218 © 2004 International Reading Association (pp. 218–221) doi:10.1598/RT.58.2.10 Process/content/design/critique: Generative and dynamic evaluation in a digital world Robert J. Tierney, Theresa Rogers Our everyday lives have changed dramatically as digital technologies alter how and with whom we spend our time and how we communicate in our workplaces, communities, homes, and schools. E- mail, Web searches, online conversations, blogs and e-diaries, digitally based media, online ex- changes (of finances, photographs, music, and video), and Web homepages influence our daily interaction. As a consequence, our notions of liter- acy and the range of literacy practices in our class- rooms are constantly expanding and transforming with these new technologies. Advocates of “new literacies” and “multilitera- cies” call for pedagogies that account for and help children become competent users of the burgeon- ing varieties of text forms associated with infor- mation and multimedia technologies (e.g., New London Group, 1996). While schools may not yet be as well equipped as some homes, a growing number of schools are beginning to support the in- tegration of these digital-based literacies in student learning and engagements. Emerging technologies afford new linked, online, and multimedia-based ways to interact and explore the world. However, these new literacies also represent digital and on- line extensions of rich multimedia engagements students have had for generations. For example, curriculum models that allow for collaboratively based multimedia engagement, such as the Reggio Emilia, and other integrated curriculum initiatives have offered nondigital variations of these same possibilities (see Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1998). Consider the following three vignettes of classroom literacy involving new technologies and curricular goals. Vignette 1: Getting to know someone A grade 4 teacher and a teacher-librarian worked collaboratively with students to create a multimedia project on poetry. To begin, the stu- dents were immersed in poetry. Their teachers read and dramatized poems and talked about character- istics of the different forms of poetry. Students were then divided into two smaller groups, one us- ing computers to learn the software needed for the project and the other to do choral readings of po- ems for two voices. The choral readings were taped using a digital video camera and then edited using video editing software. Students also wrote poems; they illustrated them with crayons and pencils and used a word-processing program to publish them. As a cumulative activity, the class collabora- tively wrote a poem entitled “We Know Someone” and videotaped and edited a performance of it. Finally, all the pieces were pulled together using the video editing software. The project resulted in a multimedia video that included video clips, voice- overs, background music, titles, and transitions. Once their work was complete, the students had an opportunity to share it, giving families a chance to see the diversity of the students in the class and how hard they worked together (from Pahl & Rowsell, in press). Vignette 2: Peer pressure Youth were provided an opportunity to create multimedia projects as part of the curriculum of an alternative literacy program. Two First Nations A s s e s s m e n t