As a teacher-researcher concerned with the educational approaches and learning outcomes of urban students, the author believes it is important to explore hip-hop as a curricular and academic resource because hip-hop represents the ways in which urban youth speak, think, create, move, and relate to the world. This article explores the English…

Taking a close look at multimodal composing as an essential new literacy in schools, this volume draws from contextualized case studies across educational contexts to provide detailed portraits of teachers and students at work in classrooms. Authors elaborate key issues in transforming classrooms with student multimodal composing, including…

Three criteria for meaningful student learning--construction of knowledge, disciplined inquiry, and value beyond school--are assessed as authentic learning outcomes for an implementation of a digital documentary project in two fifth grade history classrooms where teachers' practices are constrained by a high-stakes testing climate. In all three…

This is a qualitative case study of two students' composing processes as they developed a documentary video about the Dominican Republic in an urban, public middle school classroom. While using a digital video editing program, the students moved across multiple media (the Web, digital video, books, and writing), drawing semiotic resources from…

Jason Ranker argues that struggling students need "opportunities to use print and produce meanings in diverse and multifaceted ways." His case study of two fifth-grade girls who used digital video production to better understand aspects of the civil rights movement reveals ways in which multimodal literacy practices "can create new possibilities…