Critical literacy examines the relationships between language and power in text (text, in this case, can be anything from a picture book to a novel to a social media post). It is a way of analyzing texts to identify issues of power, injustice and equity. Similar in many ways to information literacy, critical literacy focuses less on locating information and instead emphasizes analyzing and evaluating sources from a social justice standpoint. In reality, one cannot effectively function without the other; to analyze information one must first locate it and, conversely, one cannot evaluate sources without critically analyzing them.

As more and more of our lives shift online, reading and writing are changing rapidly. Several studies have shown that the skills necessary to be literate in the 21st century have expanded from simply being able to read and write printed text to being able to consume and produce a variety of texts, from traditional print to digital technology (Serafini, 2012). As teachers, we need to become curators of a variety of content that allows students to not only access a wide variety of texts, but to be able to think critically about the content and draw connections between them. Enter multi-modal text sets.
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• A navigator will not only decode the written text but also navigate the visual and design elements of a text, including non-linear elements such as hyperlinks.
• An interpreter will make sense of the written, visual and design elements of a text being navigated.
• A designer will make choices about how to actively construct meaning from all of the available elements of a text based upon their own personal interests, needs and experiences. In short, the reader-viewer is actively designing their experience with the text.
• An interrogator will question why each element of text has been presented when, where and how it has been. They will analyze the content to better understand the purpose of the various elements and how they connect to the overall meaning of the text.