Assessment Frameworks for Teaching and Learning English Language Arts in a Digital Age

The Internet has become increasingly central to our daily lives (Johnson, Levine, Smith, & Smythe, 2009), transforming the ways we access, use, and exchange information. To fully participate in a globally networked society, every student needs to develop strategies for locating, comprehending, and responding to text in ways that exploit the potentials of information and communication technologies (ICTs) (Educational Testing Service [ETS], 2003; International Reading Association [IRA], 2009; National Council of Teachers of English [NCTE], 2007). Making sense of digital information requires skills and strategies that are complex, and in some cases unique, to online reading and writing contexts (Affl erbach & Cho, 2008; Coiro & Dobler, 2007; Transliteracies Project, 2006). Thus, students’ profi ciencies in the new millennium cannot be determined solely on the basis of their literacy performance in non-digital contexts (Leu et al., 2005; O’Brien, 2006).