Digital Literacy
Published on Nov 20, 2015
No Description
MORE DECKS TO EXPLORE
7 Strategies to Write a Speech with Ease
84550 views
10 ways
45135 views
TXLA Wrap-up 2015
9444 views
Techno Teaching
26913 views
How to make a portfolio
16995 views
What is Creativity
67805 views
PRESENTATION OUTLINE
WE'LL LOOK AT THREE ASPECTS
1. WHAT IS DIGITAL LITERACY?
2. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
3. WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR EDUCATORS?
1. WHAT IS DIGITAL LITERACY?
Photo by Martin Pettitt
"The ability to use information and communication technologies to find, understand, evaluate, create a and communicate digital information, an ability that requires both cognitive and technical skills"
OITP, 2013
Office for Information Technology Policy's Digital LIteracy Taskforce, 2013.
This definition stresses technical skills - the ability to use digital tools, software and websites effectively and efficiently.
The ability to use search engines, social media, RSS feeds, blogs, online journals, email, chat, browser functions, curation tools, and whatever else it is you need to use to achieve your ends.
It also stresses cognitive skills.
The ability to assess multiple information streams, to sort, organise, categorise and judge material. The ability to remember where to look for things. To connect ideas. To know how to search. To think laterally, logically and critically.
And it stresses specific critical literacies.
Sourcing information.
Evaluation and understanding it.
Communicating.
Networking and creating.
It applies to digital tools. Everything from academic journal searches, through to youtube, and social media. It encompasses search strategies, as well as the creation of electronic artefacts.
Flickr, and mozilla popcorn. Summon and skype. Managing information using curation software, and managing your own domain name.
Digital literacy is not a break with traditional critical literacies.
It is an extension.
Many of the critical skills are those which we seek to develop in offline contexts.
Photo by M.L. Ullate
Driving, for example, has literacies.
Spatial awareness, vehicle control, attentiveness, knowledge of the rules of the road, and the ability to read traffic, dangers, and the path ahead.
Photo by mytoenailcameoff
LETS COMPARE DIGITAL LITERACY TO A TRADITIONAL ONE
ARE LIBRARY AND DIGITAL LITERACIES ARE SIMILAR?
Photo by Marcus Hansson
UNDERSTANDING CATALOGUES, CLASSIFICATIONS, INDEXES AND ARCHIVES
THESE ARE KEY LIBRARY LITERACIES, AND KEY FOR THEIR EFFECTIVE USE.
Photo by Boston Public Library
KNOWING WHO TO ASK
KNOWING WHO CAN HELP YOU, AND WHAT TO ASK.
Photo by Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa
KNOWING WHAT THE TOOLS ARE
WHERE THEY ARE, WHAT THEY CAN DO AND HOW TO USE THEM TO FIND INFORMATION.
Photo by Reeding Lessons
KNOWING WHAT SOURCES TO TRUST
KNOWING WHO AND WHAT TO ACCEPT, QUESTION AND REFUTE
Photo by Steve Rhodes
Digital literacy is built on the same skills. It's a extension of the literacies we already practice.
Technical knowledge of tools, knowledge of procedures, knowing who to ask, and sifting and sorting though the facts, figures, truths and fictions. Being fluent in the technical, social and information landscapes of digital environments.
Having mechanisms for coping with abundant information.
These are skills digital and traditional literacies share.
THERE ARE SOME DIFFERENCES...
Photo by William Brawley
In online contexts, knowledge, people, perspectives and opinions are abundant. More abundant, and available than at any time in history.
Tools are plentiful, powerful, and content is constant, and can be overwhelming.
The rate of change, of tools and of knowledge, is rapid.
Sourcing and assessment are more distributed,networked and reliant on others online than they are offline.
Photo by Sue Waters
This abundance of information means that sourcing, selecting and sifting information are key.
Our ability to rapidly assess the quality of what we access helps us cope with the quantity.
Our technical skill with tools, our technical literacy, helps hugely here.
We rely on groups of people to help us assess, filter, sort and locate resources.
We rely on trusted sources, the people we know, the services and sites we use to help us winnow out what's information from what's inessential.
We use our digital literacy to build and exploit these networks or sources, sites, people and technologies.
Photo by xavi talleda
Abundance, scope and access are perhaps the key differences between digital and traditional critical literacies.
The amount of information available, the unparalleled ability to share, communicate and delegate our assessments, experiences, artefacts and ideas across a range of people.
The unparalleled power and availability of the tools with which we do that.
Photo by ~Bob~West~
Our capacity to use digital tools well, to evaluate sources of information rapidly, and access resources efficiently, are key aspects of digital literacy.
In a knowledge abundant world, the abilities to locate, assess, adapt and deploy knowledges become increasingly key skills.
Accessing knowledge is no longer a challenge. Managing it is.
Digital literacy is the art and skill of managing abundant information efficiently, effectively and rapidly.
DIGITAL LITERACY PREPARES OUR STUDENTS
FOR THE DEMANDS OF INFORMATION ABUNDANT PROFESSIONAL CONTEXTS.
Photo by ecstaticist
AS THE KNOWLEDGE LANDSCAPE CHANGES, ACCELERATES AND EVOLVES
OUR LITERACIES MUST BECOME MORE DIGITAL TO COPE WITH CHANGE.
Photo by Shawn-Tron
THE KNOWLEDGE CONTEXTS OUR STUDENTS ENGAGE WITH
ARE LIKELY TO BE INFORMAL, ONGOING, AND OMNIPRESENT.
Photo by thomcochrane
Our students will require both technical and critical skills as profession-driven, ongoing, lifelong, informal learning becomes increasingly central to their professional lives.
Lifelong, informal, networked learning tends to happen, more and more online.
Digital literacy underpins the skills these environments require.
We teach critical literacies to prepare our students for higher order thinking, to develop learner autonomy, and to try to prepare them for the professional and personal worlds they will deploy their skills in.
We teach digital literacy for the same reasons.
EMPLOYERS ARE INCREASINGLY CALLING FOR
SELF DIRECTED,DIGITALLY LITERATE CRITICAL THINKERS
Photo by zubrow
We know that students are actively looking for their tutors to demonstrate digital literacy, and digital tools, in pedagogically sound ways, as part and parcel of their learning.
Students both want and need this critical literacy guidance.
In an information abundant world, where access to information is no longer limited, assessment, filtering and managing information become key skills.
Part of education lies in developing the skills to navigate theses contexts.
Student technology use, socially, may be endemic, fluent, and native.
But it may not be translating into educational use.
"Students did not appear to understand the potential for technology to support learning. Instead they looked to their lecturers..." (Margaryan et al 2011)
Digital literacies can, and probably should be taught.
We know that educators are the key drivers of student technology uptake in education.
More than student age, demographic, or discipline, it's tutor and institutional technology usage in the classroom that drives student technology use for learning.
Digital literacy allows our students to protect themselves in their new, open, and at times dangerous online worlds.
The world online is permanent, archived, and endlessly copy able.
Our students are permanently connected.
What constitutes best practice, and safe passage is something to be taught, learned and practised.
Photo by Leo Reynolds
In both these senses, we have a duty to model safe, responsible and effective strategies for online engagement.
To model good etiquette, effective critical engagement, and focused educational strategies for leveraging technology in learning.
TO MODEL GOOD LITERACY SKILLS FOR OUR STUDENTS...
WE MUST DEVELOP AND DEPLOY THEM OURSELVES.
Photo by chris.corwin
WE NEED TO DISPLAY AND MODEL TECHNICAL AND CRITICAL LITERACY
AND ADD CLEAR VALUE TO OUR OWN AND OUR STUDENT'S DIGITAL PRACTICES
Photo by Shermeee
Knowing how to run a blog puts a printing press into your classroom's hands that can publish to anywhere in the world, at anytime, on any topic, and invites the world to respond, push back and engage in return.
Knowing how to build a network of peers on social media makes available a flow of expertise, advice, ideas and resources that you can customise, tailor and maintain according to your needs.
Photo by Travlr
Knowing how to use an rss reader, like feedly, allows you to make the web deliver what you need.
Knowing how to blog, manage a domain, use graphics and video tools and sites makes you a producer, rather than consumer.
Knowing how to curate makes you a net native and and archivist.
Knowing where and how to look for information opens up a knowledge vista unparalleled in our experience.
Photo by dolescum
FOR DIGITAL LITERACY RESOURCES CHECK MOOCIE.ORG/LITERACY
AND PLEASE TWEET AND BLOG YOUR THOUGHTS - #MOOCIE
