Handbook for Children's Digital Literacy
Edited by
Maria Grazia Sindoni [+–]
University of Messina
Maria Grazia Sindoni is Assistant Professor in English Linguistics and Translation at the University of Messina, Italy. She has published in the eld of Systemic Functional Linguistics, multimodality, corpus linguistics, and computer-mediated interaction. Her latest book is Spoken and Written Dis- course in Online Interactions: A Multimodal Approach (Routledge, 2013).
Ivana Marenzi [+–]
Leibniz Universität
Ivana Marenzi is affiliated to the L3S Research Center at Leibniz Universität Hannover.
Rosella Gennari [+–]
Free University of Bolzano
Rosella Gennari is affiliated to KRDB Research Centre for Knowledge and Data at the Free University of Bolzano in Italy.
Are Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) Environments finding their way into children’s classrooms and homes in the way they should? Though brought up with computers, children’s digital literacy and interactional potential are often hindered, both socially and cognitively, by various factors: language barriers, unfamiliar web metaphors, genres, netiquette, user-interface organisation and functions and so on. At best children’s digital learning is poorly understood.
The Handbook for Children’s Digital Literacy fills a concrete gap in the field of digital literacy in the 8-14 year-old age group and builds a powerful framework for debating and developing approaches that make TEL environments more suitable for children from different backgrounds and displaying differing capabilities. Contributions in the book illustrate best learning practices in digital literacy education in the 8-14 year-old age range and provide digital-literacy-for-children guidelines for teachers, tutors and practitioners in the field of literacy and language skills development. It is also an invaluable guide for TEL environment developers, managers and those working in the field of TEL support for children’s education learning and social development in general.
Special focus is placed on detecting shortfalls arising from specific social and cognitive deficits: e.g. poor/slow readers, bright children living in impoverished communities/families with low socioeconomic, cultural and technological standards. In so doing, The Handbook for Children’s Digital Literacy explores children’s responses to such issues as: the diversity and complexity of Web environments, awareness of digital literacy skills and deficits; understanding of how meaning can and might best be made in digital environments in integrated visual/verbal ways.
Special Teacher-and-Parent Support Features in the Companion Website:
• Access to digital literacy software projects: TERENCE, LearnWeb2.0, MWA
• Best practices feature: further guidelines, activities and theoretical models
• Case studies relating to digital literacy for 8-14 year olds
• Consultable online corpora: sample analyses of websites and databanks
• Discussion forum: exchange of educational practices
• Downloadable online teaching texts: activities, tasks and questionnaires
• Skills and literacy development: resources for researchers and teachers
