From Written to Digital: The New Literacy

Both the 21st-century economy and the careers needed to fuel it are changing at an unprecedented rate. Students must be prepared for nonlinear careers, pivoting to match the ever-changing work landscape. We thus need to rethink not just how we teach our students but what we teach our students. The people who were comfortable at this humanities-technology intersection helped to create the human-machine symbiosis that is at the core of this story. In his book about the history of the digital revolution, Walter Isaacson contends that the major innovations of the digital revolution—from the first general-purpose computer to the transistor to the iPhone—were all created by individuals who understood how to synthesize the humanities with technology. Yet even though there is much focus in higher education on how we teach using technology (e.g., e-texts, flipped classrooms, adaptive learning, personalized learning), what we teach about technology is just as important. <? Learning Digitally Notes

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For teachers just starting out with educational technology, the task at hand can sometimes seem daunting. Even though tools such as the SAMR model can help, the plethora of choices available can prove paralyzing, frequently resulting in ongoing substitutive uses of the technology that block, rather than enable, more ambitious transformative goals. The approach below is designed to help overcome this barrier, and is inspired in its form by Alexander’s notion of Design Patterns -- a clearly structured solution to a recurring design problem -- which has been applied to education scenarios by Bergin et al. The Definition Of Digital Literacy The Definition Of Digital Literacy by Terry Heick When we think of digital literacy, we usually think of research–finding, evaluating, and properly crediting digital sources. The “research” connotation makes sense, as it is the sheer volume of sources and media forms on the “internet” that stand out.

MobyMax Review for Teachers MobyMax is a standards-aligned K-8 learning platform for math, literacy, science, and social studies equipped with adaptive tests, test-prep lessons, interactive whiteboard activities, and motivational tools. MobyMax also features specific state test-prep activities. Unique features include multiple SSO login options, teachers' ability to assign badges for performance, student goal-setting, student-teacher messaging, and teacher-initiated class contests. The site also has a Wall feature where teachers can post class messages, assignments, events, and polls. Based on an initial adaptive test, teachers can select lessons for each student. Subsequent tests monitor students' skill growth and "learning velocity," the tool's term for the rate at which each student learns.

What Is Digital Literacy? While the word “literacy” alone generally refers to reading and writing skills, when you tack on the word “digital” before it, the term encompasses much, much more. Sure, reading and writing are still very much at the heart of digital literacy. But given the new and ever-changing ways we use technology to receive and communicate information, digital literacy also encompasses a broader range of skills—everything from reading on a Kindle to gauging the validity of a website or creating and sharing YouTube videos. The term is so broad that some experts even stay away from it, preferring to speak more specifically about particular skills at the intersection of technology and literacy. The American Library Association’s digital-literacy task force offers this definition: “Digital literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.”

BrainPOP Jr. Review for Teachers BrainPOP Jr. is a subscription-based educational video, game, and activity site for students in kindergarten through third grade. The main page is divided into math, reading and writing, science, social studies, health, and arts and technology. First, students choose one of the six main subjects. When they click the subject, it gets broken into more specific categories. Under each category, individual video topic and activities pages appear. Students can learn about everything from telling time, internet safety, and ancient Rome to dental care and getting lice (what it's like, not how to get it!).

Storybird Review for Teachers Storybird is an online social platform (and Chrome app) for storytelling. Students act as authors, pairing their words with site-curated, licensed art. Students can compose text, but they can't upload their own art; they must use Storybird's curated collection in their picture books and illustrated poems. After signing up or logging in with teacher-provided credentials, students can read published stories or create their own. They can repost favorite stories to their own Storybird account feeds, "heart" stories they like, and comment on them. Flocabulary Review for Teachers Flocabulary is an online platform that delivers educational hip-hop songs, videos, and supplemental activities for kids in grades K-12. Flocabulary covers math, vocabulary, language arts, social studies, science, and life skills and offers a weekly news update, The Week in Rap (or The Week in Rap Junior for younger kids). Lessons contain music videos and clickable lyrics that can be played at three different speeds.

ReadWorks Review for Teachers ReadWorks is a free website offering resources for differentiated reading instruction, specifically comprehension. There's a range of nonfiction texts, activities, and assessments as well as an online platform teachers can use to track student progress. After signing up as a teacher, click on Class Admin from the top menu and create a class. Teachers can add students manually or via Google Classroom by sharing a class code. Using the drop-down menus, teachers will find all that they need to get started: class demo videos, classroom protocols, tips, and suggestions that will make it easy to implement or improve reading instruction. Once classes are created, teachers can begin curating reading assignments by grade level, Lexile level, StepReads availability, and whether or not audio is included.

Critical Thinking: The Key to Digital Literacy – Fishtree How should we define digital literacy? Educational leader and PhD student, Lynnea West, explains her research on the principle ways of redefining education through technology, using digital literacy as a key driver: “I would hope that moving forward, we just call them ‘literacies’ and they’re just considered essential components of good literacy practices. We’re living in an online world and digital tools are our reality, so literacy in the broader context is just how we make meaning of what we’re reading or interpreting and how that joins together with our place in the world.” The concept of digital literacy has been broken down in numerous attempts to define what constitutes a ‘digital native’ and what skills are central to our understanding and interpretation of digital content.

Helping Students Become Better Online Researchers Your students are probably Internet authorities. When it comes to Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, they might know far more than you. All of that time spent tweeting and chatting doesn’t necessarily translate to deep learning though. As students progress through school, online research skills become more important — for good reason. Both college professors and employers will expect young people to know their way around the academic side of the Internet; a skill that for many students, needs to be taught.

How to Maximize the Impact of Email Newsletters With Content Curation One of the best ways to build trust with your audience is by opening a two-way communication channel. Social media has provided this for a long time now. Everyone can now tweet, message, and tag brands through channels they hang out on. When you’re on the business side of this interaction, there’s a problem (and it’s not quite obvious): these platforms dictate the rules of your engagement with the users.

The Every Student Succeeds Act: An ESSA Overview Published: March 31, 2016 In this video, Education Week's Alyson Klein unpacks the details of the new law and what it means for schools, educators, and students. The new Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law Dec. 10, 2015, rolls back much of the federal government's big footprint in education policy, on everything from testing and teacher quality to low-performing schools. And it gives new leeway to states in calling the shots. That's a big change from the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which ESSA replaced and updated. Which Digital Citizenship Skills Do Students Need Most? Dig in to new research and get tips on how to make your digital citizenship instruction more relevant and effective. Digital citizenship has emerged as a top priority in U.S. schools and classrooms. In fact, six out of 10 educators are teaching some kind of digital citizenship skill every month. To find out more about this growing effort, we've completed a first-of-its-kind research report, The Common Sense Census: Inside the 21st-Century Classroom. This research gives a unique window into today's classrooms, including the challenges and opportunities teachers see in managing technology and using it to enhance student learning. Though digital citizenship encompasses a range of skills and habits of mind, we've observed that often teachers and schools design digital citizenship instruction with a protectionist approach, emphasizing anti-cyberbullying education and internet safety.

4 Ways to Improve Digital Equity in Your Classroom When we consider students' perspectives, small changes can have a big impact. As a former middle school teacher who taught in a lower-income, majority-minority school equipped with lots of "high tech" tools, I often wondered about equity when it came to edtech. For me, students' access to tech at school wasn't the issue. However, I knew that things were a lot different once students left my classroom. Because the majority of my students lacked internet access at home, I never assigned homework that required technology.