7. CONCLUSION

As the social practices in today's knowledge society set new demands for literacy educators, the web is one of the many media which needs focal attention. The web is integrated into the academia as university courses entail more and more on-line opportunities, notwithstanding the other spheres of life where the web has a prominent role. As a medium the web can be seen to change how we communicate, and how information and knowledge can be accessed, produced and distributed (Warschauer 1999, Luke C. 2000). To mention a few, the negative viewpoints towards the web are its uncontrollability, its lack of censorship, and "anarchic" nature (Luke C. 2000:70). Luke also mentions the lack of management as a downside of the medium. Yet, even though we cannot manage the content of the medium, in this study we offer an approach to manage the medium itself and yourself as a user of that medium.

This study was a process of developing an electronic learning space Netro to facilitate the development of web literacy. We aimed at creating a learning space which takes the Netro passengers a step closer towards autonomous managing of the web. Through collaborative knowledge building processes the passengers not only produced shared new knowledge on web literacy related issues, but also had the opportunity to become more aware of the characteristics of the medium as well as themselves as users of this medium. This, then again, can be regarded as supporting autonomy development, and the cry for the development of what Castells (1996:371) calls the "interacting" members of tomorrow's society.

The design and procedure of the present study can be said to reflect the diverse roles and responsibilities of the teachers in today's knowledge society. We challenge the language teachers to be actively involved in the new multimodal forms of meaning making, and to boldly integrate web literacy into their teaching approaches. As the speed of technology development seems to increase, and the new forms of social practices (i.e. literacies) emerge, we language teachers have a significant role in ensuring the access for all. Through web literacy education we can support the development of a more equal, democratic society.

Naturally the research cycle does not end here, but Netro will be updated to meet the upcoming challenges. The Netro learning space, or at least the first version of it, can be found in the University of Jyväskylä Language Centre web pages http://kielikompassi.jyu.fi. We planned the learning space to be open and accessible for all interested, yet the first version of Netro is administrated by the Language Centre. Those interested can naturally also contact us, the creators of Netro, for more information. Similar projects to Netro are more than welcome. Yet, we kindly ask you to not to plagiarise us but to boldly go where no one has gone before. :)