Technology and Literacy

Suzanne Miller and Suzanne Borowicz conducted a fascinating research on the use of digital video in various classrooms upstate New York. You may want to visit their project site, City Voices City Visions, and review some of the students’ digital authoring projects. Ernesto’s Bio Poem and Tysheka’s iPoem spoke to me personally. These projects are great examples of the ways to empower our students with ownership for complex media productions that

• integrate all aspects of language arts (reading, listening, writing and speaking);
• send powerful messages to the larger audience about important issues in students’ lives within and outside the classroom, and in this way bridge inside/outside school literacies;
• encourage and nurture collaboration, peer support, and inquiry,
• and call for critical thinking about the meaning making process with newer technologies and about the audience’s interactive role in this process.

Please join us in exploring the potential of digital video for multiliteracies of today and tomorrow. Here are some questions for us to consider in this exploration:

·        What possibilities do you envision for digital authoring in your classroom?

·        Do you know of good examples of student digital authoring?

·        Can you share these with us?

·        Can you tell us why you chose them?