oday’s students are awash in technological gadgetry such as iPods, cell phones and handheld video games, but this may not be such a bad thing for classroom learning, according to Donna Alvermann, a Distinguished Research Professor in the department of language and literacy education.
Alvermann recently edited Adolescents’ Online Literacies: Connecting Classrooms, Digital Media and Popular Culture, a book explaining how teachers can use pop culture and digital media to connect adolescents with school-based learning and motivate their literary practices in and out of class.
The book is a compilation of work by teachers and researchers from across three continents focusing on ways to incorporate and use the digital literacies that young people bring to school.
It makes connections between what the research literature portrays and what teachers, school librarians and media specialists know to be the case in their own situations.
Alvermann also has cowritten Bring It to Class: Unpacking Pop Culture in Literacy Learning, with COE alumnae Margaret Hagood and Alison Heron Hruby.
