Developing digital literacy skills is essential for 21st century learning, working and living. Emerging mobile technologies provide affordances that can be leveraged to advance these skills in a school educational setting. Digital literacy in the context of this paper encompasses media literacy, visual literacy, technology tools literacy and…

Democratic societies require a citizenry skilled in argumentation. At present, the written argument maintains primacy among communicative modes. Because of its cognitive demands, written argumentation is often difficult to teach. A multimodal approach to writing instruction carries the potential to assist struggling learners. This article outlines…

All too often, subjects in schools present disjointed phenomena as a compilation of data or facts that seem isolated from students' lives. However, current science education pedagogy clearly emphasizes integration of knowledge and skills in real-world settings (NRC 2007). This integrated instructional approach addresses fundamental process skills…

This paper highlights the instructional design process followed by the Maricopa Community College faculty in the creation of instructional modules in Digital Visual Literacy. The paper categorizes 10 tasks that an instructional designer, a teacher, or a trainer performs during the design phase of the instructional design process. The importance of…

External representations (ERs), such as diagrams, animations, and dynamic models are vital tools for communicating and constructing knowledge in biochemistry. To build a meaningful understanding of structure, function, and process, it is essential that students become visually literate by mastering key cognitive skills that are essential for…

This paper presents a blended learning model in which the online component is not used to replace some of the traditional on-campus activities of a course but to "introduce new teaching objectives" that would not have been possible to achieve, because of class time limitations and the nature of the course. The instructional model was aimed at…

Recent appeal to the concept of design in composition studies benefits teaching writing in digital media. Yet the concept of design has not been developed enough to fully benefit composition instruction. This article develops an understanding of design as a matter of resolving wicked problems and makes a case for the advantages of this…

This paper discusses the development of a sociocultural and local, context-sensitive base for guidance in selection and evaluation of instructional media. The development of system relationships criterion specifically targeted at 16mm educational film is the focus of the paper. Banathy's educational systems model is used as a base upon which…

Discusses a five-year study of an integrated curriculum model in which a science/reading strategy replaced traditional reading/writing instruction. How instructors exploited the links between print and visual literacy with video, television programming, and other media is detailed. A related project that helps K-12 teachers develop graphics and…

Analyzes the research strategies, stimuli, subjects, statistical strategies, and relative variables in 34 empirical studies on children's representation of three-dimensional objects. The studies fell into three categories: children's representation of spatial relationships within an object, between two objects, and studies that included both. (MJP)

This paper discusses the changing role of teachers and students working on the World Wide Web and outlines the following eight characteristics and associated descriptors of the engaged learning model: (1) vision of learning (responsible, strategic, energized, collaborative); (2) tasks (authentic, challenging, multidisciplinary); (3) assessment…