As an educator who is still relatively early within their career, I am ashamed to say that I have tended to use more traditional approaches towards teaching literature – simply because of the demographic of the school. The school I previously worked at before the pandemic/my move, was low socio-economic, largely Indigenous, and rural (meaning most families did not have access to technology, nor traditional print books). Majority of the students lacked basic literacy skills, and as a result could not navigate digital literacies to a competent level. However, as a whole school we did try to implement technological tools during our spelling program, utilising the ‘Words Their Way’ software, and SeeSaw; during HSIE we used the Inquisitive programs which implement digital medias into their lesson sequences; and we had just implemented Read, Write, Think towards the end of my time there.
During my five years at this school (which makes up most of my teaching career), very little changed regarding technology and literature. Many teachers are hesitant implement digital literacies at a core level, as they don’t know where to start or how best to meet a digitally poor and literacy deprived demographic. So digital literacy was often e-books, video books or games.
In my final year at this school, as the relieving TL, I began to try and teach very basic digital literacy on a core level. The lessons were focused on a book trailer, the physical book, and reflection/discussion in the form of a blog in google classrooms. The end assessment was going to be students creating their own book trailer. On top of this I was teaching early navigational skills of digital devices. Unfortunately, Covid hit and that was thrown off completely. Through digital learning during covid, the school I worked at noticed how poorly students were working digitally – despite each family being given a laptop or iPad for during the home-schooling period.
I hope that through my experience thus far, and my studies as a TL, I will be better able to equip my students to be digital natives ready for a 21st century world. But I do question how to make this possible for communities similar to where my previous school was?