My main takeaways from the readings were trust teachers, digital learning goes beyond the classroom, and some tips for teaching digital literacy. The International Literacy Association mentions at the beginning of their article that “faith must be placed in the expertise of teachers to sustain classrooms that reflect the contexts…outside of schools and in the real world”(ILA, 2018). Teachers are told to teach a specific curriculum from the start of the school year to the end of the year based on the state standards. In addition to this, they are also working to show students the connection it has to the real world, but also general skills to be productive members of society. The article says that “faith must be placed in the expertise of teachers”, this can be directed at teachers and everyone else in the world. Teachers could use the reassurance that they are doing a great job and everyone else needs to know to take a step back and trust the process. The part that challenges me and I’m sure other educators is time. Time isn’t always on our side, but hopefully with using digital literacy it will help with lack of time to accomplish all in such little time.
Digital learning can be used to help accomplish curriculum learning goals, but also skills being successful in life. Vanek mentioned that “digital literacy is much more than proficiency with discrete computer skills” (2019). There are different types of digital literacy, which I knew, but didn’t know that much about it or what they were. There are “basic computer skills”, “network literacy”, “digital problem solving”, “information literacy”, and “media literacy” (Vanek, 2019). I didn’t realize there was both network and media literacy. After reading about both I learned that network literacy is what my students most closely associate with rather than media. This kind of surprised me. Before reading, I thought they associated more so with media literacy. Network literacy “lent weight to one’s knowledge of online social networks, how to learn from them and through them, and how to use them to access and disseminate information” (Vanek, 2019). Many of my students believe everything they read or see on social networks. They are definitely spreading information, it’s a matter of is it true or not. Here is where one implements digital literacy in their classroom comes into play. If they aren’t taught how to critically think and analyze information, false information could be spread. In my classroom I would like to educate students on “the skills and knowledge necessary to draw on inductive and deductive reasoning, systems thinking, and analysis so that one can evaluate evidence, opinions, and information” (Vanek, 2019). Where I struggle with this is how in a math classroom?
References:
International Literacy Association. (2018). Improving Digital Practices for Literacy, Learning, and Justice: More Than Just Tools. https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/ila-improving-digital-practices-literacy-learning-justice.pdf
Vanek , J. (2019). Digital Literacy . The Skills That Matter in Adult Education. https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/TSTMDigitalLiteracyBrief-508.pdf
Hi Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your understanding of “trusting teachers’ expertise.” This is not only a recognition for teachers, but also a reminder for school administrators, parents, and policymakers to understand the complexity of teachers’ work and give them enough trust and space. I also relate to the time pressure you mentioned, which is a real challenge for many educators. In my own work, I have found that digital literacy can help ease time constraints to some extent. For example, being skilled with digital tools when writing newsletters or preparing unit plans can improve efficiency while keeping information clear and professional. At the same time, if we systematically teach students digital literacy in the classroom, they can become more independent in finding and analyzing information, which saves teachers time for explanations or guidance. Overall, trusting teachers and effectively using digital tools together is key to improving both teaching efficiency and quality.
Hello Morgan,
ReplyDeleteTrusting teachers to provide instruction which utilizes digital tools is very important for the public to do. In order to connect the curriculum in each subject area to the outside world should require the use of technological applications. Often times the lack of time throughout the year creates a lack of real world connections in most math classes. Our school offers a course called Applications of Higher Math which aims to correct this gap in real world connections. I teach this course, and one of the project that we do is on financial math and requires the programming of several spreadsheets on Google Sheets. There are several other examples of digital literacy development in this course throughout the school year, and course like this are an example of how teachers are actively preparing students for the technological world that they will encounter after graduating high school.
Morgan,
ReplyDeleteYour takeaways I would say are pretty close to what mine were as well from the readings. I really enjoyed what you said about teachers needing to be reassured and trusted that they are doing a good job. I mean that is the whole reason that we went through a hiring process right? Time definitely is an issue. However, I feel like it is all into your own perspective about having enough time or not. I think that if we integrate it into our curriculum's we can get the best of both worlds. Teaching the curriculum and teaching the students real world problems.
Within your second paragraph, something that stood out to me was students being more engaged with network literacy. I teach 4th grade and I have a lot of students that come in and repeat a lot of what they hear on social media. Sometimes it makes sense, and other times it does not. And I totally agree that they do not know how to distinguish what is real or fake/false information. Our schools should be doing more to implement digital literacy within our curriculums and not just rely on us to figure it out and teach it from there.
I agree whole heartedly, TIME is the true struggle. The curriculum that we are given doesn't allot much time for the deficits that our students may have. As stated, New Literacies is a necessary on going learning process in itself. Incorporating basic uses of understanding ALL the easily obtainable information has its challenges. In the past, teachers only struggled with "But my mom said...". Today we have to help them to understand that just because "EVERYBODY" on their AI programed devices has the same belief because their systems algorithms has paired them to posts of similar searches and followings!
ReplyDeleteAs for incorporating it in a math class, I cans understand your challenge. I am certain however you have come across some videos that have given miss information on how to solve math problems: That would be an opportunity to point out that everything you see online isn't correct, and they should check more then one resource.