Main Overview

My name is Jeff Tibbetts, and I'm a pre-service teacher focusing on secondary Language Arts.  Emergent Literacy (a term that encompasses a range of new, technology-influenced writing and reading methods) is gaining importance and relevancy in our society at an exponential rate.  New forms of technology are being adopted by young men and women all over.  Each of these new forms of technology spawns a new language around itself, diversifying and expanding American English into new territories every day.  These emergent forms of literacy have no codified lexicon that we can turn to, no explanations for their terms, and may in fact change very rapidly; making such study difficult or impossible to keep current.  Text Messaging and Instant Messaging are perhaps the most dynamic of the new forms, whereas Blogging and Social Networking only test the boundaries of our vernacular speech.  I will attempt with this website to introduce my readers to these new and exciting forms of literacy both in an attempt to legitimize them as valid extensions of our language and to lend a bit of translucency to an otherwise very daunting environment.