Digital literacy is the ability to navigate various digital platforms and understand, assess, and communicate through them. When you read a book on a Kindle, consider the accuracy of a news report linked in your social media newsfeed or create and share a YouTube video, you are displaying digital literacy.
Student-created Wordle on digital literacy.
Digital literacy is "The capability to use digital technology and knowing when and how to use it." ( Rubble, M. and Bailey, G. (2007). Digital Citizenship in Schools. Eugene, OR: ISTE, p. 21)
What does digital literacy look like?
Digital literacy is when students are able to engage with multi-media to read and interpret text, sounds, and images. Digital literacy is when students can manipulate and evaluate data to construct their own meaning. Digital literacy also includes a student having knowledge about how to use technology to construct meaning, but most importantly in ways that are appropriate to their needs. Students who know how to use technology are also instructed by parents and teachers on how to use it effectively and appropriately to communicate a message.
Most students today have more knowledge about technology than their teachers, but most have not had instruction on how and when to use technology appropriately. "Too often the focus is on learning the technology itself, with little time given to discussing what is or isn't appropriate." ( Rubble, M. and Bailey, G. (2007). Digital Citizenship in Schools. Eugene, OR: ISTE, p. 21)
Examples of Digital Literacy
Non-Examples of Digital Literacy
- Learning just how to use multi-media to research and investigate a specific topic.
- Have a computer lab in your school.
- Technology as a specials class separate from the daily classroom.
- Typing papers (research, opinion, or narrative stories) on a computer or using search engines only to find information.
- Children drop out of school to independently learn without guidance.
- Using online media without any knowledge or guidelines on how to judge whether the information is accurate or trustworthy.
Why is Digital Literacy Important?
Literacy skills have always been important. In centuries past, people communicated via letters. These letters soon turned into telegraph messages. From there we advanced to the telephone, internet, and then text messaging via a phone. Today's options for communication far outweigh the one or two of generations' pasts. "Children learn these skills as part of their lives, like language, which they learn without realizing they are learning it." (N. Andersen, New Media, and New Media Literacy: The Horizon Has Become the Landscape—New Media Are Here,; report produced by Cable in the Classroom, 2002, pp. 30–35) Students today learn in ways that their teachers could not even imagine decades ago when they were in school. Students learn technology just like they do the spoken language, by doing and today it is not uncommon for a 3-year-old to have some basic knowledge regarding how to get on to the computer and load a game (hopefully educational). The way students learn and their abilities to showcase their learning has surpassed the years of book reports, posters, and shoebox representations. "We will not be able to achieve a liberating, collective intelligence until we can achieve a collective digital literacy, and we have now, more than ever, perhaps, the opportunity and the technologies to assist us in the human project of shaping, creating, authoring and developing ourselves as the formers of our own culture. To this end, we must create the conditions for people to become wise in their own way." (Poore, M. (2011). Digital Literacy: Human Flourishing and Collective Intelligence in a Knowledge Society. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 19 (2),20-26.)
The 22nd Century Brain
Students in this modern world need to utilize all of the higher-order thinking skills taught to students in previous times. As the illustration at the left illustrates, the one missing component in how teachers view students' learning today is the internet and its' endless possibilities in motivating and intriguing the young mind. Students for centuries have been taught and encouraged to evaluate, apply, analyze and synthesize knowledge. Today's students are able to use the internet to research and find text sources, videos, podcasts, and presentations related to anything they would like to learn about. The big catch is, can this "Google, yahoo" part of the brain begin to differentiate what resources they consume online are valid or not. Can this "goggle, yahoo" part of the brain create new meaning from the authentic sources they read? Will this "goggle, yahoo" part of the brain lead to great innovations and discoveries that help humans understand their place in the world and make life easier for all our world's citizens? Technology is a lovely asset to any classroom, but in a global community, will students transfer their learning beyond their community? Educators around the globe will be tuned in to find the answers to these questions in the years ahead.
