Ilana Snyder

Young People's Engagement with Digital Literacies in Marginal Contexts in a Globalised World

Claims about the complex ways in which young peoples lives are entangled with digital technologies abound, yet insufficient theoretically informed empirical research has been conducted to examine how they use them and with what impact. This special issue of Language and Education presents theoretical and empirical understandings of young peoples interactions with digital technologies in schools, homes and communities, and examines implications for educational development in four contrasting sites. The final paper considers the implications of the research for an investigation of young peoples use of information and communication technologies in Uganda.

ICT and educational (dis)advantage: families, computers and contemporary social and educational inequalities

Because access to new technologies is unequally distributed, there has been considerable debate about the growing gap between the so‐called information‐rich and information‐poor. Such concerns have led to high‐profile information technology policy initiatives in many countries. In Australia, in an attempt to ‘redress the balance between the information rich and poor’ by providing ‘equal access to the World Wide Web’ (Virtual Communities, 2002), the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Virtual Communities (a computer/software distributor) and Primus (an Internet provider) in late 1999 formed an alliance to offer relatively inexpensive computer and Internet access to union members in order to make ‘technology affordable for all Australians’ (Virtual Communities, 2002). In this paper, we examine four families, one of which had long‐term Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) access, and three of which took advantage of the Virtual Communities offer to get home computer and Internet access for the first time. We examine their engagement with ICT and suggest that previously disadvantaged family members are not particularly advantaged by their access to ICT.

Using mobile phones as placed resources for literacy learning in a remote Indigenous community in Australia

Despite massive funding from the Australian government, the literacy achievement of Australian Indigenous children remains significantly lower than for non-Indigenous. With the aim of identifying innovative ways to improve Indigenous childrens literacy achievement, this study explored the social practices surrounding everyday mobile phone use by Indigenous people in a remote Australian community. Informed by the notion of ‘placed resources’, which highlights the understanding that digital literacies are best considered as resources situated by social practices that have local effect, the study surveyed 95 people living in a remote Indigenous community about their mobile phone practices. The study also examined a video of a literacy event between a mother and her child around the use of a mobile phone. The findings revealed the strong relational aspects of phone use in remote communities. Integral to the concept of placed resources is a respect for the practices communities find important as they adopt artefacts for their everyday communication.

Literacy and technology studies: past, present, future

In this presentation, I examine what we have learned from research about the complex connections between literacy, technology and learning. The beginnings of research in this area coincided with the introduction of PCs into educational settings in the late 1970s. For the first decade, researchers asked the kinds of questions best explored using quantitative methods. They set out to determine whether the use of computers enhanced writing. The findings, however, were equivocal. By contrast, sociocultural understandings of literacy, which became more widely accepted in the mid-80s, provoked a different research orientation and different kinds of questions. The Digital Rhetorics project (Lankshear et al 1997) is an example of research informed by the recognition of literacy as social practice. Further, it exemplifies the shift towards qualitative research approaches in the field of literacy and technology studies. To provide a context for the concurrent sessions and panel discussion that follow mine, I include an overview of the Digital Rhetorics project, giving particular attention to its sociocultural perspective and qualitative methodology. Finally, I consider future directions for research and practice in this area. We have reached what could be called a maturing of the field of literacy and technology studies. The research agenda is fertile with possibilities. The challenge is to undertake studies that will continue to inform effective practice, mediated by new communication and information technologies, at all levels of education. Bio-details: Dr Ilana Snyder is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Monash University. Her teaching and research focuses on the new literacies and changes to pedagogical practices associated with the use of digital media and telecommunication technologies. Two books, Hypertext: the electronic labyrinth, (Melbourne University Press 1996) and Page to screen: Taking literacy into the electronic era (Allen & Unwin 1997), explore these changes. She was one of the team of nine investigators in the DEETYA-funded literacy and technology research project, Digital Rhetorics (Lankshear et al 1997). With Colin Lankshear and Bill Green, she has co-authored Teachers and Technoliteracy: Managing literacy, technology and learning in schools, which draws on the final report. It will be published by Allen and Unwin in March 2000.

Packaging Literacy, New Technologies and `Enhanced' Learning

Literacy educators need to pay attention to shifts in the perceived relationship between literacy education, the use of new technologies and learning, as exemplified in national and state P-12 policy documents. At the national level, policy statements have reverted to emphasis on basic literacy, with minimal acknowledgement of the cultural significance of emerging digital literacies. By contrast, at the state level, the emphasis is on ‘technologising’ the curriculum and literacy education, with the promise that technology will ‘enhance’ learning. At both levels, literacy has become ‘commodified’: an autonomous product to be packaged and consumed. However, if schools are to prepare students for a rapidly changing world, in which technology-mediated literacy practices are integral, then more is needed than reductive notions of literacy and market-driven ‘technologisation’ of the curriculum, accompanied by evidence-free promises of better learning. The conclusion considers the possibilities for critical digital literacy education.

Families, Cultural Resources and the Digital Divide: ICTs and Educational (Dis)advantage in the E-Society

By concentrating on cases of family engagement with information communication technologies at a very local level, this paper tries to illustrate that issues related to ‘access’ and social disadvantage require extremely sophisticated and textured accounts of the multiple ways in which interrelated critical elements and various social, economic and cultural dimensions of disadvantage come into play in different contexts. Indeed, to draw a simple dichotomy between the technology haves and have-nots in local settings is not particularly generative. It may be the case that, even when people from disadvantaged backgrounds manage to gain access to technology, they remain relatively disadvantaged.

Shuffling Towards the Future: The Enduring Dominance of Book Culture in Literacy Education

Within the broad field of Literacy Studies, some literacy researchers have had a particular interest in the connections between literate practice and the use of digital technologies, so much so, that by the late 1980s, literacy and technology studies had emerged as a discrete area of research endeavour. Since the early 1990s, the area has grown and diversified to become the multi-faceted field that it is today with research activity evident in many sites around the world.

Research Methods for Studying the Use of Computers in Literacy Classrooms

This review’s broad concern is the complex connections between literacy practices and electronic technologies. More specifically, it looks at research methods, taken to be a set of practices and discourses, for studying the use of computers in language and literacy classrooms.

ICT EDUCATION POLICY: CULTURAL LESSONS FROM FAMILIES

This chapter reports research conducted in Melbourne, Australia that is focused on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in schools and families. The emphasis is on the relationship between technology, learning, culture and (dis)advantage. It is generally agreed that ICTs are associated with major social, cultural, pedagogical and lifestyle changes, although the nature of those changes is subject to conflicting norms and interpretations. In this chapter we adopt a critical, multi-disciplined, relational perspective in order to examine the influence of ICTs, in schools and homes, on a sample of students and their families.

Toward Electronic Writing Classrooms: the challenge for teachers

ABSTRACT This two year study examined how five teachers introduced the use of portable computers into the writing practices of their classrooms in an Australian school. Analysis focused on the teachers’ attitudes toward computers, their capacity to see the potential uses of computers in a writing curriculum and the ways in which they structured and carried out classroom writing practices. The findings suggest that computers function in classrooms as part of a complex network of social and pedagogical interactions. The study concludes, however, that the teachers’ disposition toward the writing technologies and their structuring of writing sessions had the greatest impact on students’ writing practices and the ways computers entered into that writing.