Digital reading in a secondary classroom: Real practices and difficulties of students

Abstract

This work shows and analyzes the practices and difficulties of students from 4th year of Obligatory Secondary Education (ESO) when they use the internet in a language class to find information. This is a case study in which the interaction of three pairs of students and their work on the computer screen during the search process has been recorded by software. Both the audio and the screen activity of the students have been analyzed using international standards of information literacy (American Library Association, 2000). The analysis shows that the students incorporate vernacular practices in their task. The results point to the need for teaching support when choosing a topic and to interpret the information of graphics and videos. We have observed distractions from the tasks and access to violent content that may not be appropriate. In this context, this paper points out some aspects to take into account when working with digital reading in the classroom, such as the importance of scaffolding the choice of topic, working from real information needs, and the need for the Secondary students to acquire multimodal and critical literacy strategies.