Children are growing, learning, and being shaped by the digital environment they live in. While technology has greatly impacted education, it has also caused some unforeseeable issues. Our students live in a time where everything they want is at their fingertips. Technology has connected them to people, places, and ideas that they may have never been exposed to before. These new connections can be used in the classroom to help teach ideas, concepts, and standards, and can deepen a student’s understanding of the world around them. However, technology has had negative ramifications on students’ ability to find and consume online information, properly understand their digital footprint, etc. Therefore, digital literacy is becoming a more and more prevalent issue simply because our students turn to the internet for answers without questioning if the source is accurate. As an educator, I have seen this issue grow and grow in the past few years. I have even had a student explain her thinking by writing, “...because Google told me”. A very horrifying phrase for any educator to hear! However, it became a more and more frequent phrase in my classroom and I realized I needed to be the one who had to tackle this issue. Yet, my educational training had not prepared me for this (probably because such an issue was not on anyone’s radar when I earned my Bachelors). I enrolled in an online professional development course titled, Fact vs. Fiction, and my eyes were opened to how little I knew about digital literacy, how widespread the problem actually was, and the fact that I was not properly equipped to help my students understand digital literacy all on my own. I realized that in order for us to better our students, we must understand our fallacies in the area of digital literacy.
Before we dive into the literature, let’s make sure we are all on the same page when it comes to the definition of digital literacy. Just like many things in education, digital literacy has taken on many different meanings and rapidly adapted over the years. According to The American Library Association (ALA), digital literacy is defined as “the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills” (2021). The purpose of digital literacy is to help bridge the gap between print literacy with other multimedia (O’Brien & Scharber, 2008, p.66). However, schools still promote old print literacies in their teaching practices. Students are forced to navigate the “new” literacies on their own after the school day is over. If a tech savvy educator tries to incorporate the new, they only focus on the positive aspects. For example, having students create tweets pretending to be the major characters of a book. These inclusions are meant to motivate the student but do nothing to teach them the pitfalls of technology. This practice causes gaps in students' understanding of the different modes of literacy and their importance. As O’Brien and Scharber (2008) state, “the possibilities of digital literacies relate to bridging the new with the old in ways gradually transforms how youths express ideas and learn in schools using new emerging digital tools” (p. 67). Yet, it cannot simply be adding “new” digital literacies into the curriculum. As Troy Hicks and Kristen Hawley Turner (2013) note, that “we must look critically at pedagogy that may be perpetuating what we’ve always done” (p. 59). Educators need to evaluate their teaching practices and be the first ones to make systemic changes, or changes will never occur.
In Hicks and Turner’s article, “No Longer a Luxury, Digital Literacy Can’t Wait”, they focus on outlining five major practices that educators use that are killing digital literacy. The biggest mistakes are: using slides and calling them digital components of a task, asking questions that can easily be answered by technology, and adding “cool” technology into already planned lessons (pgs. 60-61). Since digital literacy is still a new concept for many educators, they do not properly know how to integrate it into their lessons. This issue, in turn, highlights an even larger problem, if we do not know how to use it properly, how can we be expected to teach our students how to use digital literacy properly? Yet, how do we solve this problem for us and for our students? Hicks and Turner have also highlighted some ways that educators can do and be better for their students. One such way is by putting yourself out there, i.e. read. They strongly urge educators to read what is on the internet; read blogs that others have written about their experiences. Learn from those who have come before. Join social groups that focus on the topic. Other educators are your biggest ally; they have done it before and can guide you in the right direction. However, just like you put yourself out there, have your students do the same. Model for them how you navigated the digital world. Create safe risks where they learn by doing. Students need to take reasonable risks which helps them understand the benefits and pitfalls of a networked world. By not teaching these skills now, we are leaving our students vulnerable later (Hicks & Turner, 2013, p. 64).
As we educate the future generations, we cannot hold onto practices of the past. We must step into the present and embrace and incorporate digital tools into the learning process. O’Brien & Scharber (2008) point out that we must “seriously consider how best to weave together old, new, and future literacies so that young people leave school literate in the ways of school and in the ways of the world” (p. 68). Therefore, we need to provide students with opportunities to practice and develop their digital literacy skills.
Digital literacy is here to stay. We educators must stop ignoring that the digital age is upon us and that our students are well versed in it. As COVID-19 has shown us, the future of education is online and digital. Therefore, I believe that curriculums will expand to include lessons on teaching students digital literacy at all age levels. Every age group needs to understand the importance of being digitally literate and how to articulate and communicate knowledge gained from online sources. Also, I believe that standards will start to emerge, just like ISTE’s, that will help guide educators on how to teach digital literacy and what students should know. Helping students understand the digital world and how to effectively use it, will make them more informed and better adults, and in the end, isn’t that our goal as educators?
References:
Hicks, T., & Turner, K. H. (2013). No Longer a Luxury: Digital Literacy Can’t Wait. The English
Journal, 102(6), 58–65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24484127
O’Brien, D., & Scharber, C. (2008). Digital Literacies Go to School: Potholes and Possibilities.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(1), 66–68.
What is Digital Literacy and why does it matter? Renaissance. (2019, April 12). Retrieved
November 8, 2021, from https://www.renaissance.com/2019/02/08/blog-digital-literacy-
why-does-it-matter/.
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