ABSTRACT
In our current standards-driven educational era, many teachers have begun to harness project-based learning (PBL) as a way to dynamically and effectively develop their Pre-K to 12 students’ academic multiliteracies. The “project” as a pedagogical unit of instruction, if designed appropriately, can be a student-driven, inquiry-based microcosm that helps build student confidence and expertise by encouraging them to engage with authentic real-world content. This chapter takes PBL one step further by situating it within what we call technology-enhanced form-function project-based language learning (TEFF PBLL), a heuristic that allows teachers to weave together content-, language- technology- and standards to organize projects that focus on developing students’ multiliteracies and their world and career readiness. Here, we present a third-grade TEFF PBLL learning segment built around a class webpage project where students use mentor texts as the basis for developing their own digital fictional narratives. Using a checklist for curriculum development with four key components (analyze form-function connections, technology, content, and standards; develop the project, learning objectives, and public product; choose multimodal texts and materials; develop technology-enhanced activities and assessments), we provide an example of a digital storytelling project, showing how it was put into practice using the best practices of TEFF PBLL. The chapter ends with a discussion of the unique challenges of and opportunities for adopting a curriculum based on technology and projects for developing students’ multiliteracies.
