How do we help our students become digitally literate?

With our society’s increasing dependance on the digital world, there is a great need for digital literacy program within education. I am a Middle Years teacher, an age that I think is crucial for developing digital literacy and critical thinking skills. I see digital literacy falling within the subjects of health and ELA. In health, you could teach students about the dangers of the internet and cyberbullying. In ELA, students could learn how to think critically on the internet as well as how to spot fake news.

Digital literacy is just one crucial aspect of literacy in general. Literacy is often thought of simply as the ability to read or write, but its definition expands further into general forms of communication. UNESCO says that “literacy is now understood as a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world.”

The NCTE framework suggests nine different elements of literacy skills in the digital age:

1. Participate effectively and critically in a networked world
2. Explore and engage critically, thoughtfully, and across a wide variety of inclusive texts and tools/modalities
3. Consume, curate, and create actively across contexts
4. Advocate for equitable access to and accessibility of texts, tools, and information
5. Build intentional global and cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought
6. Promote culturally sustaining communication and recognize the bias and privilege present in the interactions
7. Examine the rights, responsibilities, and ethical implications of the use and creation of information
8. Determine how and to what extent texts and tools amplify one’s own and others’ narratives as well as counter unproductive narratives
9. Recognize and honour the multilingual literacy identities and culture experiences individuals bring to learning environments and provide opportunities to promote, amplify, and encourage these differing variations of language (dialect, jargon, register)

Each of the nine areas define what it means for our students to be digitally literate. These elements should be implemented throughout a variety of grades and subjects. While there are ways that these can be connected to the curriculum, digital literacy is not it’s own subject and therefore it can be different to find useful teaching resources on the topic. Here are some that I would likely use in my future classes:

1. TED-Ed has created 16 videos to help people hone their media literacy skills. These videos connect well with the NTCE framework. While they seem to be aimed towards adults, they are appropriate for older middle to high school students.

2. Canada’s Centre for Digital Media Literacy created a fun game for students to test out how well they can spot fake news. This is a great tool to engage middle years learners and have them start thinking about how to spot misinformation online.

3. There is a great media bias tool by Ad Fontes Media that can teach students about media bias and if their news sources lean a certain way.

Teaching digital literacy is an ongoing process, but it is sure a lot easier with the right resources and tools.