The Uses of (Digital) Literacy

This article shares research facilitated by a multinational technology provider, converging mobile networked technology (tablets) used across school and home, a technology enhanced community ‘third space’ providing workshops for students aged 6-9 with their parents / carers. The approach taken avoids the instrumental measurement of functional digital literacy competences, but instead seeks to negotiate, with participants and the various stakeholders, a more nuanced and complex understanding of the ‘uses of literacy’ (from Hoggart, 1957) in digital contexts and in a deeply situated, specific local setting. Working with our findings, we later put Amartya Sen’s concept of capability (2005, 2008) to work on our data in order to provide a discussion on how the digital literacy community might distinguish digital competences as functionings from the ‘uses’ of such competences for a broader range of capabilities. Findings demonstrate initial successes in using networked mobile technology in bridging the school-family-community triad as a third space. However, the outcomes reveal the complexity and specificity of factors which restrict the potential for mobile technology in education to lead on to further reaching capabilities – delimiting the uses of digital literacy

Designing digital texts for beginner readers: performance, practice and process

This illustrated chapter describes the role of research in typography and graphic communication and in information design, that is relevant to the design and use of materials for children’s reading. By ‘design’ in this context we mean ‘typography’ (which is the visual organisation of type and pictures on paper or screen), and ‘process’ (the ways in which design is developed in order to make sure that what is designed works for its intended reader group). We summarise issues that designers consider when they are producing reading materials for beginning and emerging readers, including the constraints imposed by technology. We suggest ways of engaging with users of e-books so that their needs can be considered. We conclude by summarising the typographic parameters that are likely to benefit children’s reading