Month: November 2022

Screenshot taken from Stanford news

As teachers, we need to teach students about fake news when teaching them about digital literacy. Students have access to social media and technology, so they can easily spread fake news if they are not taught skills to decipher between real and fake news. For example, in The Smell Test: Educators can counter fake news with information literacy. Here’s how article by Linda Jacobson, it states that “students at an elementary school admitted that their reports of creepy clowns wielding weapons – really just construction workers with tools – were not true” (para. 9). This can cause worry and panic, resulting in emergency services being called and taken away from real emergencies.

In the future, I will be teaching elementary students, and right now, I am pre-interning in a grade 2/3 split classroom. Teaching digital literacy for this age group will differ greatly from teaching digital literacy to high school age students; teaching digital literacy to elementary students should be introductory. It is very necessary to bring awareness to the topic at a young age as students/children have access to technology much younger nowadays, so it is important that students begin to understand how to be safe and responsible online. They need to be able taught to be weary of what they are seeing, as well as taught to question and think about what they are seeing or reading.

At these young ages, one has to be careful about how they teach the information to students. The information needs to be age appropriate, so students can understand. Further, teachers need to teach students without using fear as we do not want to scare children away from the digital world. In an age appropriate manner, students need to be taught to not trust easily online. We need to not just accept what we read on the internet. Further, we need to avoid immediately sharing news you see online. One should always take at least a few minutes (or longer) to think and consider what they just read before choosing to share it in an online space.

The curriculum needs to be adapted to include digital literacy specifically. As of right now, teachers are not required to cover digital literacy. It is up to an individual teacher’s discretion whether or not they cover the topic in their classroom. Looking at the Saskatchewan health curriculum from grades one to five, a teacher can discuss risk and safety regarding digital literacy. The outcome and indicators are: USC1.4 e and i, USC2.5 a and h, USC3.5 a, USC4.4 d, and USC5.6. From grades one to four, there is no specific mention of digital literacy. These outcomes and indicators discuss risks, so one could discuss the risks of not being aware of digital literacy and fake news. USC5.6 mainly focuses on safety in regard to peer pressure; a teacher could discuss how we need to think hard before sharing online, and we should not just share an article or post that we are not sure about because our friends are or our friends told us to share it.

In terms of the NCTE framework for grades one to five, students would need to focus on being able to “participate effectively and critically in a networked world” and being able to “explore … across a wide variety of inclusive texts and tools/modalities.” We need to teach them the proper ways to interact and network online, as well as provide them experience in different age appropriate online environments, so when they are out of school and exposed to technology, students have the knowledge and strategies of how to be safe and responsible online.

For elementary students, the activity done in class would be beneficial as it was a fun way to engage students. As mentioned in the EdCan fact sheet, this will provide a more meaningful experience with more absorbed knowledge for children.

Teachers are also not alone! Librarians can be a great resource for digital literacy when they are properly trained in that area.

For this blog post, I opted to do an Hour of Code option on Code.org. This activity was designed for grade two students, and it involved making a little dinosaur video game. There are also multiple other activities available for various grade levels. These Hour of Code activities have step-by-step video instructions that you can watch first before completing a task, but they are not mandatory as there are written instructions on each task as well. While going through the activity, I watched the step-by-step guides for the first two tasks, and then I opted to use the written instructions for the rest of the tasks. In the classroom, I think the videos would be beneficial for the grade two students so they can visualize the process and the steps before completing the tasks. Further, after each task, you get to test out the dinosaur game with the new coded additions.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of coding. I used to have to do in in high school, and it never peaked my interest. However, I think that students would enjoy the Hour of Code activities as a fun, new, and different activity. Also, I think coding is so important to teach students as we continue to develop and use digital things more. Additionally, it could give students insight for a future career plan if they develop a passion for coding. If I had the resources in my future classroom, I would attempt to incorporate coding into some aspect of my teaching.

This week in EDTC300, we cybersleuthed another classmate to see what we could uncover about this other person. I cybersleuthed Kaelynn LePoudre this week, and I found accounts of hers on three social media sites, as well as her online ePortfolio. The three social media sites were Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. As I know Kaelynn personally, I follow her on her private social media accounts, so I tried to only look at public information to get the perspective of an outsider trying to look in. From these accounts, I was able to gather information like her birthday, her relationship status (as well as her significant other’s name), her hometown, her high school, and her current city. Further, I was able to find out where she attends university, where she works, and her job title. Lastly, I found out her interests like nature, photography, hiking, gardening, and painting from her ePortfolio. From my sleuthing, I found out that once you can add something to a google search of someone’s name, like a hometown, you have more access to any public news articles or documents that feature the person’s name. For instance, I found Kaelynn’s track and field results from 2015.

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On social media, most people like to hide the bad. As per the article, “Instagram is passed off as real life,” instead of just the highlight reel that it is. People post the good moments and make their lives look as ideal as possible. Every day we are exposed to perceptions of others’ lives on various social media sites, and this can be detrimental if we are in a tough spot ourselves. 

Further, social media posts can ruin lives, even just one, as stated by Jon Ronson in his TED Talk. They are forever, and they are exposed to the entire world. This can cause extremely poor mental health, as well as lost jobs and alienation from those around the person who posted something viewed as bad. Even if the post is a miscommunication, the damage is instant and lasting.