L2 Digital Literacies Symposium

Project Directors: Jonathon Reinhardt and Chantelle Warner (UA) and Betul Czerkawski (UA South).
In collaboration with: COH and SBS at the UA; and COERLL.

As digital technologies continue to radically change the social acts of communication in which we engage, boundaries once taken for granted between various modes and medialities, between consumption and production have begun to break down. Digital, networked communication forms afford new literacies—new forms of interaction, meanings, and understandings of ourselves and the world around us; thus, they also demand new pedagogical approaches and perspectives. The Digital Literacies project arose as a way to provide educators, practitioners, and researchers a space in which to explore the wide array of practices captured by the concept of digital literacies as they relate to particular circumstances of learning and living in a second or additional language and culture: in October 2014, CERCLL hosted the first symposium in this series, Digital Literacies in and Beyond the L2 Classroom, with online posters accepted from among a pool of submissions and with opportunities for synchonorus and asynchronous exchange with the authors, as well as an in-person event consisting of a roundtable discussion, keynote presentation, and assessment of the posters. The continuing project has two primary and interrelated goals: (1) to provide a forum within which various stakeholders (teachers, administrators, researchers) can consider how to integrate digital literacies into language classrooms, study abroad programs, and other forms of structured language learning, and (2) to provide a set of resources related to digital literacies and language teaching in the form of a web site, which will extend long beyond the symposium event itself. The symposium itself has now taken place twice—in Fall 2014 and Fall 2016–with a third iteration in the series coming in Fall 2018.

See the upcoming event: Participation, Equity and Inclusion: L2DL Symposium, October 15-20, 2018