UOIT’s Janette Hughes is promoting innovative use of new classroom technologies and teaching strategies to enhance digital literacy among marginalized students. As community makerspaces make their way into formal education, Hughes is examining how these spaces can support student learning across all subjects.
She aims to address a variety of questions, including how adolescents’ digital literacy skills develop over time while immersed in a rich media setting that emphasizes digital making rather than digital consumption; how makerspaces influence creative and critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving, and cultural and global citizenship; how these spaces can enhance literacy, specifically for students who live in poverty; and how they might promote civic engagement.
