Digital Literacy

Children are growing up in a digital world. More and more schools are bringing in tablets and laptops for students to use. Digital literacy is a very important part to using these devices. We as teachers need to make sure we are teaching our students the proper way to use these tools. We need to teach students how to navigate these devices and how important it is that we use them correctly. We use digital resources to find and consume digital content, create things digitally such as Blogs, and communicating with others. When students are searching for things digitally, they must decide what is best to be used out of tons of different resources. Digital text has more things incorporated in it then a normal textbook. Students will come across extra links in the readings that may contain extra text or videos. They must then decide if this is something they need to click on or if they just continue reading. They need to learn how to decide what they should do with this extra information. Students must also be shown how to type in key words when searching things on the internet and know how to pick a good site for their info. Students need to be taught about digital content such as emails, blogs, and Power Points. They need to know that these things need to be done with safety since more people have access to it than if it was printed work. Students need to that their privacy is important, and they need to be responsible when sharing things on the internet with others. Some pros to Digital Literacy are knowledge available at your fingertips and network with anyone anywhere in the world. You can also collaborate with others easier. Some cons are information overload. The web is filled with millions of different ideas on a topic. They can fall victim to cyber bullying. WE want students to be active using these resources. Such as collaborating with others, talk about their work together, and sharing ideas with each other. We as teachers also need to teach students digital citizenship. They need to know that everything they do or share is important and that they need to make good choices. They need to know about their digital footprint. They need to be made aware that not everything they find on the internet is true or accurate. There are many apps out there available to us to use digitally. There are story telling apps to help students share things with each other, there are games we can play with students as a class to be fun but also go over content they are learning, and there are reading apps they can use to help them build reading skills or just be able to read a book digitally. All these things can not be taught to the students overnight. We need to make sure we are constantly reminding students of how important things are when it comes to digital literacy. The cost associated with this just depends on what type of devices the school chooses to go with. It can range anywhere from $100 to $500 depending on the product purchased. Some apps also cost money. Teachers definitely need to do research and try to find as many good apps for free that they can use with their class.

I have earned that there are so many different things that come along with letting our students go digital in the classroom. We need to make sure we are doing our part to keep them informed and knowledgeable about all the things that go along with digital literacy. There are so many wonderful and fun things we can do digitally with our students to make learning fun. I hope in my future class I am able to implement this into my classroom.