This week's article provides insightful strategies in which we can teach digital literacy to our students. Brianna Crowley uses The New York Department of Education definition for digital literacy: “having the knowledge and ability to use a range of technology tools for varied purposes.” If an individual is digitally literate, they will have the skills to strategically find and evaluate information. This is especially important in the discipline of history. Our students will need to develop research skills in order to write coherent and argumentative papers.
The links provided within the article are extremely helpful resources. As educators we should provide guidance, instruction, and practice so that our students understand what it means to be positive and productive digital citizens. We have to teach our students how many things online are not real or accurate. We must teach them the "benefits, dangers, and opportunities technology provides."
We can help our students become efficient searchers. In all subject areas our students will need to be able to find and access information. Whether it be for projects or research papers, they can use resources like Google Search.
As we are teaching our class how to use the internet for research purposes, we must also incorporate ways to make sure that the information we are gathering can be trusted or accurate. If our schools are fortunate enough to have the resources, we should teach our students how to take full advantage of them. Here at UIC, for one of my History classes, I really appreciated learning about the UIC library's services and collections. I felt more confident in my ability to research and gather the support needed in my paper.
Social Media
As 21st century learners, our students will probably be very excited to use social media as part of an assignment or project. (I'm even using it currently for my HIST 255 "History of Chicago" class. We are suppose to take "selfies" at the museum/neighborhood we will report on. And of course this class!)
Here's, a great article on 7 ways we can use social media in the classroom.
The Time article, Crowley presents, argues that society's response to kids with devices has been "fear-based and reactive." I find this true because I'm sometimes hesitant to let my daughter use my phone or ipad. I believe in teaching the parents how to monitor and use social media. The internet is a powerful tool, so we must be able to keep up with it and guide each student to use it responsibly.
Berenice, I like the idea of incorporating social media as part of your classroom curriculum. Since students are actively engaged in social media, it will encourage them to participate more in the class. I thik you are right though, we should teach our students to be resposible when their online. There are so many bad things that can happen when students become engaged social media e.g cyber bullying. That's why we need to take precautions so that are students are safe. If we can achieve this, then I dont see how assigments on social media can fail.
ReplyDeleteBerenice, I agree with your approach to using search engine like google and youtube as ways to facilitate education in and out of the classroom. However, I think the use of online library sources and tools is more important. As you mentioned, we are taught how to use these sources as college students in our history courses. I think we must provide our students the knowledge to access these types of sources. Google is great for broad topics, but specifically trying to find peer reviewed, accurate, and published sources for topics is difficult to do. I remember in high school we only used google and far too often many students reported information that was inaccurate or untrue. The importance of accurate sources and teaching students how to properly find these is the issue we face. I would emphasize to my class that checking sources for validity is imperative. Moreover, I like the use of social media in the classroom, especially hashtagging and blogging as different methods we can all use.
ReplyDeleteBerenice, I like that you mention that we should teach our students how to use resources like Google and YouTube more effectively. I think that when a student learns how to use these resources more efficiently and they are instructed on how to tell if a source found from one of these resources is credible they are able to find more accurate information, and it helps alleviate some of the problems that Dan presented.
ReplyDeleteAt a Model United Nations conference that I attended, we were supposed to reenact the Boxer Rebellion but we had the freedom of altering history. During the caucus, Twitter was on the projector and we would receive live updates of what was going on during the Boxer rebellion. We would receive updates on new developments such as rioting, assassinations, and troop mobilizations and I felt that it made the conference more fun. The reason I bring this story up is because I firmly believe that implementing social media into the classroom would make learning history more interactive, enjoyable, and interesting for the students. If I were to employ a role playing scenario into the classroom, "live" updates from twitter and other mediums of social networking would capture the undivided attention of the students perfectly.
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