Digital Literacy across the Curriculum handbook This handbook introduces educational practitioners to the concepts and contexts of digital literacy and supports them in developing their own practice aimed at fostering the components of digital literacy in classroom subject teaching and in real school settings. The handbook is aimed at educational practitioners and school leaders in both primary and secondary schools who are interested in creative and critical uses of technology in the classroom. Although there is increasing policy and research attention paid to issues related to digital literacy, there is still relatively little information about how to put this into practice in the classroom. The handbook is not a comprehensive ‘how to’ guide; it provides instead a rationale, some possible strategies and some practical examples for schools to draw on. This handbook is also supported by case studies of digital literacy in practice which can be downloaded here.
Promoting Multiple Literacies (Principles of New Librarianship) In my last post, I outlined 5 principles that I believe new librarianship encompasses. Today, I’m going to delve into the first principle a little further: promoting multiple literacies. Which literacies should new librarianship promote? How are the literacies inter-related? And how can they be promoted? Which literacies should new librarianship promote? There are 6 foundational literacies that I see as the root of all (or at least most) other literacies: Critical literacy views readers as active participants in the reading process and invites them to move beyond passively accepting the text’s message to question, examine, or dispute the power relations that exist between readers and authors. How are the literacies inter-related? The diagram above establishes the relationships between these foundational literacies (in my view). Critical literacy is at the core of all the other literacies. I see information literacy as being the most closely tied to critical literacy. In many ways!
Digital literacy resources for teachers and students | Timmus Limited There’s been some Twitter chat from @dajbelshaw about Digital Literacy that has sparked some discussion, notably thoughts of operationalising Digital Literacy ( see Doug’s blog – top marks for doing some thinking on a Sunday!). This reminded me about some resources that I made for Becta just before they were quangoed. Our aim was to create some useful resources for teachers and students to use, which could easily be incorporated into existing teaching practice. (Change management methods here – unfair to ask teachers to get to grips with a new concept AND change the way they work… this method only ever grabs the attention of those keen ‘early adopters’). OK so I am taking the initiative here and will upload these resources seeing as Becta are no more. Please don’t expect rocket science – I wanted to start gently – just explain to teachers and students what Digital Literacy is and offer a framework that can assist them to grasp the basics during lessons.
Developing digital literacies Digital literacies are those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society. Digital literacy looks beyond functional IT skills to describe a richer set of digital behaviours, practices and identities. What it means to be digitally literate changes over time and across contexts, so digital literacies are essentially a set of academic and professional situated practices supported by diverse and changing technologies. Digital literacies encompasses a range of other capabilities represented here in a seven elements model: Digital literacy as a developmental process Literacy is about development so understanding digital literacy in this way is important; we acquire language and become increasingly proficient over time and eventually reach a level of fluency. Defining digital literacy in your context Background About this resource This detailed guide draws on this to provide a set of practical guidance, tools and approaches.
The Never Ending Thesis Visitors & Residents – Digital – Learning – Culture Visitors and Residents is a simple way of describing the range of ways individuals can engage with the Web. It’s a continuum of ‘modes of engagement’ not two distinct categories. I’ve used V&R as a way of framing research (as have others internationally) including the development of an openly licensed mapping process which can be used to kick start conversations about how individuals or groups are using the Web in various contexts. Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagementby David S. The following outline of the Visitors and Residents idea is taken from the Jisc infokit on V&R which also highlights some of the key themes which emerged from V&R related research: (or you could try the Visitors & Residents Wikipedia page) For more than a decade Marc Prensky’s (2001) notions of digital natives and digital immigrants has had a powerful influence on how educational institutions perceive students and technology: Visitor Resident
information fluency model Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically. DIF involves knowing how digital information is different from print information; having the skills to use specialized tools for finding digital information; and developing the dispositions needed in the digital information environment. As teachers and librarians develop these skills and teach them to students, students will become better equipped to achieve their information needs. FAQDIF mapped to Common Core State Standards Common Core State Standards mapped to DIF (pdf) 1. Rubrics 2. 3. It could be argued that Competency in Ethical Use should be demonstrated by "always citing the source" and that anything less demonstrates incompetency. 4.
Defining and Developing Digital Literacy – it’s far more than Facebook! – Linking Learning Welcome to post one of two supporting the topic of digital literacy/literacies. This post focuses on introducing a few models for understanding digital literacy, or as you will come to see, literacies. The second post pins down the tricky area of embedding the development of digital literacies – our own, and our students – into our learning and life. As educators, we probably feel as though we have a fairly good understanding of literacy. We teach students how to be increasingly literate every day. If we look at the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association Declaration on Literacy in 21st Century Australia, we can see that they base their work on the definition of literacy established by UNESCO: Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written (and visual) materials associated with varying contexts. And so we move onto the focus of this article, which is that type of literacy we describe as digital literacy.