November 6 , 2007

SFU Education professor Dr. Kelleen Toohey (L) works with elementary students who are making

podcast stories with two Mac computers on long-term loan from the Faculty of Education.

When SFU’s Dr. Kelleen Toohey first set out to do her research on how non-English speaking children become literate, she didn’t realize she would have to incorporate computer literacy in her study as well. Dr. Toohey’s three-year research grant aims to better understand how young English language learners learn, and how they might be helped to improve English literacy.

Two Lower Mainland elementary schools with medium to higher levels of immigrant and refugee children were chosen to participate in the study. In posing the question, “how can English language learners be aided in learning English at school”, researchers turned to technology to help children with their writing skills.

The children were excited to be working with computers and it soon became evident that not only were the computers improving their literacy in the stories they were writing, but they were improving their computer literacy skills as well.  Dr. Toohey states “it became apparent that we had to look at literacy in a broader sense and include technological literacy since it will play such a relevant role in their futures”.

Unfortunately, only one of the schools had the computers necessary to carry out the research, so Dr. Toohey convinced the Faculty of Education to lend the school two Mac computers on a long-term loan basis. With this in place, children at both schools are now able to make podcasts of stories that they have written and illustrated.  So far, preliminary work looks positive and the teachers and researchers are delighted that the Faculty of Education has been supporting their research and, through this initiative, helping their students achieve their literacy goals.

For more information about Dr. Toohey and her research, go to