Monday May 16th, 10:30-12:00 – Group 2a

10:30-12:00

Mastin Prinsloo (in Room 201, upstairs)

Maureen Kendrick/Margaret Early
Literacy, Multimodality and Imagined Communities: Connecting English Language Learners through Global Learning Networks

In the 21^st Century, new literacy practices require the ability to ‘read’ and ‘write’ complex texts comprised of multiple modes including linguistic, visual, and gestural. Pedagogical designs, however, have not yet elaborated a robust theoretical and practical account of how a range of modalities might contribute to meaning-making. Our research focuses on how secondary school students in Canada and Kenya can participate in global learning networks (i.e., using technology as an integral part of a learning exchange over long distances) by drawing on and adapting their local multimodal resources for the development of literacy.

Claudia Mitchell
What will we know when we know it?”  Youth-as-knowledge-producers and digital media in the age of AIDS

This paper sets out to interrogate the idea of  ‘youth-as-knowledge-producers’ in relation to digital media projects involving South African and Canadian youth and in the context of HIV&AIDS. Drawing on several case studies (girls and blogging in South Africa, a video makingt in South Africa, and a stop motion project with aboriginal youth in Canada,  the paper works with  Ursula Franklin’s formulation,  ‘what will we know when we know it?’  in order to map out what  such terms as ‘knowing’  and ‘ knowledge producer’  might mean in working with youth — and especially girls.

Teresa Dobson
Implications for Literacy Education of Online Video Sharing Applications

In December 2005, “YouTube” was made available for public use. This internet-based video-sharing service designed to allow users to view and upload video clips with remarkable ease enjoyed almost immediate success, becoming the fastest-growing site on the Internet by the summer of 2006 (Cashmore, 2006a). Currently, companies that track Internet usage invariably list YouTube in the top five most accessed sites globally (e.g., Alexa, 2009). While there exists literature on the implications of the social media movement for the way in which individuals conceptualize knowledge creation and diffusion (e.g., Dobson and Willinsky, 2009), there has been limited theoretical discussion from a literacy perspective of why YouTube in particular, which privileges oral and visual over written expression, but which nevertheless demands users have sophisticated literacy skills, is garnering such interest, and of the implications of this scenario for literacy.