Reading Review Part C:Research Synopsis

Part C: Research Synopsis
In my research on digital literacy, I collected five articles, four of which I found on the UBC library database and one on Google Scholar.  In the paper by Renee Hobbs (2010), "Digital and Media Literacy: A plan of Action” outlines an action plan for the various ways digital and media literacy can be brought to the masses at all levels including informal and formal settings.  But my attention was focused on the topic of special education students, which was highlighted briefly in the article.  I had not given much consideration to special education students and their digital literacy skills education.  As a special education teacher, I was a bit embarrassed that I had not taken this aspect of these students’ education into more serious consideration and at the same time, this idea piqued my curiosity. I had lots of questions about it; what is happening in this area? Are special education students given opportunities to access media literacy and to what extent? How is it implemented in the various special programs or is it implemented in their program? etc.  So, I searched the term ‘digital literacy in special education’ and found a study done in 2015 by Cihak et al, where they explored the effects of teaching functional digital literacy to three intellectually disabled students to prepare them to partake in a digital culture.  The functional digital literacies they focuses on were emailing (sign in, respond and send), bookmarking (save and access bookmarks) and cloud storage (sign in, download and upload documents). The result of the study was positive, the students learned and retained the functional digital literacy skills taught to them. This is would be a great article to share with some special education teachers when discussing curriculum and how best to program for some of the special education students at my school.

I found two articles that discussed and offered specific activities to implement and develop digital literacies in the educational settings.  Chan, B. S. K., Churchill, D., & Chiu, T. K. F. (2017) discussed digital storytelling while Todorova, Margarita, and Georgi Todorov (2011), discussed e-portfolios.  These two articles were informative and offered some insights into how to implement digital storytelling and/or e-portfolios in the classroom as ways to develop students’ digital literacy.  I was especially interested in the article on the e-portfolio as it is tentatively the focus of my final project.  The author offered a variety of tools to create e-portfolios but the one that appealed to me is called Hyperstudio. I have yet to experiment with this tool.  I have also thought maybe it would be better to have students create an e-portfolio through Google classroom or Blogger, since the students already have signed the consent form for it at my school.

As in the paper by Hobbs (2010), in Kahne et al. (2012), the results of this study further supports the idea that digital media education engages youth to be more active in their lives, in this particular instance, exposure to media education demonstrated an association with improved online political participation and greater exposure to different views.

All articles were very relevant to my topic of research and expressed the importance of including and teaching digital literacy skills to all students, including the ones in special education programs.  With the current curricular change in BC and teachers changing their practice focus to a more inquiry-based or project-based approach. I think incorporating digital literacy practices in the classroom would complement the change and is timely.  This allows for more teaching of digital literacy skills along with content learning.   For instance, teachers would be required to teach website/source evaluation, research skills, analyzing, critiquing and critical thinking skills, asking the right research question, problem solving etc., all skills that are required for the 21st century.  I think this would also allow for greater collaboration between teacher-librarians and the subject teacher.




References

Chan, B. S. K., Churchill, D., & Chiu, T. K. F. (2017). Digital literacy learning in higher education through digital storytelling approach. Journal of International Education Research, 13(1), 1-16. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/10.19030/jier.v13i1.9907

Cihak, David F.1, dcihak@utk.edu, et al. "Incorporating Functional Digital Literacy Skills as Part of the Curriculum for High School Students with Intellectual Disability." Education & Training in Autism & Developmental Disabilities, vol. 50, no. 2, June 2015, pp. 155-171. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=102750349&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Hobbs, Renee. "Digital and media literacy: A plan of action." Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute (2010).

Kahne, Joseph, et al. “Digital Media Literacy Education and Online Civic and Political Participation.” International Journal of Communication (19328036), vol. 6, Jan. 2012, pp. 1-24.


Todorova, Margarita, and Georgi Todorov. "Multimedia Technologies and ICT in Organising e-Portfolio for Students." Journal for Perspectives of Economic, Political, and Social Integration 17.1-2 (2011): 105. ProQuest. Web. 22 Sep. 2017.

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