The document discusses digital literacy as a collaborative effort between Julie Coiro and Renee Hobbs over four years. They view digital literacy as involving active meaning making through inquiry and examining how technologies shape messages. Their framework sees literacy as situated cultural practices using multiple modes of representation. They see digital participation as promoting reflection and collaboration. Their work has led to a conceptualization of digital literacy competencies and classroom practices that increase learner and teacher agency through voice, choice, analysis, creation and reflection using digital tools. They have applied this through graduate programs and envision using deliberation and rethinking teacher education.

1. Digital Literacy as Collaborative,
Transdisciplinary, and Applied
Julie Coiro and Renee Hobbs
Coiro@uri.edu Hobbs@uri.edu
University of Rhode Island
AERA 2017

2. What does digital literacy mean to you?
Over the four years
together, we’ve
realized important
similarities, overlaps
& connections

3. Theoretical Lenses
• Learning involves active meaning making through a
process of inquiry and discovery (Bruner, 1960;
Dewey, 1976)
• Meaning making involves examining content and
form of messages as well as affordances and
limitations of technologies used to create them
(McLuhan, 1964).
• Literacy practices are situated, contextual cultural
practices (Vygotsky, 1978) that use multimodality
(Kress, 2010) to activate multiple modes of knowing
(Gardner, 1983).

4. • Digital participation promotes personal and social
reflection, personal autonomy, and collaboration
(Hobbs, 2010; Jenkins, 2006).
• Learning outcomes support literacy practices by
reshaping relationships between teachers and
learners and between learners and their culture
(Freire, 1970).
Theoretical Lenses

5. “Two sides of life;
Two sides of the literacy coin”
Texts of the Classroom …
Doing School & Learning
Information Access & Consumption
New Literacies and
Online Reading
Comprehension
Question, locate, evaluate,
synthesize, &
communicate information
JULIE
Texts of the Culture …
Doing Life & Citizenship
Information Analysis & Production
Media Literacy & Digital
Authorship
Examine mass media &
popular culture and
respond in diverse ways
RENEE
LIFE
LITERACY

6. In school
K-12 teachers Library-Media Spec.
Tech Specialists Teacher Educators
Community Media Makers
Skills, strategies, dispositions with range of texts
How & why
can each
support
these skills?

7. Weaving our individual conceptions of
digital literacy into a single framework
Classroom Inquiry Practices
Digital
Literacy
Competencies
Print
Literacy
Competencies

8. Classroom Inquiry Practices
Realizing text purposes are more important to help
articulate specific digital literacy competencies and
relevant pedagogical practices
Literacy
[Print & Digital]
Competencies
Informational Texts
Persuasive Texts
Entertaining Texts
Social Texts

9. But it’s more than that…
The power of COLLABORATION (2015)
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy
Digital & Media
Literacy Competencies
(Renee)
Classroom Inquiry
Practices
(Julie)

10. Designing items in a survey for research around the
institute helped us realize/ conceptualize the following...
Literacy
Competencies
Teaching
Practices
DIGITAL Texts & Tools = Increased
Agency for Learners & Teachers
Voice Choice
Reading
Authorship
Inquiry
Analysis
Collaboration
Creation
Reflection
Social Action

11. DIGITAL =
Increased Agency
(Voice & Choice)
I can make a
difference…
Teachers
• Freedom and
Autonomy to
Explore
• Collaboration
• Curriculum Design
• Leadership
Learners
• Ask own questions, choose their
own topics & texts
• Talk through meaning together
• Choose their tools to creatively
express and take action;
• Analyze texts & Reflect on action
Increased interest,
motivation, sense
of belonging,
confidence, and
engagement!
Respectful of In-School Spaces
Wider range
of texts, tools,
& ways to
express ideas

12. Build agency within constraints of
school-based learning spaces….
• Personal vs. Personalized: Foster teacher agency to
design own structures for inquiry-based digital
learning (rather than de-skilling teachers to be
monitors of digital playlists)
– The power to support and
scaffold (guided inquiry)
– The power to back off and
invite creative open inquiry
• Example: Genius Hour/20 Time: Foster interest and
innovation with media and technology within the
structures of school (grades, curriculum, standards)

13. How have we turned our new knowledge
about digital literacy into action?
• Summer Institute Tier 1
(Voice & Choice for Teachers)
• Seminar in Digital Literacy
(Online Reading Comprehension)
• Seminar in Digital Authorship
(Purpose, Audience, and
Implications)
• Summer Institute Tier 2
(Leading to Inspire Others – The
Leadership Challenge)
• Freedom/Exploration
• Collaboration
• Curriculum Design
• Leadership
• Digital Literacy
Competencies
• Digital Texts & Tools
• Digital Teaching
Practices
Graduate Certificate in Digital Literacy

14. Next Steps
• Leadership through digital deliberation: By
deliberating pros/cons of multiple stakeholders
around tricky school issues through dialogue and
collaboration, we can come to consensus on key
decisions and create positive change in school
• Rethinking teacher education: Inquiry is not easy for
students and challenges of high stakes certification
requirements; by designing “a playpen with tight
boundaries” to study a constrained, but interesting
problem for our students, we can move one step
closer to engaged life-long learners

15. FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://mediaeducationlab.com

16. Digital Literacy as Collaborative,
Transdisciplinary, and Applied
Julie Coiro and Renee Hobbs
Coiro@uri.edu Hobbs@uri.edu
University of Rhode Island
AERA 2017