Adolescents and Digital Literacies: Learning Alongside Our Students

Sara Kajder examines ways in which teachers and students co-construct new literacies through Web 2.0 technology-infused instructional practices.

This book isn’t about technology. It’s about the teaching practices that technology enables. Instead of focusing on where to point and click, this book addresses the ways in which teachers and students work together to navigate continuous change and what it means to read, write, view, listen, and communicate in the twenty-first century. Sara Kajder (a nationally recognized expert on technology and literacy) recognizes that students are reading and writing every day in their “real lives.” Drawing on ideas found in Adolescent Literacy: An NCTE Policy Research Brief, Kajder offers solutions for connecting these activities with the literacy practices required by classroom curricula. Through extensive interviews and classroom experiences, Kajder offers examples of both students and teachers who have successfully integrated technology to enrich literacy learning. As part of the Principles in Practice imprint, Adolescents and Digital Literacies: Learning Alongside Our Students offers critical consideration of students’ in-school and out-of-school digital literacy practices in a practical, friendly, and easily approachable manner.

Sara Kajder is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech whose teaching is anchored in helping middle and high school students connect out-of-school with in-school literacies. Regardless of the tool(s), Kajder focuses on how new literacies can affirm what students already bring to the classroom and how they can help to produce knowledge and put that knowledge to work.

Kajder is a recipient of the National Technology Leadership Fellowship.