Boundary Negotiations: Electronic Environments as Interface

Boundaries have long been a concern of literacy scholars, who are very much interested in how individuals cross boundaries and gain membership/genre expertise in new activity systems. Consequently, much attention and research has focused on issues of transition and transference: entering the academic community and acquiring academic literacy, writing across the disciplines, moving from undergraduate to graduate school, or transitioning from school to workplace settings. Less attention has been paid to boundary interactions involving other activity systems, especially those associated with home and popular culture. Drawing upon genre theory, I explore how the popular discourses and literacy practices prevalent in today's media-savvy, image-literate culture intersect and interact with academic discourses and literacy practices in electronic environments. Understanding how popular culture and classroom genres intersect via the interface of technology can help students use what they already know (i.e., apply the various literacy skills they already practice) in learning new strategies and new conceptions—in short, new literacies.