Dr Toni Downes

Associate Professor, School of Education and Early Childhood Studies,
University of Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Katina Zammit

Lecturer, School of Education and Early Childhood Studies, College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences,
University of Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

The New Learning Environments Project:
Scaffolding Teaching and Learning Across a Range of Mediums, Modes and Texts

Abstract

Classrooms today are increasingly using a multitude of resources and tools for teaching and learning. Teachers are being asked to integrate a range of modes - aural, written, visual, multi-modal - into classroom experiences in order to prepare students for the future. The texts that are used, critiqued and created are also in different mediums - electronic, paper-based and live. The burgeoning of new learning environments, new texts and new literacies makes the planning of teaching/ learning experiences more complex and difficult for teachers. The New Learning Environments Project trialed a curriculum framework developed to assist teachers to reflect on their current practices and modify them to incorporate a 'new' mode, medium or process, changing the literacy learning that occurs in their classrooms. This paper will report on the project and the development of the curriculum model as a means of scaffolding teachers with their planning and integration of a range of modes, mediums and processes.

Bionote

Toni Downes is a teacher educator and researcher. Current research projects and consultancies focus on the development of an online course in quality leadership and technology, the investigation of the educational use of the Internet with young children, young people's view about the use of computers in schools, national policy development in the professional development of teachers in regard to the use ICTs in classrooms, and the changing nature of literacies in new learning environments.

Katina Zammit is a language and literacy educator focusing on the K-6 years. She has worked in primary schools, with teachers, with secondary school students and teachers, as a consultant and as a researcher. Her publications and research interests include the new literacies, the intersection of technology and literacy, and multiliteracies.

Presentation Type
30 min. Paper

Presentation Equipment and Other Requests
Data Projector
will have own portable computer and adaptor plug

Speaking Date/Time Restrictions

Country
Australia