What is multiliteracy?

Starting this course, I really had only a vague notion of what multiliteracy could be. But on Wednesday night when I was trying to find the site and join up at Learning Times, so I could experience a synchronous online conference presentation, I thought maybe what I was doing was multiliteracy. Then when our instructor, Vance, seemed to say as much in a posting soon after, I thought I was beginning to understand.

However, more recently, as I finally read through some references I had "googled"earlier on multiliteracies, I discovered yet a new spin on the term/concept in an article by Leslie Rush, an associate prof. of English Education at the University of Wyoming. I thought others might find it intriguing also. She delves into ecological literacy and environmental literacy (!) through a case study of hikers on the Appalachian Trial.

I was fascinated by how she analyzed the ways the hikers "read" and "wrote" in their environment involving multiliteracies (reading a map, reading a trail, leaving a marker or sign which was not in print, etc.). In addition, she looked at the ways the same hikers made use of the more traditional literacies (carried books along to read and leave behind for others, and notes left for others, etc.).
http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=rush/index.html

I now realize that multiliteracy is even more broad than I had imagined. It makes the concept even more exciting in my opinion as it opens up so many new ways of looking at reading and writing and forms of communication.