Digital Spatial Literacies: Empowering Transnational Students to Tell Stories Across School and Community Spaces (Poster 3)

• In Event: Crossing Boundaries and Forging New Paths in Digital Literacies Research

Abstract

Digital spatial literacies, the capacities to make place-based meaning with digital media, support storytelling about our communities. This chapter draws from a design-based research initiative during which bi/multilingual, transnational and immigrant youth in a Title I middle and high school (grades 6–12) created story-maps about community and family members’ migration and lived experiences in home and school neighborhoods. We describe how incorporating digital spatial literacies in classrooms (a) empowers students as authors with personally, culturally relevant digital storytelling tools; (b) facilitates complex layering of voices, languages, and identities; (c) encourages critical perspectives and participation in local and global discourses.

Authors

• Daryl B. Axelrod, Columbia University

• Matthew R. Deroo, Florida International University

• Jennifer Beth Kahn, University of Miami