Digital Heart

Web 2.0 or the Read/Write Web?  Whatever you call the new participatory web, let’s explore what we know about it, how others are using it and how we might use it to enhance student engagement and learning. 

This purpose of this blog is to provide a space for participants in my dissertation study, Naturalizing Digital Immigrants: How Educators Are Responding to Rapidly Changing Digital Literacies, to locate resources for study activities and to post comments along the way. 

The purpose of the study is to describe how practicing educators and administrators are responding to the Read/Write Web.  Participants’ knowledge, perceptions, hopes and fears about digital information tools and participative media as well as their schools’ policies and programs for digital literacy will be major areas of inquiry for this study.  As a result of this study, I will describe the ways in which these educators have been responding to rapidly changing digital literacies and how these responses might be modified as the result of information gained during participation in this study.

The following related questions will also be addressed during this inquiry:

• How do educators perceive skills, habits, and dispositions related to digital media as important to their roles as educated professionals?
• How do educators perceive the importance of digital media to students’ learning and how have these perceptions shaped their instructional practice?
• How are educators addressing negative and positive community attitudes related to digital media?  How are they handling issues of control vs. freedom?
• How might actual participation in Read/Write Web experiences influence the attitudes or responses of study participants to digital media?

As we begin, feel free to post an opening comment.  Study participants, use your self-selected blog-o-nyms.  All others are invited to add encouraging comments and links to relevant ideas and resources.