What Counts as Literacy for the 21st Century Youth

The writing practices of adolescent learners are far different from those of their parents and teachers. In 2020, adolescents engage in writing bursts through text messages and chats as they play games or share stories throughout the day with friends and family. It has been challenging for high school teachers to take advantage of these literacy activities in a meaningful way to improve writing skills. In this chapter, the authors focus on two adolescents who are in different grades and hold different views of what counts as writing practice. Still, it is clear that both believe in the importance of engaging in the work of writing to learn. The findings of our case studies suggest that one adolescent, a twelfth grader, sees writing practice as integral to his life. The other, a ninth grader, reports that he only engages in writing at school through formulaic assignments that are often boring and unchallenging. The authors found in their study that storytelling and digital technologies are tools for developing flow, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, engagement, and motivation.

Immersive Storytelling

Technology tools continue to contribute to the digital story formats, and in today's world, multiple modes of communication are used to deliver narratives. Digital storytelling engages an audience by means of computer-based tools to share a message. Through the use of digital technologies like virtual reality (VR), digital stories have evolved to include the concept of immersive storytelling. VR utilizes interactive 360-degree images designed to immerse the user in a virtual environment. Immersive stories provide the storyteller's audience with a sense of being present at the scene. This chapter presents a background on the rationale for the use of VR technologies in storytelling as well as classroom applications for immersive storytelling across all academic disciplines. The technologies and processes for creating an immersive story are presented along with clear steps and recommended websites. In addition, examples of immersive stories are shared.

Using Infographics for Teaching

Outstanding advances in educational technology are significantly influencing new learning environments, where it is necessary for teachers to respond and for learners to be able to adapt to the modern age of knowledge and information dissemination. The development of ICT has catalyzed the ability of all types of data to be reproduced visually (visualization). The term visualization refers to the use of various visual aids, which makes a subject more eloquent. This is especially useful for teaching a variety of special courses (environmental education), geography (maps, atlases), history (historical maps, atlases). Geography is a comprehensive and one of the most demanding subjects, as its study deals with a variety of different topics. This course can be made more effective and produce more permanent results through the use of innovative tools. One of these tools is information. In the context of the present study, the use of infographics, a pioneering visual tool transformed into a reliable teaching tool-guide in the classroom, is presented.

Digital Storytelling and Teachers' Disciplinary Multiliteracies

This chapter reports on a multidisciplinary research collaboration which aims to explore how digital stories may be used to support pre-service teachers across disciplinary boundaries of English, science, and health education. Digital stories play a distinct role in enacting disciplinary practices within each of these curriculum areas and provide a valuable context for expanding students' semiotic repertoire. By integrating digital storytelling in initial teacher education (ITE), the authors provide a pathway for teachers to develop pedagogic knowledge of genres that are distinctly disciplinary in their purpose but which draw on semiotic affordances and pedagogic practices from across boundaries of traditional literacy education. Drawing on digital stories produced for a range of purposes, they report on the metalanguage we have developed in our collaborative work to inform a coherent multiliteracies framework to build on and extend pre-service teachers' semiotic repertoire for functional, critical, and creative disciplinary practice.

Popular Media and Grade 6-12 Literacy

Adolescents in the 21st century engage with popular media in a variety of ways. Adolescent students' interactions with video games, videos, social media, and other forms of popular media have become a growing topic of study among academics interested in popular media's role in in-school literacies. To complicate matters, secondary classroom teachers continue to grapple with state and national standards that address traditional reading and writing skills. This systematic literature review focuses on what articles from practitioner journals reveal about adolescent participation in popular media, and how media skills are addressed. The analysis provided here is based on a random sample of 35 articles focusing on popular media and in-school literacies.

Children's Cultural Backpack and Preschool Education

This chapter centres on how children's informal acquisition of textual knowledge is used or not used when children and teachers interact in formal literacy situations involving digital tools in preschool. When an interactive learning environment becomes meaningful in the eyes of children, there is potential for creativity and learning and children become competent agents in their own context and cultural environment. The empirical starting point for the chapter is qualitative observations made for a research project at a Swedish preschool. The study was organised as design-based research. The study displayed an interesting dimension of interaction in which the child had or assumed agency in dialogue with an adult. This involved occasions when the teacher was responsive to understanding the child's cultural backpack. The study is based on didactic design theories. The perspective adds to the understanding of learning in relation to human sign-creating activities.

Digital Storytelling to Enhance Social Studies Content Knowledge, Explore Multiple Perspectives, and Advocate for Social Justice

In this chapter, the authors discuss how digital storytelling expands traditional storytelling options to serve as an integrative approach to (1) deepen student understanding of social studies content, (2) learn history through multiple perspectives, and (3) seek social justice through civics engagement. Most stories told about our history tend to focus on the dominant narrative which portrays an inaccurate depiction of events and individuals. When students move beyond the “single story” of the dominant narrative to explore multiple perspectives, voices, and historical accounts through counter narratives, they develop essential critical thinking skills to help them not only deepen their understanding of content in social studies but to encourage them to actively engage as democratic citizens seeking social justice for a better world.

Using Picture Books With Instructional Strategies to Address New Challenges and Teach Literacy Skills in a Digital World

This chapter highlights new challenges that have developed over time in a digital world and use picture books with research-based instructional strategies to help teachers, K-8, address these challenges and develop student literacy skills at the same time. It identifies and describes picture books that teachers, K-8, can use as well as present instructional strategies that might be utilized to address these challenges and teach literacy skills in our ever-evolving digital world. This chapter consists of seven sections: 1) major technologies in the history of mass communication, 2) the digital world and pop culture, 3) using picture books to address new challenges in a digital world, 4) picture books and instructional strategies to support literacy skill development, 5) digital storytelling, 6) the need for caution, 7) suggested additional resources to address new challenges in a digital world.

Interculturally-Critical Digital Storytelling

Narrating personal experiences, stories, or real-life events can engage students in meaningful learning that is interesting and fun. Digital storytelling can support not only knowledge transfer but also realizing socially-just education by promoting inclusive attitudes. This chapter argues for the use of digitally supported storytelling for social justice education. Interculturally-critical digital storytelling is presented as a critical orientation that is sensitive to intercultural issues of power and sociopolitical realities. It makes a case for implementing digital storytelling as a way of introducing experiences and narratives that explore elements pertinent to social justice. Interculturally-critical digital storytelling involves (a) incorporating multicultural literature in order to amplify students' voices and include different cultures, (b) considering storytelling as a creative practice that entails an innovative method of teaching and learning, and (c) emphasizing the need to discuss and question hegemonic normative expectations that perpetuate injustices and inequalities.

Adaptations of Print Narratives Into Literary Apps

Adaptations of children's books into literary apps provide a twofold approach for literacy practise at primary school. This chapter deals with the app The Big Word Factory (2013), which is based upon the picture book of the same title, written by Agnès de Lestrade and illustrated by Valeria Docampo. An analysis of the narrative framework of literary apps is meant to show that nonlinear storytelling, a key component of numerous print works of children's literature, but also of digital narratives, may help untrained young readers develop reading motivation while print and digital readings are practised as complementary activities.