Community-Based Multiliteracies and Digital Media Projects: Questioning Assumptions and Exploring Realities(63 New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies)

Within community-based digital literacies work, a fundamental question remains unanswered: Where are the stories and reflections of the researchers, scholars, and community workers themselves? We have learned much about contexts, discourses, and the multimodal nature of meaning making in literacy and digital media experiences. However, we have learned very little about those who initiate, facilitate, and direct these community-based multiliteracies and digital media projects. In Community-Based Multiliteracies & Digital Media Projects: Questioning Assumptions and Exploring Realities, contributors discuss exemplary work in the field of community-based digital literacies, while providing an insightful and critical perspective on how we begin to write ourselves into the stories of our work. In doing so, the book makes a powerful contribution to digital literacies praxis and pedagogy - within and outside of community-based contexts.

About the Author :
Heather M. Pleasants received her PhD in educational psychology with a specialization in language, literacy, and learning from Michigan State University. She is a past Spencer Dissertation Fellow and is a writer, ethnographer, and the Director for Community Education at the University of Alabama. Dana E. Salter is completing her PhD in curriculum and instruction from McGill University and is the Community Outreach Specialist for the Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence at Georgia State University.

Review :
«What I so appreciate about this important volume is that the authors take up as central the kinds of conversations that too often only happen off the record. Fearlessly, they explore the messiness of research on digital media literacies. They ask what to do when things don't go as planned, when deeply personal stories go public, when intentions bump up against realities within the politics of 'doing good.' We all need to think deeply about these issues together, and to speak of them out loud and on the record. We need methods to embed reflection and critical analysis of process into multiliteracies research, which is precisely the mandate this collection delivers on, with clarity and courage.» (Dr. Elisabeth Soep, Senior Producer and Research Director, Youth Radio) «By playing at the intersection of the digital literacy and community context, the editors and their co-authors move beyond traditional conversations about the pedagogical and programmatic mechanics of utilizing digital media to the criti-cal examination of digital literacies in specific contexts and the associated chal-lenges that accompany this work. As a STEAM educator and community advocate, I believe that through their work, Heather M. Pleasants and Dana E. Salter have created an invaluable space to interrogate some of the key questions facing those hoping to empower educators and students to utilize digital media to change and improve their world.» (Dr. Brian Williams, Director, Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence, and Assistant Professor, Early Childhood Education, Georgia State University) «This is a beautifully conceptualized collection. The editors have invited experienced, self-reflective, community-based practitioners to 'write themselves into the story' of their work and the result is a nuanced conversation about the intricacies, ambiguities, challenges, and the inspiration of collaborating across boundaries to create media that matter. The insights shared and questions explored are invaluably generative. They help us think critically about the ethics, integrity, and purposes of our labor. They remind us that reflection into process is not for the footnotes; rather, it is central to the story of social justice work.» (Darcy Alexandra, visual anthropologist, writer, educator, and documentary practitioner, Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland) «[T]his Text is far more than a collection of interesting and powerful stories, but also provides grounded insights and design principles to guide the ethical, relational, methodological, pedagogical, and longitudinal aspects of digital media creation in community collaborations. This is not a 'how to text', rather it is a 'why to' text that casts an important gaze away from the products of media production and on to the interactions that shape the collaborative process. [...] This edited collection adds critical voices to the conversation about what it means to engage people in participatory media practices within their communities. In doing so, Heather Pleasants and Dana Salter make a vital contribution to the base of scholarship that informs our conceptions of literate practice.» (Michael Manderino, Teachers College Record, January 2015)