Digital Literacy

 

What Are Digital Literacy Skills?

Digital literacy encompasses a number of 21st century skills related to using technology effectively and appropriately.

Because digital literacy and citizenship are gaining importance across the country, many states have developed specific digital literacy standards and courses.

1. Information Literacy

Today’s students rely on the Internet as a primary source of information for both school and personal use.

That’s why it’s important that you teach students how to evaluate information to ensure it’s accurate.

To teach information literacy, focus on effective ways to evaluate the quality and credibility of information and cover learning strategies that yield more credible results.

2. Ethical Use of Digital Resources

While your students may know they need to cite information from books, they could forget that they need to cite information online as well.

Talk to your students about intellectual property, copyrighted material, and the proper way to reference the information.

It’s especially important to note that copying text from a website is plagiarism just like stealing text from a book.

3. Understanding Digital Footprints

A digital footprint is all of the information a person passively leaves and actively shares about themselves online, especially on social media sites. Text, images, multimedia, cookies, browsing histories, IP addresses, passwords, and even Internet service providers all make up a person’s digital footprint.

Your students spend a lot of time online and may not always think about the implications of what they do. In your digital literacy lessons, discuss the consequences of what students share online.

It’s especially important to note that students can’t assume anything is private online. Whether it’s the new phone number they registered or the tweet they just wrote, it’s all available online.  

4. Protecting Yourself Online

With so much information available online, your students need to understand the basics of Internet safety.

Creating strong passwords, using privacy settings, and knowing what not to share on social media will start them on the right foot.

You can also delve into more technical parts of privacy, like virtual personal networks (VPNs), data encryption, and hacking. 

5. Handling Digital Communication

Today, most students use technology to communicate in one way or another. That’s why it’s so important to talk to them about how to communicate safely and appropriately.

That includes both personal and professional communications.

Almost every career requires digital communications at some point. If students don’t have a good grasp on responsible communications, their careers could end before they even had a chance to start. 

6. Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying — the use of technology as a means to harass others — has become a daily occurrence across the United States.

According to the Cyberbullying Research Center, an average of 27.9% of students experienced cyberbullying over the past 10 years. Those numbers have jumped to an average of 34% since 2014.

The statistics about cyberbullying speak for themselves! Addressing it in the classroom can stop current bullies and prevent future harassment.

Written by - 

Digvijay Singh Nathawat