This study examined 94 bilingual and emergent bilingual 10th grade students’ perspectives on multimodal composing for academic purposes in their English Language Arts class. A social semiotics theoretical framework was employed to understand students’ views of the affordances and constraints when composing three digital multimodal projects—a hypertext poetry analysis, a persuasive podcast, and a video literary analysis. Qualitative analysis of interviews and written reflections revealed how students overwhelmingly held a positive view of composing with multiple modes for academic purposes. Students detailed the unique semiotic resources of nonlinguistic modes for supporting their understanding of the content and innovative meaning‐making. A majority of students described how communicating through multiple modes offered impactful opportunities to express their bilingual/bicultural identities as well as explore the affective dimensions of the English Language Arts content. Additionally, students explained how the process of multimodal composing fostered peer collaboration and creating meaningful connections to other works and their lives. Along with affordances, students also described a variety of challenges when designing their digital projects, including technical difficulties, uncertainty of expectations, and sufficiently representing their ideas multimodally. This study concludes with implications for how educators can learn from listening to emergent bilingual students’ perspectives when integrating technology in the classroom.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection between critical literacy and digital activism. Critical literacy is a form of instruction that teaches students to question power structures and societal injustices, while digital activism introduces methods for individuals and groups to use digital tools to effect social and political change. This review argues that digital literacy is the natural partner to pedagogical approaches informed by critical literacy, which attempts to uncover, address, question and solve social problems. Design/methodology/approach An illustrative example of collaborative student choice and action is offered through a multimedia project with actionable hashtags for sharing online. The paper concludes with a discussion of how educators can foster more collaborative choice and action by intertwining critical and digital literacies at all levels of education. However, implementation and application of these ideas lies not only with educators and administrators, but most importantly, with students themselves. Findings In order for students to be most prepared for meaningful interactions in the global and digital world, critical literacy, digital literacy and digital activism must become a core part of classroom instruction. Multimedia projects that are easily sharable and can track analytics are a successful way to raise consciousness and advocate for local and global action. Originality/value The powerful instructional practices that link critical and digital literacies provide students with the skills to continue questioning multiple viewpoints and promoting social justice issues within and beyond classroom walls.

Digital multimodal composition offers opportunities for emergent bilingual (EB) students to orchestrate semiotic resources in ways that develop their identities, strengthen their understandings of language, and help them to engage with content. To better understand how EBs can participate in varied multimodal composing practices, this study systematically reviews the literature on EBs’ digital multimodal composing in secondary classrooms. More specifically, it examines types of scaffolds, or planned and responsive instructional supports, used by teachers and students, as well as functions for learning associated with these scaffolds. Through an inductive approach, the authors analyzed 74 studies situated in classrooms. Findings showed seven types of scaffolding: collaboration, direct instruction, exemplar texts, translanguaging, discussion, encouragement, and questioning. In addition, eight scaffolding functions emerged that illustrate three major themes of scaffolding identities, scaffolding resources, and scaffolding contexts. The authors then discuss implications for classroom practice, implications for translanguaging and social semiotics theories, and directions for future research.

This paper explores the second language, digital multimodal composing practices of 12 American undergraduates studying French abroad in Paris. Drawing on multiliteracies, multimodality, and translanguaging frameworks, this study utilizes a qualitative lens and multimodal composing timescapes to analyze how students leveraged languages and modes across 72 digital multimodal reflections and vlogs. Findings demonstrate how reflective multimodal composing developed multilingual identities by fostering metalinguistic awareness and goal-setting practices. Through their vlogs, students additionally participated in transcultural repositioning by making crosscultural connections and sharing emotional experiences. Throughout the term students increased in traversals of modes, languages, spaces, and places as they became more comfortable with the French language, living in France, and multimodal composing. These results illustrate how digital multimodal composing can enhance learners' linguistic and transcultural competencies while studying abroad. The article concludes with implications for multimodal composing to learn languages and calls for further research on the reflective multimodal composing practices of second language learners. _______________ In recent years, literacy research has touted the values of multimodal composing for encouraging students to make meaning from their full linguistic, cultural, social, and modal repertoires. While promoting richer meaning-making, multimodal composing also "break[s] the frame" of "in-school" and "out-of-school" boundaries through multiliteracies pedagogies that embrace diverse identities and literacy practices (The

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