Literacy in Digital Technologies

Embedding a literacy and writing framework in Digital Technologies learning (3:26 minutes)

Using Scratch Jnr to tell the story of a dog working with a native Arrante speaker in an EAL/D context.

The video depicts the work the student achieved after teacher modelling of the Digital Technologies involved.

Using Digital Technologies process and production skills to preserve a record of written language (3:32 minutes)

A discussion leading from the video above which explores the usefulness of Digital Technologies to capture and present native language in both written and oral form. It also explores the native language as a cultural tool to express concepts that have no english equivalencies.

Aligning a writing framework to the Design Thinking process (3 minutes)

Sample of a recount of a day of doing school at home using computational thinking strategies to retell their day using Scratch Jnr. Further discussions and examples of this are at the bottom of this page (last 2 videos)

link to Sarah's blog

Using 7 steps to writing success (6 minutes)

Combines the Australian Curriculum design process with the 7 steps to writing success and the Stanford Design Thinking model to look for alignment between the approaches.

The discussion analyses the models to provide a structure for including the Literacy Capability in combination with aspects of the Digital Technologies curriculum in a logical and coherant manner to help students become better writers and create multimodal stories which are engaging and entertaining.

Using Scratch to create a game based story with a story arc (5 minutes)

Explores an activity with Infants students using Scratch to create a game based story arc suitable for students in Prep to interact with. The story arc used is the hero's journey in this example. Students should be able to identify with this in most stories / videos they have been exposed to even at this early stage.

An interesting discussion takes place considering how successful many students were in understanding and applying the computational concepts required by Scratch rather than Scratch Jnr, as well as extending their Literacy capabilities by introducing new characters such as a wizard to enhance the narrative.

Using a planning template to model a story (2 minutes)

Introduces the planning template that is further described and implemented in the two videos below. The template allows for storyboarding, as well as computational thinking to be developed and illustrated.

Using a computational thinking model to complete a literacy recount

This video demonstrates the computational thinking involved in planning and then undertaking the task of recounting a day that could use a platform such as Scratch or Scratch Jnr.

The video highlights the preplanning that is required before moving on to the be handy for teachers taking students from the narrative/literacy to the computational thinking by using a simple storyboard approach. The video below demonstrates this planning in practice.

Using a design thinking model to complete a literacy recount

This video demonstrates the design thinking and computational thinking involved in planning and then undertaking the task of recounting a day using a coding platform. It applies the theory of the last video using real life examples suitable for Scratch Jnr.

The template would be handy for teachers taking students from the narrative/literacy to the computational thinking by using a simple storyboard approach.

Scratch Jr - Coding meets literacy (20 mins)

This video demonstrates how Scratch Jr can be used to promote literacy through simple visual storytelling. The video guides viewers through adding characters and animating them through simple visual programming.

A Computational Thinking Workflow to incorporate Literacy

This video guides viewers through a workflow to use with students which encourages the use of a variety of computational thinking strategies within a literacy-rich lesson sequence.

A Computational Thinking Workflow to incorporate Literacy - Questions

This video is a continuation of the video above and includes questions and comments.