Each year, International Literacy Day is celebrated across the world on September 8th. The theme for this year is “Literacy in a digital world”. The goal is to look at what kind of literacy skills people need to navigate “increasingly digitally-mediated societies”. International Literacy Day is a UNESCO global event.
In preparation for International Literacy Day, NCTE recommends the following resources to help you integrate technology in instruction in ways that are meaningful and authentic.
Kristen Turner and Troy Hicks, in Connected Reading: Teaching Adolescent Readers in a Digital World, offer practical tips by highlighting classroom practices that engage students in reading and thinking with both print and digital texts, thus encouraging reading instruction that reaches all students. Also read “No Longer a Luxury: Digital Literacy Can’t Wait” from English Journal.
In Adolescents and Digital Literacies: Learning Alongside Our Students, author Sara Kajder examines ways in which teachers and students co-construct new literacies through Web 2.0 technology-infused instructional practices. See more in the sample chapter.
View the #nctechat archive “Beyond the Screen: Multimedia in the Classroom“, guest hosted by the Studies in Literacies and Multimedia Assembly of NCTE.
Lesson Plans for Developing Digital Literacies presents a set of lessons designed to help you integrate a variety of digital applications into the courses and units you’re already teaching. Read the sample chapter, “What’s on the Other Side, When You Finally Cross the Digital Divide?”
Check out these resources on Digital Learning from ReadWriteThink.org.
We encourage you to visit the UNESCO website to learn more about the organization’s theme for 2017, “Literacy in a Digital World“. How will you celebrate the day?