Event Date: 10th August 2021
Abstract:
New technologies have become pervasive in the way students live, learn and communicate, challenging our values and norms in education and literacy. For most educators, preparing students for an ever-changing, multimodal and interconnected world is not just a choice but a necessity; yet, addressing this need can present most educators with overwhelming challenges. This was the case before the pandemic and became even more apparent during it.
This plenary will argue that along with the traditional access inequalities, there is a new and increasingly concerning digital divide that separates those who have the literacies to use technology in an informed, responsible and sophisticated way and those who do not. After exploring the impact of this disparity on students, we will look at how embedding Digital Literacies in the ELT classroom (both online and face-to-face) can help bridge the gap. This will lead to a final discussion in which we will attempt to draw some practical conclusions about the way forward.
About the Speaker:
Sophia Mavridi is a Digital Learning Specialist & Lecturer in English Language Learning at De Montfort University (UK). Her research focuses on online learning and the increasingly important role of digital literacies in language education. As a consultant, Sophia supports institutions and teachers to integrate technology in a pedagogically sound way and has trained for major organisations around the world. She is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences and her latest volumes are Language teaching experiences during COVID-19 (2021), English for 21st Century Skills (2020), and Digital Innovations and Research in Language Learning (2020). You can learn more about her at her website https://sophiamavridi.com/
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