Teaching the basics about new literacies

I find using the new technology learnt in ICT class to be very interesting and also quite empowering. I however have some concerns about whether we are paying enough attention to the way in which students acquire information online, considering the ones who have reading difficulty offline will ultimately become frustrated attempting to read information online. While we may be able to teach use of search engines, blogs and wikis by demonstrating to students, navigation through these new forms of technology, we must consider many weak readers may have never even accessed the internet. Further more, we must find innovative methods to teach online reading before even venturing into the use of blogs etc. The Rand Reading Study Group (2002) concluded, “… accessing the Internet makes large demands on individuals’ literacy skills; in some cases, this new technology requires readers to have novel literacy skills, and little is known about how to analyze or teach those skills.” (p. 4).The following site contains an interesting article on reading comprehension:- http://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/pub_files/What_is_new_about_new_literacies_of_online_reading.pdf