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In “Worlds Apart,” Margaret Brenston argues that there is a serious gender divide when it comes to computer literacy involving men and women. Brenston explains that women prefer computers for more artistic meanings than men who wish to conquer the technology; women feel belittled when speaking to a male partner or friend about a technical issue with a computer largely because of these attitude differences. Brenston addresses an audience of avid computer users, both male and female, who must use computers on a regular basis. Her goal with this article is to demonstrate that the divide does exist, and to urge those who are computer literate to begin bridging the gap.

Though Brenston’s article is nearly twenty years old, and the divide between men and women has diminished, this speaks to the idea of control and power on the message boards. Women, in large numbers, have overcome the problem of technological power to an extent where they, as a gender, have created female dominated message boards. Though the article is not directly related to my study, it is helpful to be able to put a time frame on how far women have come over the past twenty years.

In “Metamedia Literacy: Transforming Meaning and Media,” J.L. Lemke argues that literacy must be defined within the genre in which it emerged in order to comprehend each of the social contexts that surround the literacy itself. Looking specifically at the potential of the interactive learning paradigm to aid in individual literacy acquisition because of the self-paced structure it provides, Lemke argues that by allowing individuals to control their own learning, they will pursue topics of interest and work through problems on their own which will further enhance their learning. Lemke speaks to the current generation of parents and educators by proving that interactive learning should not have as negative a connotation as the current society leaders give it. By proving that interactive learning works for improving literacy, regardless of the reader’s age, Lemke strives to persuade his readers to begin incorporating more interactive, personal learning into their lives.

In What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning Literacy, James Paul Gee argues that while video games are often seen as a waste of time for children, they can be an entertaining tool to increasing the literacy of children. Gee focuses his work on how the use of various video games help children to create and comprehend their own identity, learn to retry problem areas until they have mastered the area, learn while being entertained, and begin to establish understandings of other cultures. As he explains these advantages, Gee posits thirty-six learning principles that emerge from studying video game literacy. These principles help his audience of parents and primary educators to see the various ways in which video games are advantageous to the learning process. Gee’s purpose is to help both parents and educators see how a limited amount of time spent with video games can help children and teenagers to improve their own learning skills without being completely conscious of what they are doing.

Lankshear, Snyder, and Green examine the impact of technology on literacy and learning using the 3D model as a holistic and culturally critical means of studying this trend in literacy. Asserting that literacy has three interconnected facets, the operational, cultural, and critical, the authors demonstrate that all literacies are socially intertwined and, therefore, none should be omitted from classroom usage. Lankshear, Snyder, and Green address potential literacy educators and provide a solid model for analyzing the usefulness of technology in the classroom. Through their model and analysis, the authors urge new educators to consider incorporating new literacies into their classroom.

While Lankshear, Snyder, and Green are focusing on the evaluation of medias for instructional use, their work extends well beyond the classroom. The 3D model they outline in their text allows for researchers engaged in any media to fully evaluate the media as a social literacy. This model proves highly effective for my study and will, likely, become the basis for the message boards I am examining.

In “Technology and Literacy Education in the Next Century.” the authors argue that technological literacy should be incorporated into the classroom as a standard in education to better prepare students for the new millennium workplace. Arguing that students are preparing for a more technologically-centric world and should be better prepared to enter this workplace with a better understanding of the key concepts to digital literacy, Labbo, Reinking, and McKenna explore the key concepts of digital literacy as they relate to technological trends in the workplace and the responsibility of instructors to prepare students to enter the real world with a better understanding of these technologies. Through the demand that students be prepared with these technological literacies, it is apparent that the authors address this article to technologically hesitant instructors. Demonstrating the ways that technological literacy has become essential to the workplace, and providing methods for incorporating technology into traditional lessons, the authors’ purpose of aiding these technologically hesitant instructors in teaching technology in their classrooms reveals itself.

In “Does Sense of Community Matter?” the authors explore the idea that a sense of community in online education classes is essential to the improvement of student participation and learning. Looking specifically at an online MBA program from a Midwestern University in which 28 faculty members and 20 students within the program were individually interviewed to determine how various teaching pedagogies and community building activities were carried out by faculty and received by students. The authors determined that though a sense of community created a stronger sense of learning among the students, a sense of community is not requisite to the students’ belief that they learn in the online environment. Xiaojing, Magjuka, Bonk and Lee address this study to active distance education faculty in order to aid in their comprehension of the necessity of community construction in their online classes. The purpose of the article is to present the fact that while communities may make students feel more comfortable with the online learning environment, they are not essential to furthering the education of students enrolled in a distance learning course.

“New Research Literacies for Contemporary Research into Literacy and New Media?” raises several questions important both to Nixon and the researchers looking into the literacies that surround various medias new to exploration. Nixon argues that with the controversy surrounding the term “literacy” and the use of new medias to gain literacy,scholars must not forfeit the traditional, socially respected literacies, but use these literacies as a basis for beginning research into new medias. Arguing that new medias are as important as the old medias of literacy learning, Nixon demonstrates the need for researchers to begin with the standards of old literacy learning and to build upon these methods by setting standards for their research that can transcend the new medias, thus aiding in these standards becoming more socially acceptable. Nixon’s article, with its detailed scholarship review, is aimed at new researchers in the literacy field who must begin their research by comprehending the research of the old literacies before beginning work in the new medias with haphazardly created standards. Her purpose in this article is two-fold; she strives to prepare researchers for the obstacles apparent in new media literacy while also providing valuable information about old literacies to aid in the new researcher’s developing a stronger ethos.

Margaret Hagood’s “New Media and Online Literacies” asserts that in order to understand the full benefit of literacy acquisition through new medias researchers must use a close examination of the texts they study in order to comprehend the use of new medias by various ages. Investigating the questions of who is affected by new media literacies, how these new medias affect both the researched and the researcher in conjunction with the methods of conceptualizing medias and crossing fields of medias for research, Hagood demonstrates that a focused age group in new media research will not demonstrate the true benefit of media literacies in today’s society. With her focus on methods of research, Hagood addresses fellow researchers delving into the world of new medias in their studies. Her purpose with this article is to demonstrate that a narrow focus on age groups interacting with new medias will not do justice to the extent to which these medias aid in increasing literacy broader than the traditional reading and writing literacy.

Particularly useful to my study is the idea of active audiencing she describes in her study. This concept posits that the audience member is not a passive receiver of messages and advertising, but an active participant in the conversation taking place in and around these messages (388).

In “Measuring the Acquisition of Media-Literacy Skills” (2003), Hobbs and Frost explore the acquisition of media-literacy skills in a yearlong high school English course and demonstrate how this class improved the literacy of the students. Examining one specific media enhanced English course, Hobbs and Frost look at media-literacy acquisition in the areas of message analysis and purpose combined with reading and writing skills to determine the success of students from various social classes working in the same classroom. Hobbs and Frost present this information to teachers of all grades and disciplines as information presented by research professors distanced from the study in order to show an unbiased evaluation of media usage in the classroom. Hobbs and Frost’s article encourages readers to incorporate media material into their classrooms to aid students in meeting academic goals.

Hobbs and Frost demonstrate an effective study in their work. As distanced observers from the students participating in the study, they allow the reader to put more merit to their study. Overall, the study is effective and supports the argument that media literacies should be used more in the classroom However, this article does not aid in my research for the specific reason that I am not focusing on the classroom itself, but on media acquisition outside of the classroom. Since the methodology of the study involves using live participants, which is not a portion of my research, the article is not useful to my study.

In “Online Literacies and Learning,” Robin Goodfellow argues that online environments provide immense ways of improving the social literacies of todays students and examines a manner of research which explores the variation in relationships between teacher and student both online and face to face. Using the three dimensional theory of Lankshear,Snyder and Green Goodfellow examines the potential of this method of social learning research in relation to potential pedagogy and uses this method to examines two situations where social learning has been practiced. Goodfellow demonstrates the advantages of social learning as it relates to her fellow teachers and puts forth methods of research that benefit this audience in comprehending the benefits of social learning. Goodfellow’s purpose in writing this article is to motivate peers to begin exploring social learning online and to incorporate the usage of this medium of education into their pedagogy.

Goodfellow’s study exemplifies the benefits of social learning in a strictly academic setting, and much of what she examines in her article pertains to non-academic settings as well. Her examination of the three dimensional study and links to other methodologies aids the researcher in understanding how these methods may be combined and used to examine any social network regardless of its discipline. For the work I am doing with wedding planning message boards, the theories that Goodfellow examines can easily be seen as a base method for engaging in research in this area.