In this chapter, issues relating to the digital literacy practices of girls aged from three to eight in both home and school contexts are explored. Since the late 1990s, there have been persistent concerns about boys' achieve- ment in literacy. Here, I argue that these concerns have overshadowed matters that should be considered by educationalists who are committed to gender equity in their classrooms. In this first section of the chapter, the nature of the anxieties expressed about boys and literacy are investigated before data from a number of projects that have focused on children's use of new technologies and related literacy practices are discussed. Three key issues are the focus for reflection. First, I suggest that girls' experiences of literacy across homes and early years settings are not as seamless as is often assumed and that girls as well as boys experience dissonance across these domains. Second, I suggest that there is a need to pay attention to the reductive gendered discourses that are embedded in many of the home literacy practices of girls in order to inform the development of critical literacy curricula. Finally, I consider the way in which initiatives designed to motivate boys through the incorporation of popular culture into the lit- eracy curriculum can reinforce gendered stereotypes and marginalize the out-of-school experiences of girls. This discussion is undertaken within a context in which it is acknowledged that there is a need to move beyond a simplistic binary which fuels the see-sawing debate regarding the achieve- ments of one gender at the expense of the other (Jackson 1998). I would suggest, as do many others, that such a position is an over-simplification of the issues and that we should address the needs of all pupils (Skelton and Francis 2003). However, in this chapter I have chosen to focus on an investigation into the experiences of young girls in the early years because this is where it is often erroneously assumed that literacy transitions from home to school are relatively seamless.
In this paper I identify some current elaborations on the theme of participation and digital literacy in order to open further debate on the relationship between interaction, collaboration and learning in online environments. Motivated by an interest in using new technologies in the context of formal learning (Merchant, 2009), I draw on in-school and out-of-school work in Web 2.0 spaces. This work is inflected by the new literacies approach (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006a). Here I provide an overview of the ways in which learning through participation is characterised by those adopting this and other related perspectives. I include a critical examination of the idea of “participatory” culture as articulated in the field of media studies, focusing particularly on the influential work of Jenkins (2006a; 2006b). In order to draw these threads together around conceptualizations of learning, I summarise ways in which participation is described in the literature on socially-situated cognition. This is used to generate some tentative suggestions about how learning and literacy in Web 2.0 spaces might be envisioned and how ideas about participation might inform curriculum planning and design.
This article provides an overview of the design, implementation, revision and informal assessment of an information literacy curriculum embedded in a new University Foundations (UF) program at a mid-sized public university. The library information literacy sessions incorporated team-based learning and Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) elements using iPads. Each session provided students an opportunity to develop and apply information literacy skills, and included critical thinking questions which led students to think about underlying concepts. A focus group with the librarians assessed the UF library curriculum, its impact on student engagement, and the training activities for librarian teaching preparation.
New technologies are being used in schools.This article reports on a case study of one teacher’s work to integrate an interactive whiteboard (IWB) into a primary classroom.
The characteristics of contemporary societies are increasingly theorized as global, fluid, and networked. These conditions underpin the emerging knowledge economy as it is shaped by the societal and technological forces of late capitalism. These shifts and developments have significantly affected the communicational landscape of the 21st century. A key aspect of this is the reconfiguration of the representational and communicational resources of image, action, sound, and so on in new multimodal ensembles. The terrain of communication is changing in profound ways and extends to schools and ubiquitous elements of everyday life, even if these changes are occurring to different degrees and at uneven rates. It is against this backdrop that this critical review explores school multimodality and literacy and asks what these changes mean for being literate in this new landscape of the 21st century.
when you interact with a service online or by phone there may be software in action that mediates how you experience the service: by sorting you. Live in a high income postcode? Get routed to a sales person more quickly than if your IP address makes you look as if you come from a less promising area. On record as an awkward customer or "time-waster"? Then wait in the queue.