Digital Literacy
Center for Digital Literacy at Syracuse
In Australia, the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA) identifies six main processes involved in digital literacy. They are as follows:
1. Accessing information
2. Managing information
3. Evaluating information
4. Creating new understandings
5. Communicating with others
6. Using ICT appropriately
(Poore, 2011)
Using these six processes to identify how digital literacy is used and identified we can begin to find resources available that include these to help us understand digital literacy better. It also begins to allow us to find resources we can use as educators.
The Center for Digital Literacy (CDL) at Syracuse hosts a website devoted to digital literacy. It recently released From the Creative Minds of 21st Century Librarians, the first e-book published by CDL for teacher and librarians in grades K-12. This is a free downloadable resource that has lesson plans for the 21st-Century Learner.
The CDL uses an interdisciplinary collaborative research approach that is dedicated to understanding how information, technology and media literacy impacts children and adults in today’s society as well as studying the impact these have on people, different organizations and society.
This website collaborates with organizations and communities in and around the University to study students and the impact digital literacy and digital-age learning has on students. It hosts several on-going projects that anyone can look at. It also provides educators with useful surveys for their own classroom to understand the impact digital-age learning and literacy has on their students, school and community.
The CDL website could easily be used by educators to facilitate the beginning of digital literacy development in schools where it has yet to be introduced. By providing a free 200+ downloadable document with lessons plans and ideas for digital literacy, it becomes a great resource for any teacher seeking to use digital literacy a digital-media in their classroom. It can also be a resource that students look through to develop their own understanding of digital literacy and how they could turn it into a learning lesson for themselves. Remember – students are teachers, too.
Resource:
Poore, M. (2011). Digital literacy: Human flourishing and collective intelligence in a knowledge society. Australian Journal Of Language & Literacy, 34(2), 20-26.
1. Accessing information
2. Managing information
3. Evaluating information
4. Creating new understandings
5. Communicating with others
6. Using ICT appropriately
(Poore, 2011)
Using these six processes to identify how digital literacy is used and identified we can begin to find resources available that include these to help us understand digital literacy better. It also begins to allow us to find resources we can use as educators.
The Center for Digital Literacy (CDL) at Syracuse hosts a website devoted to digital literacy. It recently released From the Creative Minds of 21st Century Librarians, the first e-book published by CDL for teacher and librarians in grades K-12. This is a free downloadable resource that has lesson plans for the 21st-Century Learner.
The CDL uses an interdisciplinary collaborative research approach that is dedicated to understanding how information, technology and media literacy impacts children and adults in today’s society as well as studying the impact these have on people, different organizations and society.
This website collaborates with organizations and communities in and around the University to study students and the impact digital literacy and digital-age learning has on students. It hosts several on-going projects that anyone can look at. It also provides educators with useful surveys for their own classroom to understand the impact digital-age learning and literacy has on their students, school and community.
The CDL website could easily be used by educators to facilitate the beginning of digital literacy development in schools where it has yet to be introduced. By providing a free 200+ downloadable document with lessons plans and ideas for digital literacy, it becomes a great resource for any teacher seeking to use digital literacy a digital-media in their classroom. It can also be a resource that students look through to develop their own understanding of digital literacy and how they could turn it into a learning lesson for themselves. Remember – students are teachers, too.
Resource:
Poore, M. (2011). Digital literacy: Human flourishing and collective intelligence in a knowledge society. Australian Journal Of Language & Literacy, 34(2), 20-26.
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Digital Literacy - digitalliteracy.gov
Koltay (2011) states that there are “seven great debates in the media literacy movement” and they are:
1. Should media literacy education aim to protect children and young people from negative media influences?
2. Should media production be an essential feature of media literacy education?
3. Should media literacy focus on popular culture texts?
4. Should media literacy have a more explicitly political and/or ideological agenda?
5. Should media literacy be focused on school-based K-12 education environments?
6. Should media literacy be taught as a specialist subject or integrated within the context of existing subjects?
7. Should media literacy initiatives be supported financially by media organizations?
(Koltay, 2011)
In order to answer these questions one must look at their own core values and their values as an educator. There are numerous resources available to answer these questions and to help educators determine how they feel about each of these. A great website to begin this process is one that our own government has created.
Digital literacy is an umbrella for many different resources and tools. On digitalliteracy.gov you can find resources ranging from advanced IT, internet basics, web searching to content evaluation. You can go to their Find Educator Tools tab and select the criteria you are trying to find to narrow down the search results by skills, topic and/or what you want to search for if you know specifics.
Under Learn the Basics tab you can browse resources for using software and applications, using the internet, communicating on the web and child online protection. All of these links provide more resources for use on digital literacy. There is also a section for finding news stories on digital literacy and a collaboration section that allows users to suggest topics and other new resources.
This website has a plethora of information and this is only a short overview of what is available. This is definitely a website that should be put into ever educators tool box for references when using digital literacy.
“The concept of literacy includes visual, electronic and digital forms of expression and communication. Modern literacy has broadened ins cope, as it is tied to technology and culture and the ability to become and remain literate requires a long term commitment” (Koltay, 2011). In order to stay ‘literate’ and ‘up-to-date’ on anything in education now requires a long term commitment. We will continue to see digital literacy expand and become part of our curriculum in the schools as it becomes more and more necessary to address the issues we are finding with the internet and privacy and students and websites.
Resource:
Koltay, T. (2011). The media and the literacies: media literacy, information literacy, digital literacy. Media, Culture & Society, 33(2), 211-221.
1. Should media literacy education aim to protect children and young people from negative media influences?
2. Should media production be an essential feature of media literacy education?
3. Should media literacy focus on popular culture texts?
4. Should media literacy have a more explicitly political and/or ideological agenda?
5. Should media literacy be focused on school-based K-12 education environments?
6. Should media literacy be taught as a specialist subject or integrated within the context of existing subjects?
7. Should media literacy initiatives be supported financially by media organizations?
(Koltay, 2011)
In order to answer these questions one must look at their own core values and their values as an educator. There are numerous resources available to answer these questions and to help educators determine how they feel about each of these. A great website to begin this process is one that our own government has created.
Digital literacy is an umbrella for many different resources and tools. On digitalliteracy.gov you can find resources ranging from advanced IT, internet basics, web searching to content evaluation. You can go to their Find Educator Tools tab and select the criteria you are trying to find to narrow down the search results by skills, topic and/or what you want to search for if you know specifics.
Under Learn the Basics tab you can browse resources for using software and applications, using the internet, communicating on the web and child online protection. All of these links provide more resources for use on digital literacy. There is also a section for finding news stories on digital literacy and a collaboration section that allows users to suggest topics and other new resources.
This website has a plethora of information and this is only a short overview of what is available. This is definitely a website that should be put into ever educators tool box for references when using digital literacy.
“The concept of literacy includes visual, electronic and digital forms of expression and communication. Modern literacy has broadened ins cope, as it is tied to technology and culture and the ability to become and remain literate requires a long term commitment” (Koltay, 2011). In order to stay ‘literate’ and ‘up-to-date’ on anything in education now requires a long term commitment. We will continue to see digital literacy expand and become part of our curriculum in the schools as it becomes more and more necessary to address the issues we are finding with the internet and privacy and students and websites.
Resource:
Koltay, T. (2011). The media and the literacies: media literacy, information literacy, digital literacy. Media, Culture & Society, 33(2), 211-221.
I stumbled upon this video and felt it was very empowering and makes you think. It may belong better under another tab, but for the sake of everyone seeing it, I put it here for now.