Abstract:

The need for technological literacy is not new. Buckingham (2006) mentions that computational literacy has been talked about since the 1980s. It is clear that the acceleration of technological progress has led to the emergence of new literacies (Roswell & Walsh, 2011) and multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009) and it is increasingly indispensable that students come into contact with technological resources in a school context in an interdisciplinary way (according to the precepts of STEAM education), multimodal (Teixeira & Leal, 2019) and in the form of active methodologies. Moreover, awareness of the specialty languages (Gil, 2003) used in the different subject areas is part of scientific and academic literacy, which, in Portugal, falls short of the students' effective needs. It is in this sense that we developed, within the PortLinguE project (ref. PTDC/LLT-LIG/31113/2017), resources that support academic and scientific literacy and the use of specialty languages, such as the activity of creating thematic glossaries in a school context using style languages (CSS) and annotation languages (XML).

Unlike a glossary created in a word processor, digital glossaries offer a greater number of aesthetic possibilities than traditional glossaries and, therefore, they promote visual literacy. They can be edited on a large scale and can be processed by machines (for example, they allow term-to-term searching, as in the case of a search engine). This leads to the question: How can a student appropriate a specialized language in a creative, collaborative and multimodal way, using an annotation and styling language, to create a digital glossary?

To do so, we will use a guide to explain step by step the process of creating digital glossaries:
(1) delimitation of the main terms linked to a disciplinary area;
(2) researching the definitions and/or elaborating other representations (images, photographs, audio and video, among others);
(3) organizing terms, definitions and visual representations in Excel format,
(4) integration of the file in code editing and visualization software (such as, for example, Codepen.io);
(5) automatic and large-scale customisation (changing the structure, font, title color of entries, among others).

This script was used in a series of workshops aimed at middle and high school teachers and also with college students as part of a Master’s class. In this presentation, we will report the results of both experiences.

References:
[1] Buckingham, David. (2006). Defining digital literacy: What do young people need to know about digital media?. Medienbildung in Neuen Kulturräumen Die Deutschprachige Und Britische Diskussion, 21-34. 10.18261/ISSN1891-943X-2006-04-03.
[2] Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), 164-195.
[3] Gil, I. (2003). Algumas considerações sobre Línguas de Especialidade e seus processos lexicogénicos. Máthesis, 12, 113-130.
[4] Rowsell, J. & Walsh, M. (2011). Rethinking literacy education in new times: multimodality, multiliteracies, & new literacies. Brock Education, 21(1), 53-62.
[5] Teixeira, C. e Leal, A. (2019). A multimodalidade na escrita académica. In F. Caels, L. F. Barbeiro & J. V. Santos (orgs.), Discurso Académico: Uma Área Disciplinar em Construção, (pp. 287-311). CELGA-ILTEC, Universidade de Coimbra/ Escola Superior de Educação e Ciências Sociais, Politécnico de Coimbra

Keywords:

Glossary, specialised language, computacional literacy, multimodality.