Search

Digital literacies abound in playing a foundational role in the rhythm and pattern of our lives, yet debates continue about how to harness them to teach and learn literacy. In an effort to humanize digital literacies, this department column offers a vast array of topics, from participatory work that pushes educators and researchers to communicate in local and global spaces to ways of redefining core reading and literacy skills through a screen-based, multimodal logic. This column also provides a venue for research and practical applications that depict technology use as a part of the fabric of being human. The column helps educators reconceptualize the ways that children learn with technology, media, and new communication systems; honors educator success stories and burning questions and issues; and reimagines literacy futures.

Based on a 2-year ethnographic study in an urban secondary school in Toronto, the article presents how a teacher and a researcher teach Grade 11 students through a design-based approach to teaching and learning in English class. Built on research and pedagogy on design, the authors designed a programme of study as an alternative to more traditional approaches to writing. After framing five core principles of design, students completed a series of writing assignment that focused on particular modes such as sound, visuals and materials. Focusing on specific modes for each lesson, students considered design concepts and design epistemologies to complete assignments about texts covered as a part of their programme of study. The authors conclude the article by summarizing the theoretical and methodological orientations that were developed while adopting design principles and the pitfalls of taking such an approach.

What are new literacies and how do they mesh with core curriculum? Classroom teachers who find their students’ interests and bases of knowledge about new technologies expanding exponentially often ask this question. While broadening the definition of new literacies beyond internet literacy this article explores the history of new literacies and offers an answer to the question of how to blend new literacies while not losing the focus of the core curriculum. An example of how one teacher remixed new literacies, core curriculum, and intentional instruction to support critical literacy is shared to illustrate the reality and possible process of weaving new and existing literacy instruction.

Living in an increasingly visual culture, Rowsell, McLean, and Hamilton illustrate the importance of critically evaluating the potential of visual literacy as a dimension of the school context. They first situate visual literacy within the school arena and then examine its relevance to learning through different visual genres. In an effort to illustrate the power of visual literacy to enhance cross-curricular learning, the authors conclude by sharing examples of students conceptualizing and extrapolating visual literacy through the consumption and production of texts.

Zombies flank the Jerusalem walls? Zombies invade a southern plantation in the United States? A television show with characters on the run from zombies? Videogames devoted to zombie chases like Planets vs. Zombies or Minecraft? I am baffled by the zombie revolution and the writing of this chapter solidified my continued bewilderment about the allure of zombie worlds. In the chapter, I unravel fascinations with zombies from three different optics. One is more of a landscape optic that speculates on contemporary fascinations with zombies and apocalyptic texts that have earned increased popularity. The other optic is a portrait view of a tween’s keen interest in zombies, drawing out aspects of her life as sedimentations of apocalyptic themes. The third and final optic is a brief close-up and personal account of my own struggles with zombies and researching young people about their investments and ruling passions with gothic, apocalyptic, and zombie worlds.

Barack Obama’s depiction of the boundaries of East Harlem and Manhattan creates a picture in your mind. If you have been there, you can visualize it, if you have read about it, then you extemporize, even embellish on the details. Uninviting, treeless, soot-colored walk-ups with heavy shadows resurrect colours, sounds, textures, and shapes. In this short excerpt, Obama materializes a place for a reader; he captures materialities-in-place and he does so through evocative details and speaking to the senses. There is a difference between living these senses, visiting these senses, and reading these senses. The subtle, yet important distinctions are the subject of this article in a special issue about combining ethnography with multimodality. The topic of the article is seeing an artifact, and its sensory world, through the optic of its owner as a coupling

Conceptualizations of the home have changed, particularly in respect to children’s rearing and development. An increased awareness of early intervention in meeting a child’s learning needs has filtered down into the organization of space in homes. Maximizing learning opportunities by creating ‘literacy nooks’, which involves carving out interactive domains in the home, has become a way of asserting parental agency in their children’s development. The Parents’ Networks project is an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project that focuses on how specific locales, such as commercial retail outlets, playgroups, libraries, health services and home spaces, have become networks of information sourcing and learning. This paper refers to a sub-project derived from this larger study that focuses specifically on the home space. We suggest that within the home space, parents construct learning environments for preschool children based on concepts of ‘good’ parenting. Four case studies of family homes in the US town of Greystone (pseudonym) are presented, exploring how space is arranged to produce an environment conducive to learning and development. In this article, we locate interview and observational data within space theory to posit how learning is mobilized within and across home environments. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The dynamics of discourse in literacy classrooms offers a complex paradigm for describing the communication patterns that exist among the agents (teachers and students) involved. The discourse patterns that exist in classrooms contextualize the pathways individuals take to assume understanding. Through interviews and case studies of two teachers and their classrooms we consider how the multimodal informs English/language arts education.

The digital reading practices of two middle school students in US and Canadian contexts are examined. Using a multimodal discourse framework, the authors contemplate what digital reading practice is and distinctive practices of reading texts online compared with printed, school-based literacy practices. By focusing on two different genres of online texts, the authors illustrate the diversity of reading practices that digital texts entail. Alongside mapping out practices, the article aligns practices with reader subjectivities and describes how one informs the other. At the end of the article, implications for practice are foregrounded, such as using design to facilitate comprehension, invoking producer agendas in the act of reading, and identifying discourses and ideologies through the distribution of visuals and modalities within the semiotics of texts. لقد تم فحص ممارسات القراءة الرقمية لدى طالبين في المدرسة الإعدادية في الولايات المتحدة وكندا. ويتأمل المؤلفون ما هي ممارسة القراءة الرقمية والممارسات المتميزة لقراءة النصوص على الشبكة العالمية بالمقارنة لممارسات قراءة النصوص المطبوعة في تعليم معرفة القراءة والكتابة المبنية على الدراسة التقليدية باستخدام إطار تعددية الطرق في الخطاب. ومن خلال التركيز على جنسين من النصوص على الشبكة العالمية، يوضح المؤلفون تنوع ممارسات القراءة المتواجدة في النصوص الرقمية. وبجانب إلى شرح الممارسات، تصفف المقالة الممراسات بموضوعيات القارئ وتصف الطريقة التي تحيط واحدة فيها علما بالأخرى. وفي نهاية المقالة تضع الأعقاب لتنفيذ الممارسات في المقدمة على سبيل المثال استخدام التصميم حتى يسهل الاستيعاب واستدعاء جداول أعمال المخرج في عملية القراءة وتحديد الخطابات والعقائد بواسطة توزيع البصريات والشكليات في علم رموز النصوص. 本研究考查两名在美国和加拿大的中学生所实践的数字化阅读学习。本文作者采用一个多模态话语理论框架，仔细考量什么是数字化阅读教学实践，以及讨论线上文本阅读有何别于以印刷为本及以学校为本的读写文化教学实践。本文作者聚焦于两种不同体裁的线上文本，描绘出数字化阅读所产生的多样性阅读实践，同时亦把阅读实践与阅读者的主观看法作对照，说明两者之间的互相影响力。在本文结尾中，作者凸显出数字化阅读给教学实践带来的启示，例如：利用课程设计以促进阅读理解、在阅读行为中唤起制作者的议题，以及透过分析各种文本中的视觉效果与模态形式分布的符号学，从而识别出其中的话语和意识形态。 On a examine les pratiques de lecture des eleves de deux colleges des USA et du Canada. A l'aide d'une structure de discours multimodale, les auteurs considerent attentivement ce qu'est la pratique de lecture numerique et les pratiques distinctes de lecture de textes en ligne par rapport aux pratiques scolaires de litteratie des textes ecrits. En se centrant sur deux genres differents de textes en ligne, les auteurs presentent la diversite des types de lecture que suscitent les textes numeriques. Tout en mettant a jour ces pratiques, l'article met en regard les pratiques et la subjectivite des lecteurs et decrit de quelle facon l'une influe sur l'autre. La fin de l'article met en avant des implications pour la pratique, comme utiliser un plan pour faciliter la comprehension, faire appel a la production d'agendas dans l'acte de lire, et identifier discours et ideologies grâce a la distribution de visuels et de modalites pour la semiotique des textes. Исследование посвящено практике чтения текстов в цифровом формате двух школьников из США и Канады. Используя полимодальный дискурс, авторы размышляют над самим явлением “цифрового чтения” и его отличиями от обычного “бумажного” чтения, чаще всего практикуемого в школах. На примере двух онлайн-текстов разных жанров авторы показывают, насколько разнообразны могут быть практики чтения подобных текстов. Наряду с описанием таких практик, авторы демонстрируют, насколько они обусловлены индивидуальностью самого читателя. В конце статьи подчеркивается значение этого исследования для практики, а именно: как дизайн текста влияет на восприятие содержания, как влияют на процесс чтения те цели и задачи, которые ставил перед собой создатель того или иного текста, как происходит распознавание типов дискурса и философских установок автора через визуальный и модальный ряды, присутствующие в семиотике текстов. Se examinaron las practicas de lectura digital de dos estudiantes de escuela intermedia en los EEUU y Canada. Usando un marco multimodal de disertar, los autores consideran lo que es la practica de lectura digital y comparan practicas de lectura en linea particulares con las practicas de alfabetizacion en las escuelas. Enfocandose en dos generos diferentes de textos en linea, los autores ilustran la diversidad de las practicas de lectura que los textos digitales conllevan. Ademas de delinear tales practicas, el articulo empareja las practicas con la subjetividad del lector y describe como el uno informa al otro. Al final del articulo, se resalta su posible implementacion usando disenos para facilitar la comprension, solicitando agendas del lector en el acto de leer, e identificando discursos e ideologias a traves de la distribucion de visuales y modalidades dentro de la semiotica de los textos.

Zines, blogs and memes represent just a sample of text genres that are a part of students' literacy landscapes. Many teens, adolescents and tweens feel quite at ease within diverse, intertextual, m...

Teacher education for literacy teaching is often fairly narrow in focus. New approaches are needed that are sociocultural in orientation and take due account of the diversity of language forms, both traditional and contemporary, formal and informal, literary and non‐literary. We believe this need can be met by largely adopting a ‘multiliteracies’ approach as articulated by the New London Group. This research examined the ideas and practices of 10 literacy faculty in a large school of education and 22 first year literacy teachers from the same institution. It found that despite some important advances in a multiliteracies direction, many shortcomings remained. Part of the difficulty was lack of clarity about the nature and purpose of multiliteracies pedagogy. This paper has two main purposes: first, to attempt to clarify the nature and importance of a multiliteracies approach; and second, to report on the successes achieved and challenges encountered in moving in this direction in one school of education.

The authors examine how to assess multimodal reading practices with a group of middle school students attending an elementary school in Eastern Canada. They argue that to assess new reading practices, we need a fine-grained account of what students do, when they do it, with whom, why they do it, and finally, where they go in web space. The authors explore and introduce a framework for considering children's reading of multimodal texts.

The commentary argues for an understanding of how texts are put together that accounts for multimodality and draws on children's ways of being and doing in the home, their habitus. It focuses on identities as socially situated. It argues that it is important to trace the process of sedimenting identities during text production. This offers a way of viewing text production that can inform research into children's text making. Particular attention is paid to the producer, contexts, and practices used during text production and how the text becomes an artifact that holds important information about the meaning maker. Four case studies describe sedimented identities as a lens through which to see a more nuanced perspective on meaning making. This work offers a lens for research and practice in that it enables researchers to question and interrogate the way texts come into being. Este comentario apunta a la comprension de un tipo de organizacion textual que de cuenta de la diversidad de modos y considere las formas del ser y del hacer de los ninos en el hogar, su habitus. Se pone el acento en las identidades en cuanto socialmente situadas. Se argumenta que es importante indagar en el proceso de consolidacion de las identidades durante la produccion de textos. Esto ofrece una manera de ver la produccion textual que podria dar informacion acerca de la elaboracion de textos por parte de los ninos. Se presta particular atencion al productor, contextos y practicas usadas durante la produccion textual y a como el texto se convierte en un artefacto que contiene informacion importante acerca del generador de significados. Cuatro estudios de caso describen identidades consolidadas como una lente a traves de la cual puede tenerse una perspectiva mas matizada de la construccion del significado. Este trabajo ofrece una lente para ver la investigacion y la practica de un modo que permita a los investigadores cuestionar e interrogar la forma en que surgen los textos. Der Kommentar argumentiert fur ein Verstehen wie Texte zusammengestellt werden, die fur die Multimodalitat bestimmend sind und bezieht sich auf die Art und Weise wie sich Kinder im Hause, ihrem Habitus, geben und was sie unternehmen. Man konzentriert sich auf gesellschaftlich festgesetzte Identitaten. Es wird argumentiert, dass es wesentlich ist, den Verlauf des Sedimentierens von Identitaten wahrend der Texterstellung zuruckzuverfolgen. Dies bietet eine Moglichkeit die Texterstellung zu beurteilen, welche die Erforschung bei der Erstellung von Kindertexten informativ beeinflussen kann. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit wird dem Verfasser, den Inhalten und den wahrend der Texterstellung angewandten Praktiken geschenkt, und wie der Text zu einem kreativen Schrifterzeugnis wird, das ebenfalls wichtige Informationen uber dessen Sinnkonstrukteur beinhaltet. Vier Fallstudien beschreiben sedimentierte Identitaten als eine Art Optik, durch die man eine wesentlich nuanziertere Perspektive zur Sinnkonstruktion erkennt. Dieses Werk bietet eine solche Optik zum Betrachten von Forschung und Praxis, wobei es die Forscher in die Lage versetzt, die Art und Weise wie Texte entstehen, in Frage zu stellen und zu untersuchen. Ce texte essaie de comprendre comment les textes sont mis ensemble pour rendre compte de la multimodalite, et esquisse les manieres d'etre et de faire des enfants a la maison, leur habitus. Il se centre sur les identitees en tant qu'elles sont socialement situees. Il soutient qu'il est important de suivre le processus de sedimentation des identites au cours de la production de texte. Ceci ouvre une perspective sur la production de texte qui peut informer la recherche sur la facon dont les enfants font un texte. Une attention particuliere est apportee au producteur, aux contextes, et aux pratiques mises en œuvre pendant la production du texte et a la facon dont un texte devient un objet construit comportant une information importante sur celui qui fabrique le sens. Dans quatre etudes de cas on presente les identites sedimentees comme une loupe qui permet d'avoir une perspective plus nuancee sur la fabrication du sens. Ce travail apporte une loupe considerant la recherche et la pratique comme permettant aux chercheurs de mettre en question et d'interroger la facon dont les textes arrivent a l'existence. В настоящем комментарии дается толкование механизмов создания текста, которые основаны на полимодальности и связаны с ежедневным существованием ребенка в родном доме, то есть с его средой обитания. Личность в этом контексте – явление социально обусловленное. И важно проследить отражение личности в созданном тексте – как некий постепенный процесс. Благодаря такому подходу можно рассматривать не просто текст как продукт, но исследовать механизм его создания, ответить на вопрос: как именно это делают дети? Особое внимание уделяется создателю текста, контексту, в котором создается текст, способам его создания и тому, каким образом текст становится артефактом, содержащим важную информацию о создателе нового смысла. В статье проанализированы четыре отдельных случая отражения личности в созданном тексте. В этих примерах, как в увеличительном стекле, видны все нюансы и особенности создания новых смыслов. Данная работа предлагает рассматривать исследования и практику под определенным углом, дающим исследователям возможность разобраться, как именно возникают тексты.

This paper explores ways of using culture and cultural practices as an informing principle in ESL teaching. To research culture and ESL teaching, we conducted focus groups with teachers in an urban ethnically diverse school in Toronto, Canada and their student teachers during their month-long practica in the school as a part of a Bachelor of Education programme. As instructors in the teacher education programme, we set out to find ways of infusing culture and cultural awareness into our coursework on ESL teaching and learning. The implications for the study show that culture should not be viewed as a ‘discrete’ or ‘bounded’ entity and that teacher education programmes need to do a better job of bridging the divide between theory and practice.

In this study we asked beginning elementary teachers about their needs as first-year teachers and the adequacy of their preservice program in helping to meet them. The new teachers varied in satisfaction with their preparation but showed considerable consensus on their needs. They felt the study of both theory and practice should be conducted in depth and focused on certain key areas. The main areas mentioned included comprehensive planning for the whole year, how to set up the program, assessment and evaluation, and implementation of effective group work.

When I think and read about meaning making and production, a favourite phrase comes to mind: two things can be equally true at the same time. What I admire about this phrase is that there are a number of stories and alternative realities that it invites. It reminds me that one can simultaneously feel conflicting emotions about the same idea in the same moment, or, to nuance this thought, the same idea can be depicted in multiple ways with a similar emotional outcome. The whole idea illustrates the entangled nature of emotions and embodied sensibilities, and ultimately the phrase allows for more agency in meaning making and production. Take the following two renditions of the concept of hope A poem and a photograph: both texts produced through different representational modes; in different genres; and with different aesthetic histories. In the poem, Maya Angelou captures the day-to-day struggles of anyone who feels fear, anger and sadness yet continues to hope and to persevere. The photo is of a young woman wearing a striking blue dress sitting in a streetscape alleyway. Taken by a high school student for an assignment on image archetypes, the title of the photo is The Maiden and her artist statement discusses how the photograph represents hope in the face of struggles. Both texts represent hope. Hope is personal and public; hope can be visual and written; hope is felt and enacted; hope is powerful sometimes, tokenistic other times. Yet, two versions of hope can be equally true at the same time.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to report on video making in two different contexts within the Community Arts Zone research project, an international research project concerned with the connections between arts, literacy and the community.Design/methodology/approach– At one project site, researchers and parents from the community filmed their children making dens with an artist. At another site, a professional film crew filmed young people engaged in arts practice in school settings.Findings– In both cases, researchers, artists and community participants collaborated to do research and make video. This paper discusses the ways that this work was differently positioned at the two sites. These different positionings had implications for the meaning ascribed to video making from the point of view of the participants, researchers and artists involved.Originality/value– By drawing on perspectives of researchers and artists, the paper explores implications for video making processes within ethnographic research. These include a need for awareness of the diversity and fragmentation of the fields of both visual research and visual arts practice. In addition, the relationship between research and the visual is unfolding in a context in which the digital is increasingly ubiquitous in everyday life. Therefore the authors argue for the need for researchers and artists to explore their epistemological assumptions with regards to video and film, and to consider the role of the digital in the lives of their participants. The coming together of these positions and experiences is what constructs the meaning of the digital and visual in the field.

(2003). The Production-Reception Continuum: Activating publishing practices during literacy events. Changing English: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 59-72.

This chapter explores what video game designers can offer literacy studies. Drawing on data from a 3 year interview-based study of professionals working in creative and business sectors and their thoughts on meaning making, Rowsell presents interpretative frameworks that researchers can use within their research to think about immersive and game-based texts. Two videogame designers offer thick description about the process of framing and layering storied worlds in videogames. Contemporary learning theories are increasingly arguing for understanding virtual environments as a way forward for literacy pedagogy and policy and videogames and gamification specifically have been targeted as models for future pedagogy. Presenting interview data with two video game designers, Rowsell profiles what new media and digital technologies producers do and think when they plan and produce videogames. Within the handbook, the chapter will contribute to a more nuanced appreciation of new media and how it can productively rework traditional understandings of literacy within contemporary, multimodal contexts.

This article deconstructs the online and offline experience to show its complexities and idiosyncratic nature. It proposes a theoretical framework designed to conceptualise aspects of meaning-making across on- and offline contexts. In arguing for the ‘(im)materiality’ of literacy, it makes four propositions which highlight the complex and diverse relationships between the immaterial and material associated with meaning-making. Complementing existing sociocultural perspectives on literacy, the article draws attention to the significance of relationships between space, mediation, materiality and embodiment to literacy practices. This in turn emphasises the importance of the subjective in understanding how different locations, experiences and so forth inflect literacy practice. The article concludes by drawing on the Deleuzian concept of the ‘baroque’ to suggest that this focus on articulations between the material and immaterial helps us to see literacy as multiply and flexibly situated.

Updating online profiles, texting, posting selfies, downloading music, surfing the web, and tweeting while walking along the street or sitting in class are all continual reminders that youth live multimodal lives. Less and less are communication, learning, and comprehension limited to traditional modes of the printed word or text and to more traditional media (although all of these text genres have been multimodal); instead, words are usually nested with visual images/graphics, aural/oral modes, animation, etc. and digital technologies. Indeed, in the popular culture landscape, adults appear to take note of youth’s multimodal literacies and multiple ways of knowing—from video games to websites that purposefully embed three key features of ‘new literacies’ (1) social/interactive (2) multiple modal (e.g. audio, video, print/text), and (3) creative license and expression (e.g. blogs, posts, links, fan fiction/sites). These new skills that transmediated, multimodal texts bring afford young people the opportunity to become active consumers-producers-composers of knowledge and information in a way that can directly and immediately affect and reach others everywhere, everyday.

Videogames and gameplay, and young people's engagement with them, are of considerable interest to literacy educators and researchers concerned with digital literacies, the place of videogames and digital culture in young people's lives, and the literate and social practices they that surround them. However, challenges remain about how to understand and conceptualize videogames, and what approaches to use in their analysis, that will capture the active nature of games and the hybrid nature of the form. Bringing together perspectives from the fields of Literacy and Games Studies, this chapter describes Steinkuehler's adaptation of Gee's account of 'big' and 'little' D Discourse to provide a basis for the analysis of massively multiplayer online games and game-play that bridge the differing epistemological perspectives and traditions effectively. The chapter concludes with brief discussion of other media- and literacy-oriented approaches to the analysis of online games and game-play.

The roots of multiliteracies rely on a message of hope about what education can be. Grounded on principles of inclusion and equity, the New London Group (1996) sought to create a vision of schooling that is contemporary and that is harnessed to present-day realities and demands.

We have taken a novel approach to this concluding chapter. Rather than simply outline some next steps for literacy teacher education, we used the previous 14 chapters as a form of data. We read through the chapters to identify common themes which we present here as a kind of educational significance of the work of our exemplary literacy teacher educators.