DigLit - Lit up your Phones: A Digital Toolkit for ESL/EFL Classroom to Combat Social Inequalities in Times of Covid19 Crises

The DigLit project provides a means for ESL/EFL teachers to share and embed digital education to enhance awareness of social inequalities, diversity, and equality through the usage of young adult literature in combination with popular smart phones app. At the same time, it will increase pupils’ cultural and equality awareness which will eventually influence their critical thinking, as well as their social and civic competences. DigLit will also support digital competences for teacher and pupils, specifically in times of Covid-19.
DigLit involves the collection and uploading of media files on the project website dealing with young adult literature as well as a freely available collection of young adult literature that discusses aspects of diversity and equality by featuring marginalized groups. These media files will derive from the usage of popular apps on smartphones and will center the pupils’ narratives and foster their ditial education. This collection will act as a platform for diversity and equality awareness and digital upskilling. Teachers will be trained in the use of digital media in combination with young adult literature and pupils will conduct and lead on their collection and editing.
The DigLit project is driven by the principle that innovative teaching resources form part of broader pedagogic strategies that can actively help tackle issues of social inequality and foster digital education. It facilitates action that address issues of diversity and equality common across the EU as declared in the Paris Declaration from 2015. The importance of enhancing social, civic, and intercultural competences, critical thinking and media literacy as well as fostering the education of disadvantaged children and young adults were at the heart of the Paris Declaration and DigLit’s aim, and objectives are closely aligned with many of the recommendations made in the declaration. With a network of teachers, education academics, students, and technicians, the main objective is to create an online digital toolkit (DigLit Toolkit) for the ESL/EFL classroom that uses young adult literature in combination with popular smartphone apps to combat social inequalities.