Structured reflections were designed to develop a collaborative method of working with project partners, creating opportunities for project participants to explore their understandings of digital literacies, with an emphasis on reflection in the their own digital literacy practice. In terms of practical realisation of that approach, all project participants (core team, teachers, course tutors, students and technical partners) contributed to a series of reflexive tasks in which they responded to  prompts  provided by the project team at three points in the project lifecycle. These prompts varied slightly for each of the groups in acknowledgement of their particular working context. The structured reflective tasks for the project participants were designed to follow the principle of discovery and exploration. Through these reflexive tasks, project partners were encouraged to expose and challenge some of their tacit assumptions about digital literacy, academic practice and sharing teaching resources. Participants were invited to offer their responses in a variety of formats such as text, audio or video, depending on personal preferences. A digest of these reflections was shared amongst participants shortly after each stage, thus contributing to a cumulative sense of meanings generated by the group. This framework for reflexive commentary was intended to illustrate how participants’ understandings and engagement with digital literacies might change, and to provide a narration to the project and the process.

The project team also arranged a number of opportunities for interaction between the partners through face-to-face meetings, workshops and phone conversations which were aimed at supporting partners in the process of developing their projects and articulating their approach towards digital literacy. PGCE students taking part in the project were invited to reflect on their perceptions of their own digital literacies, and how these mapped onto their developing pedagogies. Their reflections were captured through focus groups, as well as targeted reflexive tasks. Reflections were also gathered, in the form of recorded interviews and blogposts from parents, children as well as staff members from project schools.  Other professionals in the field, students and the general public were invited to share their reflections during events such as the regional conference or the Digital Bloom installation (see also Case Study 14); these were collected by the project team on the day of the event and captured in the project blog.