Literacy Beat

A post from Bernadette

The 18th European Conference on Reading was held in in the beautiful town of Jönköping in Sweden from August 6th to the 9th. Over the space of four days delegates, from around the globe including, Europe, US, Canada, Russia, Asia, South Africa and Australia, met, listened, debated and forged collaborative links around issues relating to the conference theme of New Literacies, New Challenges. In this blog post I thought I would give you a flavour the wonderful keynote addresses presented during the conference. Local speakers provided stimulating and interesting keynote addresses to both open and close the conference. Professor Elsie Anderberg, from Jönköping University, addressed the issue of The Function of Language Use in Reading Comprehension in her opening address. Professor Stefan Samuelsson (Linköping University) provided intriguing insights from an international collaborative research project on Behaviour-Genetic Studies of Academic Performance in School Students.

Professor Jackie Marsh from the University of Sheffield provided a wonderful and thought provoking keynote address on Digital Futures: Learning and Literacy in the New Media Age addressing issues including family digital literacy practices and children’s use of virtual worlds. Jackie then provided fascinating insights from the Digital Futures in Teacher Education’ Project on aspects related to pedagogical strategies and design of curriculum. Rather than trying to ‘colonise’ children’s home practices with digital literacies, she urged us to try to build on and extend such literacies links; thereby bridging the dissonance between in-school and out-of-school literacies.

Digital Futures in Teacher Education

http://www.digitalfutures.org/

Professor Don Leu (University of Connecticut) delivered an engrossing keynote address entitled, The New Literacies of Online Research and Comprehension: Reading with a Lens to the Past and with a Lens to the Future. Don got to the “Heart of the Matter”, and effectively captured the feeling of most of us working in the area of digital literacies, when he quoted Don Henley from The Eagles, “The more I know, the less I understand.” Don addressed issues related to the ubiquitous nature of the Internet and other digital technologies in society and the deictic nature of literacy in the 21st century. He spoke convincingly on the need to ensure equity in, and equality of, access to digital literacies for all students regardless of SES. You can view the PowerPoint presentation in the link below.

The conference organisers, Ulla-Britt Person, Lena Ivarsson and other colleagues in the Swedish Council of International Reading Association (SCIRA), together with colleagues on the International Development in European Committee of the International Reading Association (IDEC) and the Federation of European Literacy Associations (FELA) are be congratulated for the successful organisation of a wealth of presentations and workshops across the four days of the conference.

Presentations and hand-outs from the conference will be available soon on the IDEC website.

So a truly great conference in a wonderful venue! Mark your calendar for the 19th European Conference on Reading to be held in Klagenfurt in Austria on 14th -17th July 2015.

Filed under: digital tools, multimodal, new literacies, Reading conference |