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Hi. Welcome to Digital Literacies, an interactive online course for the professional development
of technology professionals in education. I’m Emil Ahangarzadeh, Coordinator of Integrated
Technology Services at the SDCOE and I’ll be your course facilitator. As you hopefully
know by now, this is a 30 hour course that will span across a 6 week period.
The course is designed to provide you with a rich opportunity to deepen your understanding
of what it means to be digitally literate and how you can support students in developing
their digital literacies. Throughout the course, you’ll be interacting
with your fellow classmates through asynchronous discussions, completing assignments, and watching
yours truly in a series of video lectures. To kick things off, I thought it would be
a good idea to go over what digital literacy means in context of this course. It’s a
term that is used in many ways. Some think of digital literacy as knowing how to use
a computer mouse or understanding how to install software onto your devices. Our working definition
is much more complicated than that. Other terms used to refer to concepts relevant to
digital literacy are web literacy, transmedia, transliteracy, e literacy, and so on and each
of those has it’s own spin on the larger concept of digital literacy. But for our purpose,
this is what we mean when we say digital literacy: Digital literacy is the ability to use digital
technology and communications tools, and/or networks to access, manage, integrate, evaluate,
create and communicate information in order to
function in a knowledge society. As you’ll note, there are plenty of verbs in that definition
and that’s a key component of how we’ll be approaching digital literacy. Digital literacy
isn’t just about knowing things—it’s about doing things. The problem is that we
use verbs like access, integrate, evaluate, and create, in varying ways throughout our
lives. So, let’s take a look at these definitions more closely:
The first element is access. This means that students should know about and how to collect
or retrieve information using digital tools and networks. For most folks, this just mean
that students should know about Google. The problem is that there is a vast amount of
information out across the net and simply typing in a search query or an argument into
a search engine will generally get you millions of responses. Knowing how to compose accurate
search arguments and understanding how search engines work will vastly alter your ability
to access the information you’re looking for.
Next, we come to manage. Manage, in context of information communication technology skills
is about applying an existing organization or classification scheme to a set of content.
For example, we want students to be able to conduct a rudimentary and preliminary organization
of accessed information for retrieval and future application.
Integrate is about interpreting and representing information by summarizing, comparing, and
contrasting it to other sets of information. For example, students should be able to interpret
information by using web-based and software based tools to synthesize information into
a cohesive position or report. Making judgments about quality, relevance,
usefulness, and efficiency of information is what evaluate is about. Students should
be able to judge the currency, appropriateness, and adequacy of information and multiple sources
for a specific purpose including determining authority, bias, and timelines of materials.
The last two are directly related to the framework for 21st century skills—create and communicate.
To create in this context means to generate information by adapting, applying, desiging,
inventing, and authoring content in information communication technology environments. For
example, students should be able to use digital devices to describe an event, express an opinion,
or support basic arguments, viewpoints, or positions. Communicate is more about transmitting
information persuasively to meet the needs of various audiences through the use of an
appropriate medium. This is closely related to all the rhetorical skills that the Common
Core standards demand of our students. Of course, as we dive deeper into the course,
we’ll take a closer look at these elements and particularly how their related competencies
can be realized through information media technologies.
Your first assignment is to scower the web and other resources to find an alternative
definition of digital literacy. Submit a Before I close this introduction, I have a
disclaimer for your attention. Throughout the course, you will be introduced (and in
some cases, re-introduced) to a series of tools and services that have educational value
which, when used appropriately, can yield engaging learning and teaching experiences.
However, please note that IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO VET THE USE OF THESE TOOLS AND SERVICES
THROUGH YOUR DISTRICT'S POLICIES. That is, please review your district's policies and
regulations to ensure that the tools and services you are exposed to meet your professional
obligations to your local educational agency.