For a long PDF version, see the link at the end

Multimodal and digital literacies: service-learning with primary school children and trainee teachers

Country:    Spain               

Age Group: 6-12 years 

Content Area: 

• Fostering basic reading skills 
• Effective use of tools and strategies for reading online 
• Fostering writing and communication skills
• Using digital devices to foster reading for pleasure
• Using digital devices as a medium for coding and programming, a “playground” for learning and developing a variety of creative digital-based skills.

Abstract

The project activities contribute to the student teachers’ willingness and preparation for applying strategies and approaches that develop critical multiliteracies, using digital resources, in primary school pupils.
In this project, digital literacy is developed concerning democratic values and norms, such as awareness, understanding and respect for cultural and individual differences, as well as equal rights for all members of society, in a way that benefits in parallel the children in the participating schools and the future teachers.
For children, the project introduces a way to integrate the uses of digital technologies with more traditional literacy instructional practices, such as becoming familiar with quality children’s literature texts and illustrations, specifically those that relate to ethical values and character development. The learners discover new literary texts in their second language, and receive help in understanding and enjoying them from the student teachers.

The means for this support is by way of using digital technologies for both reception and production of the participants’ own original multimodal/multimedia texts. For the future teachers, the project offers a practical experience including the opportunity to confirm how effective the strategies for using multimedia digital resources are for purposes that go beyond simply getting familiar with the mechanics or functionality of the resources themselves: based on the initial aims for multimodal literacy, the affordances of the different kinds of digital resources that best fit these objectives and the needs of the project participants have been explored. Thus, practically and naturally, the project develops education in ethical values, reading, comprehension, analysis and composition of multimodal texts, using digital tools of different kinds (videoconferencing, video-storytelling, infographics, in addition to the relevant software and hardware).

Contact Name: Aoife Ahern

Email address: akahern@ucm.es

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• For a  Long PDF version go here (also downloadable)
• Overview Page Good & Promising Practices