Critical Lessons and Playful Literacies: Digital Media in PK–2 Classrooms

Abstract

Digital literacies present opportunities to expand ways of making meaning. Utilizing a New Literacies Studies framework, this article presents critical lessons in film production from a multiple site case study using examples of classroom experience to demonstrate how filmmaking and play come together in a process of storying, a multimodal approach to text composition. Students in both preschool and early elementary contexts expressed an expanded understanding of composing through digital means, utilized technology in sophisticated ways, and accessed their knowledge of popular culture and film conventions through the process of storying.