Jill Castek

Jill Castek is a Research Assistant Professor at Portland State University with the Literacy, Language, and Technology Research Group.  Jill is the principal investigator on an Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant focused on digital literacy acquisition among vulnerable adult learners.

Prior to joining the faculty at Portland State, she was a post-doc with the Seeds of Science Roots of Reading team at the University of California, Berkeley where she explored the use of digital tools to encourage science and literacy learning.  She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut where she was a fellow in the New Literacies Research Lab. 

Jill has been a facilitator for the New Literacies Teacher Leader Institutes that took place at North Carolina State University and in Cambridge, MA.  A former elementary/middle grade teacher and reading specialist, Jill has over a decade of experience working with striving readers and English Language Learners. Her research examines opportunities for reading, writing, and collaborating on the Internet to extend literacy and content learning. She also explores a variety of instructional strategies to support online reading comprehension.

Jill is a contributor to the Literacy Beat blog that focuses on literacy teaching ideas that make the most of Web 2.0 technologies. Her work also appears in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (JAAL), Educational Forum, The Journal of Education, The Reading Teacher, and Reading and Writing Quarterly, among other journals.  In her free time, Jill loves to travel and spend time outdoors hiking and exploring.   She can be reached at jcastek@pdx.edu