With the growing world of tech, especially tech that is used within classrooms it is essential that teachers and students both have the knowledge of how to pick accurate articles. Understanding the grade level and subjects you will be encountering within your classroom is a great place to start when deciding how to focus on digital literacy for your specific classroom. Understanding that students are easily influenced and heavily involved in technology within their lives. When I think of my future classroom when it comes to digital literacy my two focuses will be choosing sites for students when possible and doing the background search myself, but also educating students properly to be able to do it themselves when needed (understanding that I won’t always be there for them to do this).
Personally, I have been grateful to have an amazing presentation during my university years. Kim from the GDI library in Regina came in and discussed digital literacy with us as both students and teachers. She created a presentation for us along with guiding us through activities to help us find real from fake, identifying bias, and more. I really enjoyed these presentations and learned a lot from them. It is nice having this connection to Kim and definitely something I can consider looking into for my future classroom.
There truly is an endless amount of resources out there when it comes to digital literacy. Here are just some of the many I will definitely incorporate into my classroom whenever I see fit –
CRAAP – The Craap test is definitely something I will not only discuss but keep displayed within my classroom. Having this reminder and these steps is a great way to ensure a chosen resource is credible.
Choose Quiz – I really enjoyed doing the choose quiz and it was a great interactive way to learn! When you can take these important teachings and turn it into a game it will definitely get students more engaged and allow these lessons to stick with them longer.
Oatmeal Comic – A really cool comic resource about how fake news comes up and how it is spread. This being a comic style would definitely make it a great resource to educate
Media Literacy Skills Videos – This is a great playlist on Youtube that is full of amazing short kid friendly videos on digital literacy! Something like this could easily be fit into a lesson right before students are given the free time to do research on their own.
Overall, as educators we play a large role in teaching our students the importance of choosing proper websites while doing their research ensuring they are getting credible information. It is not enough for us just to tell out students this it is also important that we teach them the proper ways and resources to do these. The curriculum allows time and space for this and creates many opportunities where these skills will be critical in using.
Hi Noah, I really like the way you organized this post. It is super organized making it easy to read! I agree that it is important for us as teachers to do research on the sites we are using before giving them to our students. I think this is a good way to make sure we are not spreading fake news, especially when our students are not yet at a point when they can fully research themselves. A connection with Kim is definitely a great resource for the classroom along with the resources you have outlined. Thank you for sharing!
It has now become difficult to get factual information online, so it is vital for both students and teachers to be digitally literate. It’s awesome to hear that you plan to do background search when providing students articles and websites. It will definitely help them!