Digital Literacy

As a teacher candidate, finding ways to build literacy through the use of technology is an important outlet to where kids can gain opportunities to solidify and build confidence with certain skills throughout their school education. The Ministry of Education and Child care defines Digital Literacy as the “interest, attitude and ability of individuals to appropriately use technology and communication tools to access, manage, integrate, analyze and evaluate information, construct new knowledge, create and communicate with others”. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/teach/resources-for-teachers/digital-literacy

In todays world, technology surrounds most of us and is embedded into our daily habits and practices. Utilizing this platform as a means to teach students in a variety of ways not only helps with classroom engagement, but give students a sense of agency when it comes to their learning.

It is also important to remember however, that with technology and access to the world at your fingertips, online safety is huge and every student at some point or another will need to be able to navigate what’s safe and what is not safe throughout their digital journey. As a teacher, it is especially important to teach our students how navigate this online world in a appropriate and safe way by discussing topics like online bullying, privacy, personal information, appropriate language etc. I have also observed some schools brining in local RCMP to give a presentation on online bullying and what that means, as well as the consequences that may follow. We know students will be using the internet as a means of exploration both personally and at school, therefore it is vital that we teach them at a very young age the importance of online safety.

Digital Literacy can also be a great way to have students use the internet safely and for educational purposes. I am going to give a couple of examples of websites you can use to enhance two different ares of curriculum, literacy and numeracy using a digital platform.

Raz Kids is an online comprehensive levelled reading program where students have access to hundreds of different e-books that otherwise would not be accessible in a physical classroom library. This program offers an interactive and engaging reading experience that tracks each students reading progress in an efficient and effortless way for teachers. This is a great example of using digital literacy as another tool to assess students progress by letting the students read at their own pace while reinforcing comprehension.

Math 99 is another wonderful resource for classroom teachers to incorporate an online platform that practices math skills from K-9 and allows students to work on their math fluency. Teachers pick their grade level, area they want to focus on and the amount of questions they want to give out. Students then answer questions one by one from their own computer, while the teacher monitors their online progress from the dashboard. This is a great informal assessment for teachers to use and it allows the students to use digital technology to think critically and solve problems.

Digital literacy can flow into many areas of curriculum while encompassing cross curricular competencies such as communication, thinking, personal and social. It is very important that as educators, we embrace technology and weave this into our classroom practices in order to help create educated citizens who are fluent and empowered to use digital technology throughout their life. As a future educator, the skill set of safe practices, online collaboration, effective communication, digital footprints and informative decision making should be taught to students so they are prepared to perform and succeed in a digital world.

References:

Government of British Columbia-Digital Literacy https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/teach/resources-for-teachers/digital-literacy