Colin Lankshear is a freelance educational researcher, writer, and teacher with a particular interest in literacies associated with new technologies. He is currently adjunct professor at McGill and Mount Saint Vincent universities (Canada) and James Cook University (Australia).
Michele Knobel is a Professor of Education at Montclair State University (USA). She has worked within teacher education in Australia, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. She is interested in young people's literacy practices and their use of different digital technologies and networks.

Contents: Lalitha Vasudevan/Tiffany Dejaynes/Stephanie Schmier: Multimodal Pedagogies: Playing, Teaching and Learning with Adolescents' Digital Literacies - Ola Erstad: Trajectories of Remixing: Digital Literacies, Media Production and Schooling - Kevin Leander: You Won't Be Needing Your Laptops Today: Wired Bodies in the Wireless Classroom - Bronwen E. Low: Slammin' School: Performance Poetry and the Urban School - Leif Gustavson: Influencing Pedagogy through the Creative Practices of Youth - Althea Nixon: Engaging Urban Youth in Meaningful Dialogue through Digital Storytelling - Kylie Peppler/Diane Glosson: Learning about Circuitry with E-Textiles - Andrew Burn: Machinima, Second Life and the Pedagogy of Animation - Teresa Strong-Wilson/Dawn Rouse: New Wine in Old Bottles?: Remediation, Teacher as Bricoleur, and the Story of Antaerus - April Luehmann/Joe Henderson/Liz Tinelli: Supporting Pre-Service Teachers' Development: The Place of Blogging in the Get Real! Science Teacher Preparation Program - Margaret C. Hagood/Emily N. Skinner/Melissa Venters/Benjamin Yelm: New Literacies and Assessments in Middle School Social Studies Content Area Instruction: Issues for Classroom Practices - Rebecca Black: Language, Culture and Identity in Fan Fiction - Mark Chen: Communication, Coordination and Camaraderie: A Player Group in World of Warcraft - Angela Thomas: Youth Participation: Learning and Growth in the Forum - Bronwyn Williams: Which South Park Character Are You?: Popular Culture and Online Performance of Identity - James Paul Gee: Learning about Learning from a Video Game - Aaron Hung: Situated Play: Instruction and Learning in Fighter Games - Sean Duncan: Kongregating Online: Developing Design Literacies in a Play-Based Affinity Space.

A New Literacies Reader is an introduction to social and cultural studies of new literacies from the perspectives of educators, education researchers and learners. It focuses on how participating in social practices of new literacies can be seen and understood in terms of people becoming insiders to ways of «doing» and «being» that are today considered desirable or worthwhile, and how this can usefully inform how we think about formal schooling and learning. The book's 18 chapters cover a variety of topics, including:
¿ studies of new literacies within classroom contexts
¿ semi-formal learning spaces beyond the classroom
¿ teacher learning and professional development
¿ spaces of popular cultural affinities
¿ practices viewed from different research perspectives
The diverse topics addressed range from multimodal pedagogies, remix, performance poetry, and digital storytelling to issues associated with wireless environments, assessment, identity, and teachers' ways of taking up new technologies. Chapters explore how young people participate and collaborate within the spaces of popular cultural interests and the various approaches to researching gaming. The book speaks to teachers and teacher educators, education administrators, curriculum developers, education policy makers, professional development specialists, postgraduate research students, and other literacy and new media researchers. A New Literacies Reader is an essential volume for undergraduates, grad students, and faculty interested in refining their knowledge of the vast new horizons created by the world of new literacies.