Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Data Literacy Playground is an online space where visitors can use, interact with, and understand the benefits and issues of using and sharing data so that they can make informed choices about data sharing and understand the data shared with them.

Common Craft has released a new, timely video for this fall. The new video is Disinformation Explained by Common Craft. The new video explains what a disinformation campaign is and why organizations create them. Equally importantly, the video explains traits of disinformation campaigns and how to people can try to prevent the spread of disinformation.

As the world careens from one crisis to another—as COVID-19 brings us closed schools and massive unemployment, as horrific videos of police brutality spark more than a week of nationwide protests—one thing has been constant and concerning: We are devouring digital media, seeking out information and scrolling for solace.

And, let’s face it, we’re seeking and scrolling in the dark. We’re doing this literally, as we sit up at 2 a.m. in our bedrooms, scrolling and clicking and unable to sleep. And figuratively, clicking through mazes of media messages on social media, pushing through brush to find a trail. Most of us have had no guides to orient us in this streaming and screaming digital world.

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Here is a handy visual you can use with your students in class to help them become better Google searchers. We have outlined 8 search tips that students can use to narrow down their search and get accurate results. All of these tips are nested in Google Advanced Search which is accessible from 'settings' in Google search homepage. This visual is also available in PDF format from this page.

What does it look like to prepare students to navigate the digital world? This is a question I often tackle in both in my own moments of brainstorming and searching for new resources to share, as well as in conversations with fellow educators.

Finding the right resources for teaching students the basics of copyright— including its limitations such as fair use—is essential. We want to make sure students are prepared to work and create in digital and traditional spaces, too. Both the ISTE Standards and the American Association of School Librarians Standards for the 21st Century Learner address the issues of preparing students to navigate and create in a digital world. Although we know this is important, tackling the idea of copyright and fair use can sure feel intimidating.

That’s why I’m so excited to share the Copyright & Creativity for Ethical Digital Citizens curricula for elementary, middle, and high school students. 

Properly citing Creative Commons licensed works can sometimes be a confusing, multi-step process. ImageCodr makes that process easier.

The key to unlocking the educational potential of the virtual world is through knowing how to effectively search it with the minimum time and efforts possible. Effective search in this sense refers to the ability to locate targeted information online using ‘informed search queries’. It does take time and practice to develop such an ability but it is worth every single second you spend learning it.

This is an excerpt from a book that I have been working on for the last fifteen months. I'm getting close to finishing it. 

Our students have become accustomed to entering a search into Google as soon as they are confronted by a question to which they don’t have an answer on the tips of their tongues. However, if they’re forced to take a few minutes before they search, they often find that they already know the answer. This is why a pre-search checklist should include listing what you already know about a topic. This list can be generated from memory or from notebooks (physical and digital). Not only does this process refresh students' memories, it also saves time in the long-run because they aren't spending time searching for information that they already have.

Having good digital literacy skills just makes sense in a digital world. The messages we create and consume, along with the information we generate and absorb daily, all require digital literacy skills to some degree. So if you’re new to them, this infographic from Time to Know called Essential Digital Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Worker is a good start.

It was featured on E-Learning Infographics in a post that cites the work of Professor Yoram Eshet, a leader in digital literacy research from the Open University of Israel. 

Do your students love to take and edit photos to post on Instagram? Are they obsessed with watching (or maybe even becoming!) YouTube celebs? Do you want to help your students learn how to spot a stereotype on a TV show? Or how to identify bias in a news article? If you answered yes to any of these questions, consider integrating media literacy education into your lessons..

This afternoon I was talking with a few of my students about TikTok and its new relationship with Oracle. The course of that conversation brought up a lot of "I've heard X" and "I've read X" statements from my students regarding news about TikTok. As you might imagine would happen with teenagers talking about their favorite app, the conversation got animated. I spent a lot of time helping discern fact from rumors and opinions. All that to say, this afternoon reminded me to review facts vs. opinions with students. I used this Common Craft video, but there are some other good resources you might want explore. Those are outlined below.

In yesterday's episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff I shared some information about an update to a favorite resource of mine, Factitious. Factitious is a game that is designed to help students practice identifying real and fake news stories. The 2020 version of the game features stories about COVID-19.

A few days ago we shared with you a new Google feature that allows you to easily fact check online content. Today, we are sharing with you 10 good tips that will enable you to critically assess the veracity and credibility of online content (e.g. news stories).  These are guidelines Facebook Help Centre provided for it users to help them spot fake news. However, these tips can also apply to any other type of content. Students can use them to evaluate digital content and enhance their critical reading comprehension.

Keeping up with national and international events was a lot easier when all the news came from one of three major TV news outlets and a few newspapers like The New York Times. Now, there are dozens of channels, hundreds of newspapers, thousands of bloggers, and tens of thousands of social media journalists -- all trying to get your attention with the latest apocalyptic news flash. Stories based on gossip as much as fact used to be designated yellow journalism. Now, in what has been called a post-truth society (defined by Oxford Dictionary as “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief"), it is the reader's responsibility to differentiate between fact and fake news. Here we will look at some teaching strategies to help you do just that.

Note: This list, written in 1996 by Phil Agre is the best advice I can give people who are helping novice users with computer issues. Phil Agre was a visionary technologist and this list was up on his website forever but has been up and down lately so I am reprinting it.

Computer people are generally fine human beings, but nonetheless they do a lot of inadvertent harm in the ways they “help” other people with their computer problems. Now that we’re trying to get everyone on the net, I thought it might be helpful to write down everything I’ve been taught about helping people use computers.

Theoretically speaking, digital literacy is a concept that is in constant flux. It is perpetually shifting and expanding to include new practices and skills afforded by new emerging technologies. In their excellent book "Understanding Digital Literacies: A Practical Introduction", authors Jones and Hafner provide a detailed analysis of what it means to be a digitally literate in the light of the social media revolution and the widespread of web 2.0 technologies. As I was perusing it today, I came across this section in chapter one where the authors talk about the different digital literacy practices that are required to thrive in this digitally-focused era.

The Teaching Tolerance Digital Literacy Framework offers seven key areas in which students need support developing digital and civic literacy skills. The numbered items in each box below represent the overarching knowledge and skills that make up the framework. The bullets represent more granular examples of student behaviors to help educators evaluate mastery.

For those of us who remember a time before the internet, using Google for research might feel strange -- like being thrust from the cozy confines of a favorite library straight into the Wild West of the web. But in today’s world, it’s impossible to ignore Google Search as a legitimate tool for research.