Digital Mediation and Language Learners: Imagined Identities and Placed Resources

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

In this session, we present reports of projects involving digital technologies in Canada, the U.S., India, Mexico, Uganda, and China, aimed at enhancing learners’ language and literacy learning. We illustrate the affordances and constraints of such technologies, noting that engagement with them impacts on learners’ notions of their identities locally and globally, and their investments in the technologies themselves, and in education more generally. We also point out complexities in digital literacies instruction, noting supports that may be necessary in various locations.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Second Language Research

Chair

• Theresa Y. Austin, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

Papers

• Imagined Identities: Mediating “Self” and “Other” Through Transnational Digital Storytelling - Kathleen Nicoletti, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Margaret R. Hawkins, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Digital Innovations, Imagined Identities, and Language Learners in a Ugandan School - Bonny P. Norton, The University of British Columbia

• Making Video: Imagining Socially Productive Work in Schools - Kelleen Toohey, Simon Fraser University; Diane H. Dagenais, Simon Fraser University

Discussant

• Wan Shun Eva Lam, Northwestern University