scholarly journals “Thanks for the Assignment!”: Digital Stories as a Form of Reflective Practice

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorayne Robertson ◽  
Janette Hughes ◽  
Shirley Smith
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
Reflective Practice ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Course Design ◽  
New Literacies ◽  
Transformative Pedagogy ◽  
Classroom Experience ◽  
Digital Stories ◽  
Student Reflections ◽  
New London

In this article we examine pre-service teachers’ digital literacy stories and post-assignment reflections for evidence of transformative pedagogy. The language arts course design employs both a new literacies approach (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006) and a multiliteracies pedagogical framework (New London Group, 1996). These frameworks are also applied to help us examine the pre-service teachers’ digital stories and reflections. The data consist of approximately 150 digital stories and written student reflections collected over three years. We are encouraged by the finding that the multimedia nature of the assignment appears to help pre-service teachers construct new understandings of literacies, particularly when the digital stories are shared as part of the adult classroom experience. We conclude that digital stories hold potential to encourage pre-service teachers to think critically about how they were taught relative to the teachers they wish to become.

scholarly journals “Such Tweet Sorrow”: The Explosive Impact of New Literacies on Adolescent Responses to Live Theatre

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
John M. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Language Arts ◽  
New Literacies ◽  
English Teacher ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Regular Feature ◽  
Audience Studies ◽  
Arts Programs ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
New London

Trips to the theatre are a regular feature of many high school language arts programs, and yet the experience of watching a play is often significantly different for a teacher than it is for a student. Placing “theatre literacy” within the context of the New London Group’s definition of multiliteracies, and drawing on the work of Lankshear and Knobel as well as audience studies theorists, this article compares how a 17 year-old girl and a 43 year-old English teacher respond to a series of plays, and considers how growing up in a wireless world shapes adolescents’ understanding of live theatre.

The Means and the End Teaching Digital Literacy to Nonprofit Students

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Schatteman ◽  
Li-Yin Liu
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Individual Student ◽  
Future Career ◽  
Public Service Organizations ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Student Reflections

For their future career, nonprofit students need to attain the necessary skills and knowledge to leverage the power of technology appropriately to serve their communities. As faculty, we need to design our courses to improve the digital literacy of our students and therefore improve their ability to effectively communicate, manage, and lead public service organizations. This article examines an undergraduate course called Community Organizations in a Digital World that responds to the new demands for innovations in nonprofit organizations. We present the overall course design, including assignments, and the findings of a pretest and a posttest of individual student digital literacy and student reflections on their digital literacy. Based on the two-stage survey, students’ digital literacy significantly improved when they completed the course. Moreover, students appreciated the importance and the difficulty of using social media in their future career. They also recognized the effect of algorithms and social justice issues of accessing technology. This evidence demonstrates the active learning exercises used in this course successfully improved students’ digital literacy.

The Teachers They Are Becoming

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorayne Robertson ◽  
Janette Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Methods Course ◽  
Multiple Literacies ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Language Arts Methods ◽  
Pre Service Teacher ◽  
New London

The authors review all aspects of a Language Arts methods course for pre-service teachers, one which employs a multi-literacies pedagogy (The New London Group, 1996) and is taught at a laptop-based university. The course begins with a deliberate immersion into the complexities of multiple literacies, including digital literacy and critical literacy. The authors outline the course assignments, resources and instructional goals to determine how technology impacts pre-service teacher learning and intended future practice. The qualitative data sources include digital artifacts such as digital literacy stories, book talks that focus on social justice issues, and media literacy lessons. In addition, the researchers draw from cross-program data based on teacher candidate reflections and interviews. The data suggest that both the use of digital technology and a multi-literacies pedagogy can help pre-service teachers reflect on personal experiences to develop literacy teaching and learning practices that have transformative elements.

Teaching Multimodal and Digital Literacy in L2 Settings: New Literacies, New Basics, New Pedagogies

2011 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 226-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Lotherington ◽  
Jennifer Jenson
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Literacy Education ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Multimodal Literacies ◽  
Teaching Language ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
New London

Globalization and digitization have reshaped the communication landscape, affecting how and with whom we communicate, and deeply altering the terrain of language and literacy education. As children in urban contexts become socialized into communities of increasing cultural and communicational connectivity, complexity, and convergence (Jenkins, 2004), and funding for specialist second language (L2) support declines, classrooms have become linguistically heterogeneous spaces where every teacher is a teacher of L2 learners.This article has two purposes: The first is to give an overview of the concept of multimodal literacies, which utilize diverse media to represent visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and tactile dimensions of communication in addition to traditional written and oral forms (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009a). Since the New London Group's manifesto on multiliteracies in 1996, which merged language and literacy education agendas in L2 teaching, language arts, media literacy, and cultural studies, new basics have developed that apply to all classrooms and all learners. Second, this article reviews and reports on innovative pedagogical approaches to multimodal literacies involving L2 learners. These are grounded theoretically (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009a, 2009b; Kress, 2003, 2010; New London Group, 1996) and epistemologically (de Castell & Jenson, 2003; Gee, 2009, 2010; Kellner, 2004; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, 2006).

scholarly journals Surfacing the Assumptions: Pursuing Critical Literacy and Social Justice in Preservice Teacher Education

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorayne Robertson ◽  
Janette Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Language Arts ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
English Language ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Transformative Pedagogy ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
Teaching For Social Justice

This paper outlines a four-year study of a preservice education course based on a socioconstructivist research framework. The preservice English Language Arts course focuses on critical literacy and teaching for social justice while employing digital technologies.The research study examines two concepts across all aspects of the course: 1) new literacies and multiliteracies; and 2) technology-supported transformative pedagogy for social and educational change. While the authors originally undertook the study to evaluate separate assignments of the course, the lens of the two themes has provided an opportunity for a scholarly review of their teaching practices. Research data include three course assignments over a 2-year period; an open-ended survey; and focus group and individual interviews with pre-service teachers. The authors discuss some of the affordances, challenges, and learnings associated with preparing teachers to teach critical literacy in a digital age. They also consider the development of critical literacy skills which encourage preservice teachers to bring their literacy histories and assumptions to the surface, examine them critically, and consider social justice alternatives.

The Power of Digital Literacy to Transform and Shape Teacher Identities

2017 ◽  
pp. 1152-1166
Author(s):  
Janette Hughes ◽  
Lorayne Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Beginning Teachers ◽  
Language Arts ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
English Language Arts ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
School Students ◽  
Critical Media

In this chapter, the authors focus their attention on the case studies of three beginning teachers and their use of digital storytelling in their preservice education English Language Arts classes. They undertook this research to determine if preservice teachers who are exposed to new literacies and a multiliteracies pedagogy will use them in transformative ways. The authors examine their subsequent and transformed use of digital media with their own students in the classroom setting. One uses a digital story to reflect on past injustices. Another finds new spaces for expression in digital literacy. A third uses the affordances of digital media to raise critical awareness of a present global injustice with secondary school students. The authors explore their shifting perceptions of multiple literacies and critical media literacy and how these shifts in thinking help shape or transform their ideas about teaching and learning in English Language Arts.

scholarly journals Embedding Graduate Attributes into the Undergraduate Curriculum: Reflection and Actions

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Smith
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Undergraduate Curriculum ◽  
Extracurricular Activity ◽  
Graduate Attributes ◽  
New Graduate ◽  
Institutional Experience ◽  
Work And Life ◽  
Key Interventions

Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle is used as a framework to explore the institutional experience of embedding new graduate attributes (GAs) as part of a major refocus of all the undergraduate courses at Leeds Beckett University. One of the key components of this curricular refocus was the initial conceptualisation and embedding of three new graduate attributes. The University’s three GAs are i)        having a global outlook ii)       being enterprising and iii)      being digitally literate. This paper focuses on the seven main interventions which were used to embed and foster their delivery in the refocused curriculum. The GAs run through each level of every UG course and prepare students for work and life through a variety of embedded intracurricular module-based, credit-bearing activities. This reflective paper concentrates on the intra-module core curricular activity manifested by the GAs embedded in course and module learning outcomes and not students’ extracurricular activity even though this can be regarded as strengthening skills for life and the workplace (Bowden, Hart, King, Trigwell, & Watts, 2000). A combination of personal and colleagues’ reflections, evidence from surveys and analysis of actions are highlighted using Gibbs’ (1988) cycle as a framework to explore the process in a systematic way and assist in the illustration and analysis of some of our key interventions. This reflective account considers our successes (resources and building the digital literacy GA) and some of the surprising benefits (communities of practice) of this initiative. The paper also uses Hounsell’s (2011) and Barrie’s (2006) frameworks to deconstruct the curriculum change experience and offers structured reflection on some of the lessons learnt from the challenges, e.g. tight timescales, staff ownership and constructive alignment (Biggs, 1996). Key future actions are noted; specifically the engagement of staff and students to address application/tailoring to disciplines and their specific course design issues.

scholarly journals Impact of Technology-based Reflective Practice Tools on Student Skill Development

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharleen O'Reilly ◽  
Julia Milner
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Practice ◽  
Student Development ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Summary Writing ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Student Preference ◽  
Student Skill ◽  
Impact Of Technology

The purpose of this study was to examine how students received the combination of technology-based tools implemented in a staged manner within a curriculum and if any specific tool was of greater benefit in developing their reflective practice skills. Participants were 45 tertiary students enrolled in a health professional course. Qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed student preference for individual tools changed over time. Students preferred supportive tools (simulated video recordings, group blogging and teaching approaches) earlier on and independent tools (e-journaling and online reflective summary writing) in their final year. The findings support the use of different reflective practice tools in course design to better support student development and improve student engagement in reflective practices.

Using Digital Stories in a College Level Course on Rocks and Minerals

2012 ◽  
pp. 418-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prajukti Bhattacharyya
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Digital Storytelling ◽  
Course Design ◽  
College Level ◽  
Educational Benefits ◽  
Science Courses ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
Digital Stories ◽  
Upper Level ◽  
The University

Digital storytelling juxtaposes the time-honored teaching and learning achievements of storytelling with the modern student’s affinity for technology. Although not commonly used in college science classes, the author incorporated digital storytelling in an upper level undergraduate geology course for majors at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. The overarching purpose of this exercise was to integrate the affective domain of learning within the course context. Informal comments from students indicated that this goal was indeed achieved by this exercise. Students identified technological difficulties and the time commitment necessary to create digital stories as the major hurdles they faced during the exercise. In this chapter, the author describes the course design, learning objectives, educational benefits, and strategies to overcome potential challenges of incorporating digital storytelling in college level science courses.

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