Digital, Hybrid, and Multilingual Literacies in Early Childhood

Technology is changing education and the way children learn.  This is especially true with the way children learn to read.  The article Digital, Hybrid, and Multilingual Literacies in Early Childhood by Aria Razfar and Eunah Yang starts to take a look at this topic.  As someone entering the teaching world, I have begun to wonder how technology will ultimately affect my profession.  I think if used correctly technology can be a teacher’s best friend and a great aid in a students learning experience.  In this article I read it, it focused on sociocultural literature on early literacy development over the last decade. 

There is three significant focuses that Razfar and Eunah have discovered; the use of electronic and digital media as mediational tools, the use of hybrid languages as mediational tools, and the use of multiple languages, literacies, and discourses, especially of immigrant and non-dominate communities.  This article discusses the future for the “Web 2.0” generation.  The way early literacy is taught and leaned is going to change. 

There are three aspects of human development that are touched on; the interpersonal, intrapersonal and experiences transferred to general life-course development. Semiotic mediation connects the internal and external and also the social and the individual.

Imaginative play is crucial for any child growing up.  Being able to create and imagine items are different things.  In the article it mentions a broom stick being a horse.  I personally always used the broomstick as a hockey stick or baseball bat.  The digital age is changing imaginative play.  Technology now can also not only be the source of entertainment but can be the object of play.  There are four groups of study in this article.  All focus on early literacy development through play.  The first group includes playing with digital tools and famous media characters.  The second group focuses on digital media and its impact on narrative activity at home.  The third and fourth groups are hybrid practices using media character and multilingual interpenetrated interactions. 

A boy named James spent a year between 2.5-3.5 years old learning how to use the CD-ROM storybook.  He became interested in the hypertext feature and would play a game with his father.  He would tell his dad to click him, once he did he would start singing a song or doing something funny.  He was learning the technology and seeing how it worked.  This engaged his creativity and that is how he stated to use that in his play.  A group of kindergarten and first grade children used pretend play, paper items to represent modern technology like an iPod and also popular media characters.  The students would sing songs they knew when holding the paper iPod.  This has changed their pretend play.  Though not a real iPod they knew its function and how it worked.  

Using e-books was another section in the article.  An immigrant family from South Korea moving to Canada was the example.  The mother and son would read together with a traditional book and an e-book.  The traditional book was easier to control and was easier to pace the reading with.  The more students use new technology though the more effective it will become for them.  James from the CD-ROM story became more knowledgeable on how to use the computer.  With more independence James could better use the technology.  He would use other interactive features that would enrich is experience reading with a CD-ROM. 

In the article it also talks about how struggling readers especially can be helped by technology.  Using popular culture can help these students.  One student Noah combined characters from Donkey Kong and Little Bear to create a new story.  These characters made it easier and more enjoyable for him to write.  Another student Sol would create new Pokémon and write about them.  This really engaged his creativity.  Finally Devon who was categorized as a struggling reader would use popular media and video games to help him with reading.  A specific example was spelling Tiger he emphasized the “g” connecting it with his favorite show Yu-GI-Oh.

This was a great article.  I learned a lot from this and look forward to the future with technology.  Popular media and technology in my opinion are crucial for all students.  They are great resources and an easy way to engage a student.  I had never thought of how easy it is now with technology to learn in a multilingual fashion.  This can only better a student.  The different mediation in this article is great resources.  I think all can be and should be used with young literacy learners.  

Here is a link to the article if you would like to check it out:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41804239?seq=7&Search=yes&searchText=of&searchText=Early&searchText=Journal&searchText=Childhood&searchText=Literacy&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicResults%3FQuery%3DJournal%2Bof%2BEarly%2BChildhood%2BLiteracy%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bvf%3Djo&prevSearch=&resultsServiceName=null