In response to uneven academic outcomes and resistance to reading and writing among ELLs in a Canadian grade 7 classroom, teachers and university-based researchers collaborated to introduce a podcast project in which children learned new digital and multimodal literacy skills as a pathway to success in academic literacies. Throughout the four months of the classroom ethnography, the researcher documented how the project built on and expanded children's semiotic resources, and how digital technologies and modes of learning were incorporated into a school setting typically oriented to traditional English print literacy. Although the podcast project emerged as a unique third pedagogic space, with potential benefits for academic literacy competencies, its transformative potential did not cross into the usual pedagogic arrangements governing assessment, curricula frameworks, and the social relations of the classroom. The authors conclude that the persistent marginalization of ELL students' semiotic resources for academic learning may account for this. (Contains 1 note.)