A Review of the "Digital Turn" in the New Literacy Studies

Digital communication has transformed literacy practices and assumed great importance in the functioning of workplace, recreational, and community contexts. This article reviews a decade of empirical work of the New Literacy Studies, identifying the shift toward research of digital literacy applications. The article engages with the central theoretical, methodological, and pragmatic challenges in the tradition of New Literacy Studies, while highlighting the distinctive trends in the digital strand. It identifies common patterns across new literacy practices through cross-comparisons of ethnographic research in digital media environments. It examines ways in which this research is taking into account power and pedagogy in normative contexts of literacy learning using the new media. Recommendations are given to strengthen the links between New Literacy Studies research and literacy curriculum, assessment, and accountability in the 21st century

Development of multiple media documents

Development of documents in multiple media involves activities in three different fields, the technical, the discoursive and the procedural. The major development problems of artifact complexity, cognitive processes, design basis and working context are located where these fields overlap. Pending the emergence of a unified approach to design, any method must allow for development at the three levels of discourse structure, media disposition and composition, and presentation. Related work concerned with generalised discourse structures, structured documents, production methods for existing multiple media artifacts, and hypertext design offer some partial forms of assistance at different levels. Desirable characteristics of a multimedia design method will include three phases of production, a variety of possible actions with media elements, an underlying discoursive structure, and explicit comparates for review

Pedagogies of Design and Multiliterate Learner Identities

In an era of multiliteracies, teaching and learning have become knowledge performances at multiple levels. Instead of a singular, linear focus upon print technologies, the techno-oriented philosophy of teaching aims at providing a rhizomatic network of texts where there is a close link between, and often an overlap of, different designs—linguistic, visual, spatial, and gestural—to construct the multiliterate learner. In this paper, I discuss the role of multimodal literacies in a primary classroom, affirming the role of multiliteracies and decentring the pre-dominance of linguistic at the cost of other designs. While the print media are acknowledged as significant to literacy, the multimodality of print is enhanced through visual and spatial design (Kenner, 2004). Through graphic examples of ICT applications of designs in a primary classroom, I demonstrate that students are operating through multitextual and digitextual (Everett, 2003) practices. What follows is the complex positioning and re-situating of teacher and learner identities engaged in learning through the knowledge processes of experiencing, identifying, applying and critiquing concepts (Kalantzis & Cope, 2004). In particular, I argue that within the diversity of present day classrooms, the digital oriented, multiliterate learner is implicated in constant identity construction by drawing upon macro and micro social practices. I conclude by reiterating the significance of new technologies and new literacy practices as essential to the construction of new learner identities

Media(ting) Between Generations: Common Sense and Perceptions of New Media by Young People and Teachers

The wide spread of mobile communication devices, the expansion of social media and participatory media platforms, the ease to edit, share and produce media content, indicate a trend of change in the media system that influences the production and consumption of knowledge and generates new paths for the young\u2019s identity construction. This raises necessary questions about the ways not only young, but also the education agencies \u2013 school in particular \u2013 relate to these transformations, starting from taking into account the production of common sense on the use, risks and opportunities of the media. Based on these considerations, in this paper, we will discuss the results of a qualitative case study carried out in the Veneto Region (Italy) on upper secondary school students and teachers in order to detect and compare the perception that young and educators have of the media, trying to identify boundaries or land on which to build exchange opportunities for dialogue between the generations

Appropriation of mobile cultural resources for learning

Copyright © 2010 IGI Global. This article proposes appropriation as the key for the recognition of mobile devices - as well as the artefacts accessed through, and produced with them - as cultural resources across different cultural practices of use, in everyday life and formal education. The article analyses the interrelationship of users of mobile devices with the structures, agency and practices of, and in relation to what the authors call the "mobile complex". Two examples are presented and some curricular options for the assimilation of mobile devices into settings of formal learning are discussed. Also, a typology of appropriation is presented that serves as an explanatory, analytical frame and starting point for a discussion about attendant issues

Fostering reflection in the training of speech-receptive action

Dieser Aufsatz erörtert Möglichkeiten und Probleme der Förderung kommunikativer Fertigkeiten durch die Unterstützung der Reflexion eigenen sprachrezeptiven Handelns und des Einsatzes von computerunterstützten Lernumgebungen für dessen Förderung. Kommunikationstrainings widmen sich meistens der Förderung des beobachtbaren sprachproduktiven Handelns (Sprechen). Die individuellen kognitiven Prozesse, die dem sprachrezeptiven Handeln (Hören und Verstehen) zugrunde liegen, werden häufig vernachlässigt. Dies wird dadurch begründet, dass sprachrezeptives Handeln in einer kommunikativen Situation nur schwer zugänglich und die Förderung der individuellen Prozesse sprachrezeptiven Handelns sehr zeitaufwändig ist. Das zentrale Lernprinzip - die Reflexion des eigenen sprachlich-kommunikativen Handelns - wird aus verschiedenen Perspektiven diskutiert. Vor dem Hintergrund der Reflexionsmodelle wird die computerunterstützte Lernumgebung CaiMan© vorgestellt und beschrieben. Daran anschließend werden sieben Erfolgsfaktoren aus der empirischen Forschung zur Lernumgebung CaiMan© abgeleitet. Der Artikel endet mit der Vorstellung von zwei empirischen Studien, die Möglichkeiten der Reflexionsunterstützung untersucheThis article discusses the training of communicative skills by fostering the reflection of speech-receptive action and the opportunities for using software for this purpose. Most frameworks for the training of communicative behavior focus on fostering the observable speech-productive action (i.e. speaking); the individual cognitive processes underlying speech-receptive action (hearing and understanding utterances) are often neglected. Computer-supported learning environments employed as cognitive tools can help to foster speech-receptive action. Seven success factors for the integration of software into the training of soft skills have been derived from empirical research. The computer-supported learning environment CaiMan© based on these ideas is presented. One central learning principle in this learning environment reflection of one's own action will be discussed from different perspectives. The article concludes with two empirical studies examining opportunities to foster reflecti

E-methods in literary production: integrating e-learning in creative writing

This paper discusses the integration of e-learning in creative writing. The online approach to the teaching of creative writing takes into account today’s Malaysian youth and their fascination with computer technology. It is this appeal of innovation in electronics and knowledge that leads an educator to design an on-line approach to a creative writing course. The theoretical construct used to support the discussion is Anderson’s theory that on-line learning is knowledge-, community-, assessment-, and learner-centered. The writer, who is also the course developer, analyses a poetry-writing activity, which students undertake, and the e-portfolio used in the course. To analyze the processes involved in this creative writing exercise Macherey’s (1978) Theory of Literary Production is adapted and utilized. This theory, which regards literary production as a process imitating that of a production line, provides the methodology and conceptual framework for analyzing the raw materials collected by the students and their transformation during the writing process. This paper thus addresses the benefits of e-learning in a creative writing context