There is always a gap between student learning and classroom teaching in Hong Kong education. The use of information and communication technology has made the situation even worse. It is a common practice for students to work together through digital media like Instagram, WhatsApp, opening online Chat Room and Facebook by using elements like video, music, texts and artistic photography to reflect and discuss ideas for project assignment. During the process, students can further investigate what they have learnt in lessons and construct new knowledge. However, our schools are still concentrating on text-based presentation software for teaching. Schools have been reacting slowly to the appearance of this new popular participatory culture. Therefore it is interesting to study schools’ ICT infrastructure, the digital literacy in classrooms as well as students’ individual usage behavior in digital media. From the study, we are able to realize the reasons for choosing those multimodal elements in the students’ learning as well as posting them online. Then, we can determine the relationship between the participatory culture in creating multimodal artifacts and digital divide in education among students; as well as finding out those factors which lead to the gap and enhance participatory culture in academic purpose for students. Thus, we can improve the situation of students’ learning outcome gap during the use of digital media in teaching and studying. My thesis will employ qualitative research method in case study approach. It consists of 6 students’ interviews as well as teacher’s focus group interviews of three teachers from two schools. The results show that there are different forms of technology and usage gap among the students in using digital tools. Certainly, there are several ways to overcome the barriers. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Science in Information Technology in Education

This study explored how students navigate the technological landscape of a public, land-grant institution. Through online surveys and semi-structured, one-on-one interviews, the study operated through an anticipatory/participatory lens to research with the intent of understanding students' experiences with technology at a research institution. Using this methodology and Triandis and Triandis' (1960) Theory of Social Distance and Sanford's (1969) Theory of Challenge and Support as theoretical support, the study identified five themes regarding students' experiences with technology: (a) differences in students' perceived levels of technological fluency (b) institutional expectations of students' technological fluency, (c) variance in institutional training on educational technologies, (d) importance of personal computer ownership and Internet access, and (e) understanding individual technological needs. Coupled with the methodology, these findings serve to proffer institutional awareness and understanding of students' experiences of an institution's technological landscape. / Graduation date: 2012

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Instructional Systems, Leadership, and Workforce Development. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation asks how the communication dimensions of technological literacy are understood in three informal education programs in Texas that aim to bridge the digital divide for female and low-income minority youth. Technological literacy is a prerequisite for economic, political, and cultural equality, yet different rationales for technological literacy highlight the economic, democratic, and social benefits for marginalized youth. Economically, technological literacy prepares youth to enter the workforce and positions the U.S. as competitive in the global market. Democratically, technological literacy allows citizens to participate in political discussions. Socially, technological literacy helps citizens make decisions in their everyday lives. Drawing from developmental democratic theory, I argue for an expanded definition of technological literacy that highlights the importance of communication and cultural production to democratic societies. Developmental democratic theory stresses the importance of individual development, including self-expression and creativity, to fostering democracy. I argue for an analysis of the digital divide that looks at capabilities, or the freedoms individuals have to pursue their own desires. These capabilities include self-representation, accessing information that is relevant to one’s life, learning to communicate about technology, and the freedom to achieve what one values. My research questions are grounded not only in the processes through which youth engage in technological learning through their participation in these informal educational programs, but also how the programs’ missions and activities envision technological literacy. Thus, I ask how is technological literacy conceptualized in three informal education programs? How is technological literacy implemented in program activities? How do youth themselves respond to technology and technological learning? I investigate these research questions through participant-observation, interviews, self-administered questionnaires, and analysis of program documents and students’ projects. I analyze these research questions in light of the economic, political, and social rationales for technological literacy. / text

The notion of literacy in the 21st century has changed with the emergence of advanced technologies. We can no longer treat written language as the sole resource in contemporary literacy. The advancement of technology has led to some fundamental changes in the ways we receive and produce texts. Theories of literacy that underpin the concept of writing need to be reconsidered both explicitly and implicitly. This paper reports on four case studies of primary school children in Hong Kong, focusing on their emerging digital competencies when engaging with digital text. The study investigates how the participating children engaged with digital text in the context of their out-of-school technology use. Each was observed to have developed a set of digital competencies in their receptive and productive engagements to deal with information on screens. Understanding how these competencies extended into their English language classrooms was explicated based on the data that emerged from the study. The study results identify five emerging competencies acquired by the children from their extra-school digital practices. Two of these were not extended into the children’s schoolwork – a reflection on the emphasis on mono-modal language learning in the class setting. At the heart of this research are two research questions: (1) What digital literacy practices emerge from the participating children’s out-of-school technology use? (2) How have these practices been extended to school activities? These research questions guided the methodological choice of the current study. The research was conducted with a view to understanding the understudied phenomena in their naturalistic settings. Different data collection methods were applied to uncover the emerging skills in the participants’ receptive and productive engagement with digital text inductively and iteratively. The skills utilize but are additional to listening, speaking, reading and writing, and involve frequent use of visuals, dynamic information and interaction through digital text. Such skills are categorized in the literature as viewing and representing. A detailed examination of the each of the five competencies led to the development of a framework of viewing and representing skills used by the participants during their receptive and productive engagement with information. These skills apply the five competencies in two different processes. The framework serves as a basis for recommendations for curriculum review, suitable pedagogical strategies and classroom learning resources that English language educators may utilize to facilitate development of students’ viewing and representing skills through the use of the five competencies. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education

Dating back to the dialectic between Socrates and Plato, innovative technologies have disrupted the traditions of discourse and created cultural divisions relevant to composition studies. These conversations are echoed in the Twentieth Century through the work of Melvin Kranzberg. Looking to the future, he sought to record the history of technology to maintain the constant upsurge of innovation. Like Kranzberg’s history of technology, the field of rhetoric and composition and this thesis seek to define technology and understand its value in order to navigate and interrogate effectively the deluge of twenty-first-century new media. Kranzberg—like many scholars in computers and composition—utilized various rhetorics to advocate for technological literacy despite its unpopularity in the academy.

Thesis (M.I.T.)--The Evergreen State College, 2007. / Title from title screen viewed (6/23/2008). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-87).

Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-87). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Instructional Systems, Leadership and Workforce Development. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. School of Human Sciences. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.