Empowering Minds in the Digital Age – Digital Literacy

Digital literacy focuses on understanding how to navigate the digital world. For example just learning how to have basic technical skills with phones and laptops for everyday use, as well as knowing how to solve common technical issues. Another big thing in digital literacy is knowing how to search for information. We use media and technology for so many reasons and being able to research and  find things online can be a big advantage to not only save you time but also provide more knowledge and accuracy. 

NCTE’s take on digital literacy in our world has many expectations and goals that they think society should have online. One of those being 

• “Promote culturally sustaining communication and recognize the bias and privilege present in the interactions” this specific one I think has a big impact as it’s important to recognize online where we stand.

 We can value and include diverse viewpoints which helps students and teachers to learn to listen as well as respect others opinions and experiences. This would also help stereotyping as addressing privileges makes people more aware and provides understanding for others. 

In the very start of Lessons in critical thinking it is

mentioned that responsible general interest media are being replaced by a web where civil discourse is rapidly becoming less civil, meaning that society has turned to social media for news which has caused traditional media to diminish. Discussions on platforms have become a lot less respectful and polite and civil conversations are no longer the norm.

 Another site that had some good points was  Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. They discuss 6 frames, one of those being Searching as Strategic Exploration, they state that “Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding develops.” The process for finding information isn’t always easy, it’s about being flexible and adaptive online to discover understandings especially in classrooms.

Continuing to dive into digital literacy, I can say for my future classrooms it will be an advantage for my students to learn about.

As I am majoring in math and minoring in science, there are many different ways digital literacy comes into play and would be helpful in the classroom. There are many online tools to help visualize math and science concepts for example things like graphing and exploring atomic models. Tools like excel or google sheets can be used to organize and analyse data for students. Digital literacy bridges the gap between thinking and applying concepts to the real world, giving students opportunity for more engaging and practical learning.