Enhancing Digital Literacy in the Classroom

Enhancing Digital Literacy in the Classroom

When I was in high school, I was amazed by many of the digital features, tools, and resources that I was learning about and taught how to use. In today’s classroom, the students are now introducing their teachers to these advances in the digital world. That is not to say that every modern student is more digitally adept than their teachers, but it is to say that the bridge of access has been laid and students are diving head first into the abyss of the digital world with little to no care about the consequences that could follow. Their lack of experience and caution to the wind attitude is where the importance of teaching digital literacy lies.

Image from Programming Librarian

As a future English teacher, I believe that teaching students about digital literacy will mirror lessons on improving overall literacy and processing ability. Students should be coming away from these lessons with a better understanding of identifying fake news and why it exists in these spaces. Students should be able to explain the motivations behind fake news and what it can lead to. During my pre-internship, I observed an AP B10 English class that was reading Animal Farm by George Orwell (which was an allegory for the actual Soviet Union) and using it to study the Soviet Union and communist practices. The teacher used the invasion of Ukraine as a way to further explore how Russia uses their state-sponsored media to spread disinformation about the war in order to justify it and gain support. On the first day, I observed the teacher showing the class some news footage from Russia trying to downplay the war (calling it a conflict), and videos of independent news agencies being raided and shut down for essentially not reporting state-approved news. The class then watched a speech from President Zelensky as he describes the scenes in Ukraine and the damage that is being done. The video was also intercut with footage from the streets of Ukraine that gave a first-hand look at the atrocities committed in the streets. In comparing the videos, the class connected the totalitarian tactics they found in Animal Farm, to what they saw in the Russian videos as a way to explain why they believe they were being fed fake news by the Russian videos.

Creating connections between texts and information, and digging deeper are some of the best strategies to combat the overflow of fake news in our digital world. As Claire Wardle explains, “Every time we passively accept information without double-checking, or share a post, image or video before we’ve verified it, we’re adding to the noise and confusion.” Students need to be encouraged to also dig deeper when investigating an issue or current world event and compare the information they receive from different sites. What is matching up? What is different? Why is that so, and what motivations cause certain sites to report or leave out details of an event? Can you identify the perspective/bias a particular news site leans towards? However, there are more direct ways to identify the legitimacy of these sources. Dr. Alec Couros and Dr. Katia Hildebrandt suggest using “information verification websites (e.g. FactsCan, org, Snopes, and Hoax Slayer)” to combat the legitimacy of these news sites so students may not be fooled again.

It seems that the average person today is less worried about finding the truth and more concerned with convincing you of their reality.

Having students investigate the content of these news sites and stories is also how we combat headline reading, the modern-day version of judging a book by its cover. Why only read a headline when we have access to infinite information? It seems that the average person today is less worried about finding the truth and more concerned about convincing you of their reality. The Thompson Rivers University library says that the first way you should try and determine a bias in the reporting of an article is to “Compare headlines and story content.” Teachers should be pushing students to explore resources and opinions in order to create informed opinions that can be credibly backed up. Creating informed stances on events from multiple sources is not just a well-received suggestion, but a curricular outcome in B10 English, as CR B10.2 states that students should be able to, “View, interpret, and report on ideas and information from more than one source to develop and support positions on various topics related to the course including identity, social responsibility, and personal agency.” The more we investigate, the more informed we become and in turn, we become more compassionate towards others.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *