What is Socio-Identity Literacy Practices

This chapter explores the varied participatory practices that were triggered during the Spring 2016 iteration of the Digital Dialogue Project (DDP), an initiative that connected different age groups in distinct subject-area classes within contrasting schools embedded inside divergent communities. During the project, youth (from 3rd grade to 12th grade) engaged in three phases: (1) producing multimodal products connected to curricular goals, (2) virtually sharing/viewing/commenting on the digital product with small groups of 3-5 youth from different schools, and (3) meeting face to face at a culminating field trip to engage in collaborative theater exercises to dramatically embody the groups' digital stories. Authors provide concrete examples of the kinds of participation that the DDP evoked as well as key pedagogical commitments to literacies that were central to designing and implementing the project. Throughout the chapter, real talk for practicing teachers is provided in order to offer guidance for those interested in imagining similar participatory projects for youth.