Beach Richard et al. Understanding and Creating Digital Texts: An Activity-Based Approach

Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. — xv, 303 pages. — ISBN: 978-1-4422-2874-0.Research findings indicate a marked increase in the use of digital tools to support reading and writing instruction. The challenge remains how to effectively use these tools in new and different ways to enhance students’ digital reading and writing. It is often the case that the digital tools described in this book are perceived primarily as technological add-ons designed to support a largely print-based literacy curriculum. In a national survey of 1,441 U.S. literacy teachers, most perceived technology integration primarily in terms of a technological rather than curricular framework—that technology serves more as supplementing rather than redefining their curriculum and instruction. For example, teachers may assign students to use a blog to write a five-paragraph essay, as opposed to using a class blog to foster students’ collaborative sharing of ideas. Students could simply write their essays with a word processor; in using a class blog, they can then readily add hyperlinks to blog posts/websites, embed images/videos, and add comments to one another’s posts—features that invite them to employ the practices of making intertextual connections, use multimodal communication, and interact with peer audiences.Students are not only learning to transfer uses of digital reading and writing from outside to inside the classroom. They are also learning to transfer ways of understanding digital texts to ways of creating them. In reading digital texts, students are acquiring knowledge of the features and conventions that constitute certain types of digital texts. For example, in reading blog posts, students are acquiring an understanding of the use of hyperlinks to other blogs and the content of reader comments, leading to their writing of their own blog posts. Through reading digital texts, students are also acquiring ideas for use in their own writing.Planning for an Activity-Based Approach to Understanding and Creating Digital Texts
Accessing Information for Constructing Knowledge
Curating, Organizing, and Summarizing Information
Networking and Connecting Through Note-Taking, Social Bookmarking, and Social Media
Engaging in Online Discussions
Co-Constructing Knowledge Through Collaborative Writing
Composing Multimodal Texts Through Use ofImages, Audio, and Video
Designing and Editing Digital Texts for Audiences
Using New Technologies for Formative Response to Writing
Summative Assessment of Digital Reading and Writing
Professional Development for Teachers