ABSTRACT
For the past three years Chuck has sponsored an after-school video club for students in grades 4 and 5. Video and other forms of social media, such as the podcasts that Vasquez and Felderman describe, provide unique opportunities to examine the intersection of technology, reading and writing, identity exploration, and critical literacy. Videos produced in the club may address perceived injustices in the authors’ lives and, in turn, imagine how the students would like the world to become. Through writing scripts, creating characters, role-playing, and video editing, students export their real identities into virtual and projected identities (Gee, 2007) onto the screen or other digital media. When students write these texts, they seriously consider how the videos will be read by their audiences; they read (and perform) like writers and write like readers; and they address sociocultural issues from school and community contexts. We present one student production to demonstrate how reading during video production informed and influenced writing and supported reclaiming reading in school.
