Do the conceptions of digital literacy or multiliteracies offered in the two articles you read this week provide you with specific insights into the ways in which educators should work with new media with their students?

Even though students in schools today are digital natives, they still need just as much guidance through using tech as they did with print.  All students need to be taught how to think critically about what they are reading especially in an online environment where anyone can write almost anything.  “To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed, and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (ALA as cited by Dobson and Willinksy, 2009).

Dobson and Willinksy note research on print texts which shows that students with low content knowledge benefit more from using well-structured and coherent resources.  I think the same could be applied to learning with hypermedia.  I believe concepts or tools that are just being introduced to students should be done with more overt instruction before they attempt situated practice learning tasks.

In regards to teaching with technology in my class, I would like to try blogging which allows students to “readily see and comment on each other’s work” which Bruce, Micheals and Watson-Gegeo (as cited by Dobson & Willinsky, 2009) said improved student writing.  I’d also like to introduce more lessons based in situated practice like reaching out to experts when engaging in authentic tasks.  For example, we could contact native French speakers with Skype to practise oral French.  This experience would also raise student awareness of another culture, preparing my students to work in a diverse online world when they’re older.

I found it interesting that Dobson and Willinksy cited research by Luke and Luke that showed that “adolescents competence with new technologies—is often inappropriately reconstrued as incompetence with print-based literacies.”  From my experience in the MET program, many secondary teachers have said that teen’s writing skills have declined in recent years.  Perhaps this observation isn’t only because of an increase in digital literacy but other factors as well.

Dobson, T. M.,& Willinsky, J. (2009) Digital literacy. Draft chapter for the Cambridge Handbook on Literacy.

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), pp. 60-92.