Introducing Everyday ‘Digital Literacy Practices’ into the Classroom: An Analysis of Multi-layered Media, Modes and their Affordances

Abstract

Integrating digital media into classroom practice requires consideration on many levels, how young people access and engage with digital media at the level of media, mode and genre is complex and may redefine how literacy practices in the classroom are perceived. Young people use digital media in their everyday literacy practices and a failure to embrace new technologies in the classroom may lead to a disjuncture between their everyday and college-assessed literacy practices.Following an analysis of communicative interactions that looked at multi-layered media, modes and their affordances, this paper offers insights from recent research. It looks carefully at the congruence and incongruences that exists between the two literacy practices with the aim to offer rich insights into meaning making in what are comparatively new, digital literacy practices.A major conclusion is that some assessment tasks do have congruence with young people’s everyday literacy practices but at times they either do not take account of the students ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll et al.,1992) to the full which is likely to cause confusion and possible under performance.