Blog Post 4: Personal Digital Literacies

The topic that I would like to research for my final project is Personal Digital Inquiry. Personal Digital Inquiry interests me because it provides students with a way of learning that connects personal interest with civic action. PDI involves combining online research with digital participation and provides a great way for students to integrate their interests into their learning using new media and literacies. As a middle school science teacher I am excited to learn more about this method of inquiry so that I can implement it in my own classroom. I think that the use of Personal Digital Inquiry would provide a great way for students to choose their own topic in science to explore in an investigation using new medias, and allow students to practice communicating their results using different technologies.


McCormick, L. J., & Heaton, L. (2020). Review of From curiosity to deep learning: Personal digital inquiry in grades K-5. Education Review (Tempe, Ariz.), 27. https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v27.2895

This article is a review of the book “From Curiosity to Deep Learning: Personal Digital Inquiry in Grades K-5”. Personal Digital Literacy was developed by a veteran teacher and professor of reading and digital literacy, named Coiro, at the University of Rhode Island. This article highlights how each chapter in the book provides teachers with examples of PDI lessons that are all broken down into three elements; personal, digital, and inquiry. The book is also broken down into two parts. Part one discusses PDI and what it is, and part two provides readers with ideas of how to incorporate PDI into teaching and learning. Within the book, the author provides websites and QR codes for each chapter that supplement the information within that chapter. This article also discusses the role of the teacher when using PDI, the goals of PDI, and discusses how PDI is different from the personal learning movement. 

Coiro, J., Castek, J., & Quinn, D. J. (2016). PERSONAL INQUIRY AND ONLINE RESEARCH: Connecting Learners in Ways That Matter. The Reading Teacher, 69(5), 483–492. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1450

This article discusses the use of personal digital inquiry within K-8 classrooms. The article begins by referencing two students in a classroom that are using personal digital inquiry to complete an investigation where they ask the question “how long can fingernails grow”. The students chose the topic of their investigation themselves, and they discuss how their topic relates to the human body and math. The teacher explicitly directed the students with parameters for their investigations, modeled her expectations to the students, provided prompts to guide her students, and introduced various digital tools that the students could use such as weebly, and a voice-and-screen capture program. The article goes on to explain how the teacher guided her students through their PDI’s using prompting and providing progress setting guidelines along the way, as well as how the teacher reflected on the success of her students afterwards. The article then uses the above example to provide a framework for PDI, and explicitly explains each part of the PDI process. 

Brownell, C. J., & Wargo, J. M. (2021). WRITING TO TRANSFORM: Promoting personal digital inquiry through cultivating critical literacy. In Literacy today (Newark, Del.) (Vol. 39, Number 2, pp. 60-). International Literacy Association.

This article begins with a question that two students posed “why do people protest for animal rights?”. The article explains how a teacher directed her students to find the answer to their question using the personal digital inquiry method, and the article also details how the students worked through each step of the PDI method. Then the article addresses the possibilities of PDI, and how those possibilities were achieved. The authors wrap up the article by addressing the question of how writers' workshops can be revised to include personal digital inquiry. 

Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. (2014). Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. Journal of Social Studies Research, 38(3), 159–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005

This article examines how the curriculum of social studies can provide a great opportunity to integrate personal digital inquiry in the students' learning experience. In the article, a project involving 200 teacher education students and over four design phases are analyzed. Throughout the project,  the author illustrates how historical information can be processed using digital tools, and how it can be communicated to an audience using a variety of technological tools as well. The results of this project became a guideline for historical digital history projects moving forward. 

Savage, M. D. (2016). Listening to the voices of young women adopted from foster care through Personal Public Service Announcements. Drama Therapy Review, 2(2), 195–209. https://doi.org/10.1386/dtr.2.2.195_1

This article tells the story of how young women that were defined as having “special needs” and were adopted from foster care, tell their stories using new media and literacies. These young women participated in developing Personal Public Service Announcements through the use of a digital design app on an iPad. The author of this article analyzes the effectiveness of hearing the voices of these women, as well as the procedure presented, the results, and the outcomes.  


References 

Brownell, C. J., & Wargo, J. M. (2021). WRITING TO TRANSFORM: Promoting personal digital inquiry through cultivating critical literacy. In Literacy today (Newark, Del.) (Vol. 39, Number 2, pp. 60-). International Literacy Association.

Coiro, J., Castek, J., & Quinn, D. J. (2016). PERSONAL INQUIRY AND ONLINE RESEARCH: Connecting Learners in Ways That Matter. The Reading Teacher, 69(5), 483–492. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1450

Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. (2014). Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. Journal of Social Studies Research, 38(3), 159–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005

McCormick, L. J., & Heaton, L. (2020). Review of From curiosity to deep learning: Personal digital inquiry in grades K-5. Education Review (Tempe, Ariz.), 27. https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v27.2895

Savage, M. D. (2016). Listening to the voices of young women adopted from foster care through Personal Public Service Announcements. Drama Therapy Review, 2(2), 195–209. https://doi.org/10.1386/dtr.2.2.195_1

Comments

  1. AlexaNovember 12, 2024 at 10:41 AM

    Hi Kayla,
    I think that this is a great idea. I believe that it is always important to incorporate students interests into the lessons because this will result in the students being more engaged and interactive with the lesson. The implementation of technology adds further interest into the lesson because often times students enjoy having the opportunity to use new technology.

    ReplyDelete

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