Teachers, the best and most effective tool for teaching and learning is still you. Please don’t forget that your personality, your strengths and weaknesses, your passions and interests, and your ability to reach your students are what we need most right now, and always, in education.
As I recenlty planned and participated in professional development for teachers, I learned a few handfuls bucketloads of important critical things about the importance of digital literacy. The PD was focused on using technology to create equitable access to instruction for various populations of students: in person, students in blended models, and distance learning.
While we introduced some great tools for learning, and taught teachers how to use them, we overlooked the fact that several of them did not really understand some basic elements of digital literacy. Meaning they did not know what it meant to open a new tab, what a refresh button is, or that files can be stored in a cloud. With all of this pivoting to online and digital instruction, now is a good reflect on what we think we know about digital literacy.
What Digital Literacy is Not
Having the capability to toggle between screens on your cell phone, play a video game, and conduct a google search, does not award you the title of being digitally literate. In fact, I would argue that a lot of us aren’t as literate as we think we are when it comes to the digital world. Most of us were just becoming literate in the basics of reading and writing when the world wide web started to be a thing.
People, this was only a little over twenty years ago. My junior year in high school I was taking a typing course on a typewriter. You guys, I am still super young!
In my experience as a teacher, some kids have had the luxury of having had some digital literacy education, but this is mostly in the form of typing and coding classes. Our little school has an amazing technology and media teacher who introduced Virtual Reality sets as a crazy fun tool for learning and instruction.
My point is, everyone is having to use technology almost everyday now to teach and to learn. Are we doing due diligence in providing the basic, foundational understandings of digital literacy that every teacher and student must have in order to fully access the awesome capabilities and potential that technology gives us?
An Honest Assessment
As with any content, we should have a good idea of what our students already know or don’t know. The following is just a handful of discoveries I’ve made over the past few weeks as I’ve integrated more technology in my work, and at home.
- Fewer people understand technology as a tool for solving problems.
- Not many people understand what is meant by digital literacy.
- Many people need basic digital literacy instruction, including myself.
- Students and teachers need instruction on the purposes and tools of email.
- Families and teachers need instruction on video conferencing tools, and their purpose
- Everyone needs instruction on the purpose of technology in our lives and in education.
What Digital Literacy Is
When we understand that technology is more than our computers, we can begin to grasp the fact that we are in control of it, not the other way around. We use technology. We create tools to help us solve problems. Yay humans!
New literacies, like digital, are changing what it means to be literate, and at a pretty quick pace. Reading and writing skills are just not enough to participate in today’s conversations.
Edweek.org has a great article on what digital literacy is, and it’s not simple:
“Digital literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.”
American Library Association’s digital-literacy task force
As a good reader, I know to look for keywords in that definition. In order to be digitally literate, we must be able to FIND information, EVALUATE information, CREATE information, and COMMUNICATE information. Let’s just say digital literacy is complicated. Which is why we need to be teaching it.
Digital Literacy instruction is the foundation for equitable access.
Equitable access means more than simply providing devices and connectivity. It also means giving every student the opportunity to learn from teachers who understand how to use technology to both enhance learning and create quality learning experiences for students with special needs.
International Society for Technology in Education
The key here is that students, all students, need the opportunity to learn from teachers who understand how to effectively use technology as a problem-solving tool. Not only that, but the tool should enhance your instruction. Meaning your instruction could still be taught without it, but the technology is making it better. It should not be the reason to teach the lesson. I love Kahoot and Flipgrid, but I know better than to plan a lesson around the tool.
Becoming a Digitally Literate Teacher
So where do we start? How about where we always do. Introduce the vocabulary. We all use the academic language associated with the digital world on the daily, but do we know it? Could you explain what an app is? Can you put into layman’s terms what a window is, or how email works?
If you are not a computer science nerd, or whatever that title is now, you might struggle a bit to explain all these terms. So, because I can’t really do it either, I have created this free digital literacy vocab printable for you to use to get things started. Use it to create your own word wall for reference, so we can all begin to create a more equitably accessible world full of digitally literate people!
Teaching the vocabulary is just the beginning. Below you will find three of my essential resources and systems for learning digital literacy as a teacher. This knowledge helps me be better equipped to teach families and students to be digitally literate.
Excellent article on why we must teach Digital Literacy and 21st Century Skills
The Center for Human Technology is working to realign technology with humanity’s best interest.
A Digital Citizenship Scope and Sequence, with lots of free resources
Teaching Your Students Digital Literacy Through Citizenship
What better way to teach something so complicated than to recruit help. Let your students help you help them. Teach them what it means to be a digital citizen! Thankfully, do a quick search for digital citizenship lessons and you will be off and running. Commonsense.org is my favorite resource right now for teaching digital citizenship because it offers complete lesson plans for every grade level!
Students need to know that they have a voice, their thinking matters, and they are welcome to participate in a global world. As a citizen, we have certain responsibilities, the most important being literacy. We have a responsibility to understand one another and to communicate with empathy, clarity, and purpose.
Through citizenship, students will begin to understand their roles as members of our new and changing world. A very big part of that world is digital.