This document discusses a study that examined the development of digital literacy skills in pre-service teacher students through a digital storytelling project. The study investigated students' perceptions of their ICT access and skills, the improvement of their digital literacy skills, and any contradictions. Digital literacy is defined as having three components: social awareness, critical thinking, and knowledge of digital tools. The study used surveys and student scores in a quantitative analysis to address its research questions.

1. Developing Digital Literacies Through Digital Storytelling in Pre-Service Teacher StudentsDaniela Gachago,Cape Peninsula University of Technology

3. 2010 Faculty of Education Digital Storytelling project

4. 1. What is digital literacy? Three components of digital literacy emerge from the literature Social awareness (understand your identity, collaborate, adapt communication to context/audience) Critical thinking (evaluating, contextualising – information literacy?) Knowledge of digital tools (hard/software awareness/competence – ICT literacy?) Newman, 2009

5. Research questions Quantitative study: surveys and student scores

6. Images RQ1: students perception of ICT access and skills

7. “In South Africa, for students who grew up during apartheid years, issues of language and race tended to cohere with educational and economic privilege, where white students speaking English or Afrikaans as a home language tended to be the most privileged...” (Alexander, 1997)

10. RQ2: Improvement of digital literacy skills Image from Flickr by Leif (CC)

12. RQ3: Contradictions

14. 1. What is digital literacy? Three components of digital literacy emerge from the literature Social awareness (understand your identity, collaborate, adapt communication to context/audience) Critical thinking (evaluating, contextualising – information literacy?) Knowledge of digital tools (hard/software awareness/competence – ICT literacy?) Newman, 2009

15. What are students’ existing social practices? What tools are they already using? In which language do they want to tell their stories? How should we assess our students’ improvement in digital literacies?

16. I would like to acknowledge and thank the 2010 Digital Stories students who have made this project such a success!

17. Further contact: Daniela Gachago, CPUT gachagod@cput.ac.za or gachagod@gmail.com

18. References Engestroem, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit. Leibowitz, B., Bozalek, V., Rohleder, P., Carolissen, R., & Swartz, L. (2010). Ah, but the witheys love to talk about themselves: discomfort as a pedagogy for change. Race Ethnicity and Education, 13(1), 83-100. (source of citation Alexander 1997) Mills, K. A. (2010). A Review of the Digital Turnʼ' in the New Literacy Studies. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 246-271. Retrieved December 12, 2010, from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/80/2/246.full.pdf+html. Newman, T. (2009). Consequences of a digital literacy review: moving from terminology to action. Retrieved May 2011 from http://www.slideshare.net/TabethaNewman/digital-literacy-literature-review-from-terminology-to-action Street, B. (2003). Whatʼs “new” in the new literacy studies? Critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 5(2), 77-91. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Retrieved November 20, 2010, from http://www.stanford.edu/dept/SUSE/projects/ireport/articles/self-regulation/self-regulated learning-motivation.pdf.