My research concentration for my dissertation is "Edutainment & Convergence: How can entertainment techniques and technology can be utilized in higher education." I can probably help you based on my literature review. I am defending within the next four weeks. Email me off line and we can talk. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Dr. T. Michael Roberts Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 4:24 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Request on studies about digital literacy andtelecenters Daniela, I teach writing on WebCT to a population of mostly at-risk African-American and Latino students community college students. Many of them speak and write English as a second language. Many of them feel that they are not good in school and would rather not be in school but also feel that, without more education, they will be forever stuck in dead-in jobs making less than they need to live in comfort. I have them collaborate heavily in the online forums. I tell them that, in an ideal world, I would have five students per class and would walk each of them individually through the composition process from initial brainstorming through first draft and revision to the final draft. I have twenty five students per class so they have to do much of this work as peer collaboration with my guidance. I talk a great deal about e-mail threads in the forums as being a hybrid form of conversation that leave written traces behind in the form of the individual posts as the conversation unfolds. I encourage them to construct their essays by cutting and pasting their forum posts into a Word document to get "stuff" that can then be shaped into something more formal. Students often respond in turn to my responses and the responses of their peers to their posts in ways that further develop the themes in those original posts. I very consciously try to work with students in their ZPG (Zone of Proximal Development) by asking question designed to encourage them to further articulate their own previous discourse. Once I model this "not-knowing" approach, others pick it up very rapidly and learn that you do not have to give someone the answer to their dilemma to be helpful but only witness that dilemma in an accepting way and ask questions about the dilemma that will keep the conversation about their lives and concerns going. I call this approach "writing in order to read" and talk about how a good question can create a space horizoned by that question that is a place for the person being questioned to fill up with an expanded discourse still firmly rooted in his or her genuine concerns as previously expressed. By brainstorming through e-mail threads which are written but like conversation in the sense that the audience talks back, students learn audience analysis and how to further articulate their point of view in response to feedback from their audience. This is a much more social and collaborative approach to writing than what most are used to and students who started out not enjoying writing and taking my course only because they can not graduate without it often become very active in the forums, make "A"s to their own astonishment. I think it is the collaborative and social aspect of this approach that appeals to these students. Many of them are only taking distance classes because their schedules are made so hectic by jobs and families and come into the class a little technophobic and wary of the process. I do not assign specific topics but only tell them that they must demonstrate competence in several different patterns of essay development, for example, illustration by example and comparison/contrast. Many of them choose to write about whatever dilemmas and difficulties they are experiencing in their lives. They are much more self-disclosing online than they would be live and some seem to profit greatly from telling their stories and having these stories witnessed by a group of peers. I emphasize that getting the story of what is going on in your life down in writing is a form of consciousness raising that makes it easier to see what is going on clearly and to respond adequately. This is especially true when seeing a pattern of behavior clearly for the first time once it has been captured in a written description of "how thing happen in your world" makes it possible to change that pattern of behavior in positive ways. Students routinely collaborate to help one another come to see their life situations more clearly and plan out strategies for getting from where they are to where they would like to be. This approach lessens the gap between school and the world where students live by making school a place they can talk together about whatever difficulties they are having in life. T. Michael --- Dani Matielo <dacamat@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear AOIRers,,

I am a researcher from the Laboratory for Digital Inclusion and Community Learning, from School of the Future, in Brazil, and I am currently focusing my research on digital literacy and how online competences develop among telecentre beginner users.

I would be extremely grateful if anyone could point me to some study, preferably qualitative but also quantitative, regarding this theme, or

also some study about digital competences and low income population. I

have read some theoretical work about it, but couldn't find yet empirical data or descriptions of experiences.

Thank you in advance for your help,

Daniela Matielo

-- Dani Matielo dacamat@gmail.com dde_carvalho@uoc.edu dani@futuro.usp.br http://digitaloging.blogspot.com/

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same

time, the ones who never yawn or say an uncommon-place thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles." ~ Jack Kerouac _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

"We have to think of ways to use games not just to escape reality but to re-engage with reality." Henry Jenkins ________________________________________________________________________ ____________ We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love (and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list. http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/265 _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/