Last month we officially began our year-long 7th Grade Digital Citizenship Program by exploring the concept of Digital Access.  For October we turned our attention to the issue of Digital Literacy.  Although defining literacy in the 21st century is a complex proposition, in simplistic terms it is the ability to know when and how to use digital technology.  This short clip (featuring our very own Tim Storey and Candice Baumann) should give you some insight and perspective:

YouTube Direkt

For the “at home” portion of the Digital Literacy theme, students and parents took separate, brief surveys concerning their use/mastery of various digital tools, and the students were charged with teaching their parents something technology-related.  Below are the survey results comparing the two groups:

While the survey does highlight some generational differences, the most valuable feedback came from the “teach your parents” activity.  Here are a few of the responses:

I showed my mom how to use her Iphone once she got it and it was easy for me, but hard for her. I tell my parents how to download things and more. It kind of felt weird because I knew how to do something better than them. All of my life they were teaching me things and now I was teaching them. My generation is better with computers than any other so far.

It was actually pretty cool, because my parents hadn’t known at all about what I showed them. I first showed it to my dad, and after I finished showing what I had to, my dad all of a sudden told all of it to my mom who also hadn’t ever heard of such a thing.

I taught my dad how to use an iPod. It was kind of funny because I understood all of the technological terms but he was not familiar with some of them so I had to find different words to use. It took a while but he finally got it.

Having my child show me something new with technology make me feel how much todays kids are different from when I was growing up.

Awesome! I am not intimidated by her knowing something that I do not. She is excited to find out about something that I have not found out about and share it with me. Usually it’s the other way around!

I’m actually very proud when one of my children can show something new with the computer or internet. Their future will depend heavily on digital technology.

Rethinking Literacy

Technology has evolved at an incredible rate, and with these electronic advances comes the need to provide our students a well-rounded,  contemporary education.  As several of the parents noted, in addition to the “traditional” literacies of reading, writing, and arithmetic, students today must be literate in the digital sense.  This graphic from NCREL/Meteri illustrates one approach to Digital-Age Literacy:

Moving from “the ability to know when and how to use digital technology” to clearly articulating the knowledge and skills that make one literate today is a challenging yet worthwhile endeavor.  Now that our 1:1 program is up and running,  it’s time for the faculty to start looking at this issue more deeply, and I think we need to involve our students in the conversation.  After all, it’s their future, and as they demonstrated to their parents this week, if we give them a chance they can teach us quite a bit.

Posted: 10|30|08 at 9:39 am. Filed under: Digital Citizenship, Digital Literacy.
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