Innovations in "Connected" Writing: Digital Media Production and Critical Civic Learning in a School and Community Youth Literacy Initiative

• In Event: 52.082 - Multiliteracies, Connected Learning, and Opportunities for Equity: Exploring Key Principles of Literacies Research in the 21st Century

Abstract

When the New London Group (1996) pushed literacy studies forward by encouraging the study of forms of text “associated with information and multimedia technologies” (p. 61), they likely could not have imagined the proliferation of digital media tools that have flooded the educational landscape and given students countless opportunities to read, write, listen, and speak in innovative ways. Unfortunately, while the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in Literacy encourage students to produce and publish writing on the internet, this conceptualization of writing is limited to academic text and does not take into account the new forms of literacy made possible by this tool.

This paper has two goals: 1. Review the ways that the Connected Learning model (Ito et al, 2010) extends concepts of literacy promoted in CCSS into the digital realm by analyzing the academic potential of texts, tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, and films; and 2. Explore the relationship between critical literacy practice, digital media production, and civic agency in the Council of Youth Research (CYR), a youth participatory action research program in which urban high school students conduct research and create multimedia presentations in school and community settings.

Connected Learning draws upon the idea that a new “participatory culture” is shaping the literacy practices of today’s youth (Jenkins et al, 2009) and focuses on youth production of media in the context of interest-driven, peer-supported, and openly networked spaces. This model highlights the civic purpose of literacy and the potential for social transformation (Greene 2000). This paper will explore the activities of a hybrid school/after school literacy and civic engagement program in which students research and present on educational issues that matter to them in their schools and communities using lenses of ethnography of communication (Cook-Gumperz & Hymes, 1972), new literacy studies (Barton & Hamilton, 2001), and visual sociology (Kress, 2003). I will analyze the social and literacy processes involved in producing new media products that straddle the boundaries between academic and informal writing.

This paper will present findings from a case study of CYR during one academic year and will include interview data from 30 high school youth and 5 teachers involved in researching the state of education in their city 10 years after a court settlement sought to provide the district with equitable funding. I will trace how the youth decided upon methods of communication they would use to educate themselves and their communities about complex social issues, highlighting digital writing products and visual artifacts. I will also examine the different ways that forms of literacy production manifested themselves in classroom and after school settings by documenting how teachers guided students in both spaces; analysis of Common Core aligned curriculum will be included. Finally, I will explore the unique potential that digital spaces offered young people to engage in writing for the purposes civic participation and civic action before they reached voting age.

This paper aims to continue dialogue among writing educators about the new forms of teaching, curriculum, and research demanded by youth new media production.

Author

• Nicole Mirra, The University of Texas - El Paso