Digital Literacy Presentation

Digital Literacy

Empowering and Preparing Effective Digital Citizens

By: Abbie Mayer

Start

Click the arrow to go to the page!

What is digital literacy?

Index

E-Safety

Functional Skills

Creativity

Critical Thinking and Evaluation

Cultural and Social Understanding

Collaboration

The Ability to Find and Select Information

Effective Communication

Promoting Digital Literacy in the Classroom

Preparing Students to be Digital Citizens

Thinking Critically About and Evaluating Content is a Critical Element

What is Digital Literacy?

Digital literacy is the ability to utilize content from technological platforms. This can include finding, evaluating, or interacting with different platforms to collaborate or create digital media. In order to utilize these things, one must have technical along with cognitive skills.

+ picture

These include... E-Safety Functional Skills Creativity Critical Thinking and Evaluation Cultural and Social Understanding Collaboration The Ability to Find and Select Information Effective Communication

There are 8 Digital Literacy Skills.

Click here to go back to the index!

E-Safety

This skill covers the knowledge of risks and possible dangers that may come up online. In order to be successful digital citizens, one must be able to assess online scenarios to make sure their information is safe along with themselves. This will help students become more vigilant about their own safety because they know what may be posing a threat which could keep them from clicking on a bad link or talking to a complete stranger online.

Why This Skill is Important:

Recognizing Risks

Appropriate Content

Protects Students

Because of the nature of the Internet, there is access to a wide variety of content. Teaching children E-Safety can help protect children from accessing inappropriate information that they shouldn't see.

Teaching students E-Safety can keep them informed about predators online and possible bullying that may occur on social media so that they can can stay safe from potential threats or online abuse that may occur.

Teaching this skill is necessary because it can help one assess risks online so that they are able to navigate pop-ups or emails that may be dangerous. This can keep private information and devices safe from hackers or viruses.

Click here to go back to the index!

Functional Skills

This skill covers the basic ICT skills that help students function when they are using a technological device. An example of this skill would be the ability to type correctly when using a computer and being able to navigate the database search engines as they are trying to research. By implementing these skills, students will grow in their technological competency so that they can successfully grow in their digital skills.

Why This Skill is Important:

Student Interaction

Sets Up a Foundation

Promotes Development

In order for students to grow in their digital skills, they have to have basic skills to grow upon. The basics are necessary to successfully do anything online. The functional skills allow them the baseline skills that they can improve from.

Many students become motivated to continue improving after learning the basics. These skills can prompt development in students' skills because many will want to continue finding new tricks and ways to use their devices.

By teaching functional skills, students will have opportunities to interact with their content. It will set them up to actually get involved with their own learning through many individualized programs that only need basic skills to complete.

Click here to go back to the index!

Creativity

This skill emcompasses the ability to use online tools to create products or apply their ideas. This could include students creating flyers, artwork, or presentations where they have to explore their thoughts and display their work. By incoporating this skill, students should be able to express their ideas in new ways and develop a product that they are proud of.

Why This Skill is Important:

Stretches Thinking

Authentic Learning

Engages Students

This skill can allow students to try out new tools so that they can experience them in an authentic way. The kids will be able to learn applicable ways to demonstrate their technological abilities making their learning relevant and more engaging.

Using creativity can be engaging for kids because it allows them to try out their ideas and share what they are thinking or feeling. They will be able to create something that they are proud of that showcases their skills in a new way.

This skill helps students use new ways of thinking and problem solving. They will be able to use their ideas to form a product that will demonstrate their knowledge and thoughts.

Click here to go back to the index!

Critical Thinking and Evaluation

This skill focuses around the ideas involving thinking for yourself about information and evaluating resources for credibility, reliability, and value. This can help students learn to notice patterns that they see and connections that they can make to push a meaningful learning experience. An example of this would be creating a research project where students would have to find information online and evaluate their sources to make sure they are reliable for the information they are getting from them.

Why This Skill is Important:

Increase Participation

Independent Thinking

Recognizing Reliability

This skill teaches students how to think for themselves to develop their ability to reason and make rational decisions. Students will learn to process ideas and come up with their own opinions based on their reasoning for the topic.

Students with this skill are likely to become more engaged and participate more in their learning. They will have the depths to connect to the topics so that they can advance in their understanding and feel confident about their learning.

Being able to figure out what is trustworthy is important so that students can recognize bias in a source or invalid statements in an article. Students need to learn to evaluate this so that they aren't spreading incorrect information and building rationale from bias.

Click here to go back to the index!

Cultural and Social Understanding

This skill centers around the digital culture that is becoming more abundant in our world. People can interact with many others when they get access to online communities which can open their world into many new experiences and ideas from people that they may have never met. An example of this would be an ability to participate in a global community where they can interact with others from around the world and learn about different lifestyles and cultures.

Why This Skill is Important:

Stimulates Awareness

Shared Experiences

Provides Representation

Because of the people they can interact with, students can have all sorts of shared experiences where they can learn new things and grow from others. They may have opportunities to talk to employers and have the chance to find new interests or goals for their future.

Kids can grow in their knowledge of those around them by seeing diverse cultures and interacting with many people. This can help grow their awareness to what others may go through to conceptualize what cultures look like around the world.

It gives representation for kids so that they feel safe and comfortable in the classroom. This can create a sense of belonging because there are so many different people that others can find a community in. It makes the world seem like a smaller and more attainable place.

Click here to go back to the index!

Collaboration

This skill includes working with others on an online format where they can learn and create with their peers. They will also be able to provide and receive feedback which is good practice for future employment and group projects. An example of this would be having students edit each other's papers on an online software where they can collaborate to make their papers stronger and work on what feedback should look like.

Why This Skill is Important:

Working Together

Increased Achievement

Feedback From Peers

Working together can increase productivity and achievement because it amplifies the learning environment. Two students working together can increase the ability level of both students and help them show more success which can be very motivating.

Students can learn social skills and how to work with others in an educational setting so that one day, they are ready to find a job. This can prepare them with skills that they will use the rest of their lives for how to be a good teammate and how to do their part on a group assignment.

Feedback from peers can be beneficial because they may hear different ideas than they would get from their teacher. They can learn to edit others' work while receiving feedback which will improve their ability to use teamwork in the future.

Click here to go back to the index!

The Ability to Find and Select Information

This skill describes someone's ability to sort through resources that are available on the Internet to find and consume reliable and valid information. Students have to be able to decipher between reliable and biased sources so that they can find credible information to use. An example of this would be having students find sources and collect information for a research project.

Why This Skill is Important:

Testing Reliability

Valuable Tool

Stop Plagiarism

Students will be using this skill for the rest of their life, as they will always need to learn new things from the internet. The internet can be an amazing tool to learn information and pull facts from, so it is important for students to learn how to use it in a successful way so that they can use it.

Teaching students how to find and use information responsibly can keep them from plagiarizing and using unethical behavior online. People can get into lots of trouble for stealing work, so it is important to teach students how to reword and cite other people when they find information they want to use.

It is important for students to learn how to look for reliable sources that are unbiased. They have to be able to look at news articles or learn more about important figures so that they can form opinions based on knowledge from a reliable source.

Click here to go back to the index!

Effective Communication

This skill covers being able to communicate with others online in an effective manner to help students learn that misinterpretations are common online. It also encompasses ideas about keeping information private and making sure to be kind even though you can't see the way your words are affecting others. An example of this could be having online discussions where students practice responding to their peers in respectful ways.

Why This Skill is Important:

Safety Online

Avoids Misinterpretation

Teaches Netiquette

Teaching kids things that they should be communicating and sharing on social media can be crucial to keeping them safe. It is important to show kids what information they shouldn't share online because sharing things like addresses, phone numbers, or bank information can be dangerous.

Learning ways to communicate and say things can be essential because it can avoid easy misinterpretations online. In online communication, expressions are not available, so it is important to teach students to be very clear when they are typing something online.

Teaching kids correct behavior and language online can stop cyber bullying and mistreatment online. It is important to show kids how to respectfully communicate online so that are informed with how to treat others and how to stay kind on the Internet.

Click here to go back to the index!

Promoting Digital Literacy in the Classroom

Mini Lessons on Digital Literacy

Teachable Moments

Give Students Choice

Lots of Practice

Allow students to get creative and use different types of platforms for responses so that they can find their interests in the digital world. By doing this, students will be more motivated and excited to be a digital citizen because they will be able to use their interests.

Create teachable moments in students by creating an authentic space to make mistakes so that they can grow and evolve online. Teachers can be there for support to help guide students by providing feedback on how to improve in their technology usage for the future.

Providing whole class mini lessons can create a space for students to learn more about what digital citizenship looks like and how to be safe online. This lesson should include practice where the students get a chance to apply their new skills to promote usage in their lives.

Students are not going to learn how to become successful digital citizens without lots of practice in the classroom. Giving students the time and space to learn new tools and skills will help them grow their digital literacy through experience and application.

Click here to go back to the index!

How To Prepare Students to be Effective Digital Citizens

Giving students extensive practice with multiple forms of utilizing technology can help prepare students with the skills necessary to become effective digital citizens.

EXAMPLES

*Click on each topic to see examples*

Communicating and Sharing Digital Content

Finding and ConsumingDigital Content

CreatingDigital Content

Click here to go back to the index!

Thinking Critically About and Evaluating Content is a Critical Element

Why thinking critically about and evaluating content is a critical element of...

Communicating and Sharing Digital Content

Finding and Consuming Digital Content

CreatingDigital Content

Reasons why!

Reasons why!

Reasons why!

Click here to go back to the index!

Finding and Consuming

Thinking critically about and evaluating content is a necessary skill in order to find and consume digital content because in order to be a digital citizen, one must be able to research and think critically about the information they are consuming. They have to be able to make judgement calls and evaluate whether or not information seems like it is reliable to gain knowledge from. Everyone finds and consumes information every day from news articles, google searches, and more, so it is critical to be able to assess the sites that they are using to make sure they are trustworthy. In order to do this, they have to be able to think critically about the information they are receiving which will tell them if it actually makes sense or if there is enough information there to trust the claims. They can also evaluate the site to make sure the knowledge comes from an unbiased source to make sure the information is likely to be true and factual instead of opinion-based.

Creating

Thinking critically about and evaluating content is an essential aspect of creating digital content due to the need to think about and evaluate work during and after a creative process so that the most effective product can be developed. When someone is creating something in a digital setting, they have to be constantly looking at their work and thinking about why they are incorporating certain aspects. They have to be able to evaluate the contribution of all of the parts of the product so that they can make sure everything is beneficial and important to the final creation. This evaluation and critical thinking about what is being created is vital because it is how a person self corrects their work as they are creating. It is also important to be able to look at a final product and edit the parts that may need improvement; in order to do this, one has to be able to evaluate their work and think about possible changes to maximize the success of a creation.

Communicating and Sharing

Thinking critically about and evaluating content is an important part of communicating and sharing digital content because it is important to think about what you are saying to someone online and evaluate what they are telling you. At times, online communication can be really tricky because there are no nonverbal cues that give away feelings like in a normal conversation; it can be easy to misinterpret what someone is actually trying to say when you are communication digitally. It is important to think critically about the way you word certain things so that people know exactly what you mean. The skill of evaluating is also necessary because you have to evaluate your wording along with others' wording to effectively communicate and understand what someone is trying to tell you or how someone feels about a topic. This is an essential skill because you can learn so much from others, and technology opens the door to collaborating with lots of different people with diverse perspectives

Giving students independent practice through research projects where they will be expected to find information online will be beneficial because it can teach them how to evaluate sources and consume information in a reliable and safe way. This will give them skills for the future where they will learn how to decipher trustworthy information to figure out if what they are learning about is true. This type of activity pushes students to find and consume digital content at the same time because they will be using strategies to find specific information online while also consuming new information that comes their way as they are researching their topic.

Research Projects

Virtual exploration can be a fun way to prepare students to learn how to find and consume digital content because it forces students to use new tools in order to navigate the digital world that they are put in. Web quests and online escape rooms can help students explore different virtual spaces where they can use their digital skills to look for clues or information that they will need to solve the problems. This is a great way to help kids get familiar with using their devices meaning they need an understanding of the content and their technology in order to solve the problems that may come up while they are completing an exploration.

Virtual Exploration

and

There are many graphic design opportunities for students where they can create flyers or posters online. They can practice manipulating graphics on a computer to make aesthetic or creative products that can provide information to a viewer or form an artistic representation. This is something that would be engaging for students to include into the classroom because the students would be able to use their creative minds to make flyers, infographics, posters, etc. that demonstrate their ability to utilize different design tools on their computer to showcase information in a pleasing way to make their future work more enticing.

Graphic Designing

Students can use digital tools to create videos, podcasts, presentations, games and more to practice creating different forms of digital software. This will help them learn how to utilize these softwares to create presentations so that they can be effective digital citizens in their future employment. Teachers can bring choice into their classrooms to give students different options for digital presentations so that they can practice using many forms of technology. This will help support them by giving the students lots of practice with demonstrating their ability to create new things from digital platforms

Online Projects

and

Have students practice collaborating on shared documents so that they can work on teamwork in a digital sense. This can include having students share documents with each other to create projects, peer edit, etc. On many editing softwares, students can collaborate by sharing their work to allow others to edit. This would be a good thing to help them practice so that in their future, they are able to share their work with others or create a shared document to allow people to look at and edit. This can prepare students for any collaborative projects that they may have in the future because they will know the basics of sharing collaborative documents with others.

Sharing Documents

In order to prepare students for future communication online, they can do discussion boards or give feedback to each other. Students can practice collaborating with each other through this where they will learn how to word what they are trying to say so that it is not misinterpreted when collaborating digitally. Teachers could also give them a place to interact with other humans online including some sort of online chat with their classmates, or they could find penpals to communicate with over an online forum. This would be a good way to teach children how to utilize online discussion boards, emailing, or other ways of communication to help them grow in their knowledge of digital learning.

Online Collaboration

and