cusp of the 20th century, M.E. Burt. a veteran teacher, librarian. and member of the Chicago Board of Education, wrote a com- pelling, no-nonsense treatise on the form and content of children's literary educations. Her compact book. ~0111- plete with an annotated bibliography. was entitled Litemly Landmah~for

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Young People (1899). Burt outlined the selections of literature that should be available to and read by all children, what they should and should not attend to as they read ("He will read with better expression if his mind is searching after the largest thought in the piece than he will if he is continually nagged at concerning the definitions of words") (p. 29), and what adults should know before they ventured their opinions on children's reading ("It always excites my indig- nation and contempt to hear 'scholars' putting themselves on haughty pedestals of classicalism, speak dis- paragingly of giving the greatest works to laboring men or their children") (p. 23).

Burt had no patience with scholars or publishers who suggested that children's texts should be limited in literary style or content. She argued that children needed the best of literary art and ideas if they were to gain a sense of the continuous chain of events and ideas that have formed modern thought. Her comprehensive plan for literary studies included bibli- cal stories and Arthurian legends for young children, Fenelon's Lives of the Philosophers and Chaucer's Griselda for upper elementar).-aged children, and a study of Dante's poetry and Marlowe's Fazrst for adolescents. As is apparent from her recommended reading list, she saw no reason to separate adult and children's reading: "Any book is not good enough for the youngest child in the primary grade unless it would be a good book for the teacher or parent." She argued that, in the company of great books and avid adult readers. children would soon discover and delight in the interrelatedness of literary structures, themes, and historic events.

Many advocates of Western classical literature might wholeheart- edly agree with Burt that a chain of events can and should be gleaned from the guided selection and interpretation of well-wrought literary art.

She would have found a kindred spir- it, no doubt, in E.D. Hirsch had they been contemporaries at the turn of the 20th century. She might also have found much in common with literature-based reading educators who en- courage deep and wide reading, as James Britton proposed in the mid- 1960s. Indeed, in the latter part of her book, she presents a strong argument for the centrality of literature across the curriculum, particularly in science and social studies education. She cer- tainly would have supported family literacy research and practices, particularly those located within middle class and economically depressed neighborhoods, that bring children and adults together around the best books available.

Burt's perspectives on literature selection and literary interpretation placed high value on universal access to ideas, art, and goodness. In her day. these views would have been ac- ceptable to most teachers, librarians, politicians, and labor organizers (but not scholars!). The United States was seeking a political compass at the turn of the century and found much to support its largely immigrant popu- lation in the form of socialist and pro- gressive politics, the equity politics reflected in Burt's vision of literary education. Her writing was also a reac- tion against the modernist vision of social change that imposed catego- rization, efficiency, and reductionism on school curricula. particularly reading education.

I wonder, now, how Burt's perspectives on literature selections and interpretations might persist while the form and substance might be changed in the 21st century. How would she, in these postmodern and postcolonial times, organize histories that cannot be made commensurable as a continuous chain? And what cri- teria would she use to select from the extensive body of literary art forms and ideas so that the exemplary voices and visions of all the world's peo-

ple are represented and interrelated? I am hopeful that today's multistoried, multimedia children and adults will not be content with a singular line of literary landmarks that convey "a mas- terpiece of creative goodness" (p. 1j). That line, based almost exclusively on European male values, language, and histories, thins and weakens rapidly, leaving many children wondering where they fit in to the process of making meaning.

If, at the turn of the last century, literary study and interpretation had as its purpose the coherent mapping of historical relationships associated with the writer's art, then, at the beginning of the next century the chal- lenges for researchers, teachers, and students may be to comprehend the incoherences in stories, the unstated histories, the long-denied and mis- placed representations within literary forms. Unlike Burt, who advised teachers to guide children toward "the big ideas" within literature. future teachers and researchers will need to consider what could possibly be con- strued as a shared idea. "Big ideas" or themes, the staple of literary interpretation, are intentionally obscured by today's artists and authors working across media-based and book-like art- forms (see, for example, Monster, 1999. by Walter Dean Myers). Students may be far ahead of teachers and researchers in recognizing that themes are precisely what limits meaning: the artform and the artist are questioning. not sustaining, the reader's assumption of an answer.

The future of literary interpretation promises to be an exciting scramble through texts and images. Still. the key question for future literary and reading educators, in the United States and other emerging den~ocracies,is not so much what new literary forms and interpretations might be possible, but whether teachers will have authority within the political struggles over the form and substance of reading education, to

What will be the influences of media on literacy in the next millennium? 279

determine how any text will be se- lected and interpreted. The future of research and teaching regarding literasy education will be played out against a landscape of definitions, values. and civil rights. And here we can return to Burt's vision. Should we. like Burt, demand the most comprehensive and remarkable exemplars of the world's narratives and literasy forms-based in local and global texts, music, film. CD-KOMs, and other media-for all of our children? Or a-ill inequitable funding continue to place magnificent libraries in some schools for a few children, while a majority of children pick through last centuT's worn-out paperbacks? Should we, like Burt, fear loss of literacy among fourth graders and then focus attention on "the theosy that reading should be v e v simple and monosyllabic" (p. 28). Or should n,e. like Burt, argue long and loud for "spirited discussions," that "leave the question open?" (p. 49). The right to interpret is always contested. I inlag-ine researchers and teachers becom- ing more infornled and more vocal in the effort to determine both the rights to, and the contests over. images and ideas.

REFERENCES BURT, M.E. (1899). Literarylandmarks for

young people. New York: Houghton Mifflin. MYERS. W.D. (1999). Monster. New York:

Har~erCollins.

R. Scott Baldwin ,-\ii,lrm St(1tL' CG//L'$c,, - \ l L 7 1 1 l ~ ~ ' 7 ,

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Most people seem to think that the university librav of the fi~ture will be virtual

and Web based. In this scenario tens of thousands of digitized periodicals.

textbooks, and government documents will sit out there on the Internet in a full-text, searchable for- mat that elin~inates the need for cellu- loid archives on each and evesy college campus. There is already a wide range of virtual librasy services including academic periodical collections such as First Search and EBSCO. which claim several thousand periodicals online and fully searchable. The logical extension is a complete librasy accessible by Internet. There is, however, an alternative: m e lib?-a y cozild exist inside yozi r PC

It's been exactly 20 years since I bought my first home computer. an Apple 11+ with a Halloween screen monitor, two external 5.25- inch floppy disk drives. 64k of =!I. and a daisy~vheel line printer that sounded like a muffled machine gun. Hard drives and the Internet were still in the future. The storage capacity of my Apple 11+ was 128 kilobytes, about one eighth of a megabyte. In 1987 I bought a 286 PC with a 20-megaby-te hard drive. which represented a 15.000% increase in storage capacity over the old Apple II+. The PC on which I work now has a 6.5-gigaby-te DVD (digital video disk) drive and a 9-gi- gabyte (9,000 megabytes) hard drive, a 77.500%) increase over the storage capacity of my old PC. To give this some everyday perspective, a single DVD disk could hold the sum total of all publications of the International Reading Association, the National Keading Conference. and the College Keading Association, all volumes of all jour-nals, books. monographs, and newsletters ever published in their combined histories, And. all of these publications could be hypertext linked and fully searchable in a few seconds.

A DVD database with a stan- dard search engine (e.g.. Adobe Acrobat) could be searched in seconds for any word or phrase under a

variety of specific search constraints (Boolean, proximity. case matching. and more). A search for the phrase emef-gent literacy. for example. n,ould result in the almost instanta- neous identification of every occur- rence of the phrase in all volun~es, issues, and articles. To obtain the same result from a Web site, the user would have to don,nload the entire database from the site, which would take hours or days. The sophisticated searching I have just described cannot be conducted by remote because the bandwidth of the Internet limits the speed at which information can be exchanged. In the a1ternatix.e it is possible to tag issues or articles-if each article is its own file-with key a~ords.Issues or articles tagged for the kelword can then be down- loaded for printing or further inspec- tion. Current online services operate in this fashion. In a few years bandwidth may be expanded to the point where full-text, indexed searches as I have described here will be possible from a Web site.

Given the choice. I would much rather access information from n ~ yhard drive than from the Internet. It's a lot faster. and I don't have to xvorT about connect//disconnect dilemmas. Imagine what it would be like to do word processing from a Web site instead of having the pro- gram inside your own computer!

If the internal storage capability and processing speeds of PCs continue at their current pace. in 10 years the hard drives and peripheral storage devices of PCs will be able to hold the complete archives of a college librasy as easily as they hold Microsoft Word. Of course, the speed and accessibility of the Internet will continue to advance at its own warp speed: the Internet may be the ulti- mate solution when it comes to transacting business and getting current information fast. However, my prediction is that when it comes to archiving professional knowledge,

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the librasy of the fi~ture will end up inside your computer and not on somebody's Web site.

Douglas K.Hartman

y approach to thinking about how media will in-

uence literacy in the new millennium is much like futurists do in corporate America: They look at present patterns, and based on these patterns. project scenarios for what could exist tomorron7. These scenarios are not predictions, but stories that present alternative i~xages of possible tomorrows. I see a number of patterns that suggest scenarios in three areas: conceptions, materials. and methods of literacy.

Conceptions of literacy What constitutes literacy is al-

ready being reshaped by the influence of media. The movement of these changing conceptions is from:

Literacjl-> Litemcies. For most of this millennium a singular conception of literacy has prevailed: the production and reception of meaning through print. But a more pluralistic conception is taking shape. It includes print-based, meaning-making practices. but much more. The relative ease by which someone can represent thoughts, knonings. and meanings through iconography. movement, sound. and so on m-ill make other forms of production and reception just as valued as print has been for so long. This open, inclusive set of literacies nil1 require neu- languages for talking about the sense-making practices n-ithin a particular literacy. as n.ell as across the various literacies.

,I.fonoli?zgz~al-> :Vlztltilingzral. No one language can fully represent the range of information, knon.1- edge, and perspectives possible. As the pressures grow to know and understand beyond one's national, cultural, and linguistic borders. and access to other linguistic knowledges and understandings becomes easier through technological tools, the limi- tations of being literate in one language (which is true for most in the 1I.S.) will move our thinking toward reading in-and writing in-more than one language. The monotonous sound of one language will give way to the stereophonic sensibilities of a larger n,orld with which to c o n ~ n ~ u - nicate. Imagine most LT.S.elementan students moving toward reading and writing fluency in two or more languages. with the help of electronic speech and print coaches that can assist with translation and mediation among the languages.

Materials for literacy The materials to be used in lit-

erate activities are also being reshaped by the influence of media. The shape of these nlaterial movements are from:

Linguistic -> Selniotic. In this centun we have largely valued and used linguistic texts-that is. fixed print on a bounded paper page-for communicating, learning, and recording information in school. work. and community. We are wit- nessing a dramatic shift to the use of other text types-to those known as semiotic texts. These new text types are both paper and digital in form. requiring a reader to read not only print, but images. icons. and sounds; they are a virtual mix of various sign systems on the same page or screen that must be read in relation to one another. Print. film. music. art, nlove- ment, photographs, and other modes of representation will be counted as text that can be read and written. The digital semiotic texts of today

(MTL', for example) are a mix of image. talk. Web referencing, call-in. visual clips, music. and so on-a pastiche of semiotic systems at the ser ice of a singular message.

Te.~tzlal-> Intetle.~tzral. Because no single text, or information source, can possibly contain all there is to know about a topic, idea. person, or event, it is increasingly important that students know how to select. connect, and organize information from a large number of textual sources across extended periods of time. Most of the materials in the 20th centusy have been designed to outline master narratives or para- digms in a single text for students to conlprehend and conlpose. Reading and writing in the next millennium will increasingly deinand the relating and rerelating of information across multiple texts and learning situa- tions. It will be a time where the reading of one text leads to another and another, back and forth across histosy and across language and cul- tures: where readers are challenged and surprised often by unexpected, serendipitous linking discoveries in their reading: where readers continually revise their understandings and responses to previous texts: where readers exploit the rich literary and artistic possibilities kvithin, across. and beyond texts: and where readers spend their days waist high in works that can be traversed in one direc- tion, and then in another and still another.

Hzlndled -> Distrihzited. In our professional lifetime we've seen the commercial materials used for in- stn~ction bundled together in kits or packages. Beginning with the Dick & Jane readers around midcentuq-, this bundling of teacher edition, stu- dent edition, big flip charts. trade books. cassette tapes, flash cards, tests. and so on has I>ecome the norm. The hallmark of this deliven approach is that you can have all necessan materials located in one

What will be the influences of media on literacy in the next millennium? 281

place for easy access and use. The downside has been the one-size-fits- all conception it usually propagates.

But the move is toward a more distributed means of locating the materials. Some conlmercial publishers are already using their Web sites as an integral part of the material package, with certain parts of the bundle available only from or through remote access to these sites. Teachers can get background information and video footage of the au- thor not available in the printed form of the teachers' edition; students can locate a mountain of story-related material when and if they want or need it: and there are additional skill and strategy practice opportunities that dovetail into the minilessons yo~l've already provided. And imagine a Web-based smart teachers' edition, where teachers can tailor-fit the distributed materials to the unique features of students in their class- room. The hallmark of distributed material usage will be its customiz- ing power.

Methods in literacy Finally, the methods for teach-

ing or using literacy are being re-

shaped as well. The shape of these pedagogical movements are from:

Assignments -> Workshops -> Projects. The pressures of media are already extending literate activiv beyond assignments and workshops to the use of comprehending and composing in the context of project work. Project work involves students investigating sustainable topics and ideas in considerable depth, often for a sizable part of the school day and year. The literacy instruction fo- cuses on helping students locate and use textual resources to reconstruct their environment, knowledge, and social relations. Furthermore, students explore complex and important ideas and systems through project work, using and reusing a broad range of literacy tools and modes to research, report, and re- spond to what they are learning. As such, the literacy instruction is em- bedded in classrooms that are part museum, publishing house, think tank, writers' workshop, artists' studio, theater, drafting room, computer lab, library, bookstore, gallery, recording studio, and more. As a result, the teacher's role becomes that of curator, impresario, editor, futur-

ist. therapist, director, producer, media resource specialist, salesperson, and engineer, to name a few. The learning communiv formed within these classroon~s reaches far beyond its walls and uses the resources within them more imaginatively.

Intramediation -> Transmed-iation. The prevailing literacy methods of the last millennium operated in an intramediato~ fashion-they worked back and forth within one medium (print). from reading to writing and back again. With expanded conceptions of literacy and the media tools to represent meaning in other modes, a new set of literacy methods n,ill be needed to operate in a trans- mediatory fashion-working back and forth across media, from print to video to sculpture to iconic notations to music and so on. Imagine classrooms everywhere that possess the tools and know-how to transform a book into a film-from writing the script, acting the parts, choreograph- ing the moves, shooting the footage. editing the film, dubbing the music and sound effects, advertising the production on a Web site-and then use the film as the basis for writing a sequel to the book.

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