Digital Literacy Integration in Educational Practice: Creating a Learning Community, Through a Geographic Project in Mytilene Senior High School, Greece

Abstract

This study focused on the analysis of Grade-12 (Senior) students' sociocultural constructivist interactions using Web 2.0 applications during a geographical research process. In the study methodology context, a transdisciplinary case study (TdCS) with ethnographic and research action data was designed, implemented and analyzed in real teaching conditions for this study. The goal of the research process was students to integrate into authentic activities that that relate to their experiences and create a learning community, developing cognitive geographic knowledge. The study reveals a need to: a) design and implement transdisciplinary actions to create more learning incentives, exchange ideas and collaborate, for the geographical science issues study, b) shape new ways of interacting and operating social structures in the context of geographical research process, c) promote the skills that students need in real life, as participatory interaction, interpersonal communication, spatial thinking and high cognitive functions (cooperation, crisis, feedback and empathy, among others), and d) use Web applications in learning practice, shaping new methods of processing, sharing and exploiting information and produced products from the students' study.