Digital literacy involves any number of digital reading and writing techniques across multiple media forms. These media include words, texts, visual displays, motion graphics, audio, video, and multimodal forms. There are myriad cognitive processes at play, along a continuum from consumption to production when a reader is immersed with digital content as well as with print text. The purpose of this chapter is to (1) define digital literacy from multiple theoretical viewpoints, (2) illustrate how the definition continues to evolve in light of emerging technologies, and (3) discuss the cognitive, social, and affective dimensions of digital literacy as it is a key requirement in contemporary K-12 education.

Before the Internet was an integral part of life, Paul Gilster (1997) defined digital literacy as the “ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers” (p. 1). Thus, digital literacy involves any number of digital reading and writing techniques across multiple media forms. These media include words, texts, visual displays, motion graphics, audio, video, and multimodal forms. There are myriad cognitive processes at play, along a continuum from consumption to production when a reader is immersed with digital content as well as with print text. The purpose of this chapter is to (a) define digital literacy from multiple theoretical viewpoints, (b) illustrate how the definition continues to evolve in light of emerging technologies, and (c) discuss the cognitive, social, and affective dimensions of digital literacy as it is a key requirement in contemporary K-12 education.

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As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, complex global challenges necessitate cross‐cultural collaborative efforts. Thus, developing cosmopolitan literacies among students and teachers becomes ever more important. Believing that cosmopolitan literacies are central to being literate in contemporary times, the authors build on their existing project‐based inquiry model to include global themes (e.g., poverty, global water and sanitation, climate change) and cross‐cultural exchange. This theory‐into‐practice article explains the Project‐Based Inquiry Global process and six design features that enable teachers to facilitate collaborative inquiry projects with their students. As students interact during the process, they begin to practice cosmopolitan literacies by engaging in reading, writing, and inquiry with people and topics from around the world, becoming cross‐cultural difference makers.

This collective case study explores the strategies history, science and math teachers use to conduct close readings in their disciplines. Through qualitative analysis of forum posts and lesson plans submitted to a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) designed as professional development (PD), this study examines the strategies history, science and math teachers reported using to conduct close readings in their discipline, as well as how these teachers conduct close readings after receiving professional development on reading strategies for their disciplines. Ultimately, the research showed that while more teachers reported using disciplinary literacy strategies following the PD, they did not necessarily report using the strategies that, according to experts in their fields, are considered to be the most important for their discipline.