Digital Literacy in Today's Schools
What is it? Where do we start?
The Digital Generation
Students are transfluent— they are fluent in a wide range of media. And because they are transfluent, the digital generations find it much more natural than older generations to begin communicating with visuals, and then to mix in text, color, sound, and graphics in richly meaningful and creative ways. They are completely comfortable interacting across a wide range of platforms, tools, and media.
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Jukes, Ian; Schaaf, Ryan L. (2015-07-09). Reinventing Learning for the Always-On Generation: Strategies and Apps That Work (p. 59). Solution Tree Press. Kindle Edition.
Information/Media Literacy
Digital Literacy
Engage and Motivate
Learning today offers a blended instructional approach that uses feedback between & during activities. Students collaborate & create together using an array of resources. A model of discovery learning provides real-world, personally relevant, highly motivating challenges to students as the main vehicle for introducing activities and new concepts.
Digital Citizenship
Thinglink
Thinglink is an interactive image tool that provides users with the ability to turn any image into multimedia format to display their research or work. Multiple links (hot spots) can be placed on parts of the image. Users can embed video, record audio or link to a website.
Users under 13 are not able to register for account on their own because personal data is shared. Teachers can use their account to signup new students to ThingLink. The contact email of these accounts will be the teacher's email, which means that they will receive all notifications from the accounts, including password recovery links.
Explain Everything
Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere.
Screencasting can build fluency and comprehension skills as well as the ability to communicate one's thinking.
Mindomo
The Mindomo app is available on the iPad and the web, making it compatible with any device. It helps students create a visual mash-up that can be used to demonstrate understanding of a topic or create a visually appealing product. Teachers can use it to scaffold an assignment or record a class discussion in a graphic organizer. Mindomo has wonderful features that include embedding hyperlinks, sound, and even movie files to express a thought, collect research or even study for a test.
The EyeWorld
Adding images to content helps individuals recall information with amazing accuracy over extended periods of time.
If the digital generations have such a strong connection to visuals in the classroom, what does this mean for traditional learning approaches?
How can students and educators use visual media to develop powerful and compelling learning experiences?
Jukes, Ian; Schaaf, Ryan L. (2015-07-09). Reinventing Learning for the Always-On Generation: Strategies and Apps That Work (p. 70-74). Solution Tree Press. Kindle Edition.
Transfluency - Allow Students to Chose the Product
The digital generations use their tools to create seamless gateways between real and virtual worlds. They create unique and useful solutions to real-world problems by transforming raw information into new knowledge that they connect to existing knowledge.
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Allowing students to pick their product is an approach that allows students the opportunity to select the form of their final product. Although the teacher maintains all the same expectations for each potential product, students are left with the freedom to select the medium the product will be displayed in.
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Jukes, Ian; Schaaf, Ryan L. (2015-07-09). Reinventing Learning for the Always-On Generation: Strategies and Apps That Work (p. 121 & 134). Solution Tree Press. Kindle Edition.
Book Creator
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Tutorial:
PicCollage
Create a photo collage, add titles and descriptions and themes.
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Tutorial:
iMovie
iMovie provides the basic, editing tools needed to put together a movie from a set of video clips or pictures. It also has templates that can be used for book trailers.
Tutorial:
Book Creator Student Example
Collaboration Spaces Online
For a powerful, collaborative learning experience, provide small groups with an individual collaboration space and watch as text, images, and other content populates the document. Teachers can easily scroll between each document to monitor the teams’ progress.
Microsoft Office 365 offers Microsoft Word online and PowerPoint online that allows users to collaboratively make creative multimedia products.
Padlet displays content created by users in real time. With a freeform or stream display, visitors add posts to the wall. Anyone visiting the wall can see all of the previously submitted content. Teachers are able to share a link and provide access to individuals so they can brainstorm ideas, work on a collaborative project, curate hyperlinks to resources, take notes, create posters or brochures, plan events, or conduct online discussions. Padlet is great for all grade levels and content areas.
Assessment & Feedback
Let’s do the math— even if a teacher calls on or acknowledges a student once every five minutes, in a classroom of twenty-five, that means, on average, each student will be called upon, be praised, or receive feedback about once every two hours.
How can we incorporate increased feedback and acknowledgement into everyday learning experiences?
Nearpod
Engage students with fun and interactive content.
Collect and share student responses instantly.
Track student comprehension in real time.
Kahoot for Review or Diagnostics
Teacher Login: https://getkahoot.com
Student Login: https://kahoot.it.com
Google Forms for Assessment & Reflection
To create a google form the teacher requires a gmail account (free), student do not require an account they will access the forms from a link or QR code.
The purpose of education is not to make students learn; it’s about getting students to want to learn. Without motivation, there will be no learning.
Jukes, Ian; Schaaf, Ryan L. (2015-07-09). Reinventing Learning for the Always-On Generation: Strategies and Apps That Work (p. 148). Solution Tree Press. Kindle Edition.