EDTC 300
I pledge to...6/10/2020 When teaching about digital literacy it is most important as a teacher to have an understanding of digital literacy and how to tell if something is "fake news". My degree focus is on elementary education so K-5. Which I believe is a super important age to learn about digital literacy with many younger children being on the internet today.
Students need to be taught digital literacy to protect them, and allow them to spot out fake news since news and facts is a big part of our lives. Students need to understand that everything has biases as in everything comes from a certain perspective. Students need to be taught to look into where something is sourced from and make sure that the person who let out the news, or article is from a reliable source. A great activity would be to bring in real life fake news articles and ask the children to spot out what is wrong with the articles. Reliable articles could also be brought into the classroom to see if the students could spot out real news from fake. I would of course just have to make sure that these news articles are age appropriate for elementary education students. A very interesting comic shared by Katia was the "You're not going to believe this" comic. This comic instructs you to just stop and listen, it then talks through different history facts and says they are wrong and then states a counter argument with links to different sources that support this argument. This comic really gets your brain thinking about what we can trust, as you might not click into the sources the first time but another argument may make you click into the sources because it is something you strongly disagree with. But we have to know that sources are not always real, there are many fake sources. We need to be able to "Stop, to listen and to change (The oatmeal)". Which I believe is a very powerful quote right now with everything going on in the world including the #blacklivesmatter movement and then Corona Virus. One important article is the "Beyond fake news" presentation, where it states ten tips for teaching literacy, evaluation and research skills. 1. Talk about what an expert is (and in what field). 2. Let students sort real sites. Hoax sites are unlikely to show up in real life. 3. Model openness and willingness to fail. 4. Talk about how sites work, how news works, how clickbait works. 5. Stress vetted sources, but give support for searching in the wild. 6. Be careful with anti-Wikipedia messages. 7. If you want students to use databases, get really familiar with them yourself. 8. Share your own thinking's and findings 9. Add more online nonfiction to your students lives 10. Move beyond the "its for a grade, its what college wants" idea I think there is many reasons why digital literacy is important to discuss with all students, and it may have become a difficult topic with the growth of technology and social media but it is something all teachers should incorporate into the classroom. If it affects a student it is something that needs to be taught! I think there is many aspects that a child's digital literacy can connect to the curriculum such as in Language Arts, teaching the students the correct skills in order to read the articles and then taking it further with being able to identify if it is a credible source. I also think this could connect to the health curriculum because fake news can really affect someone, mental health and online bullying are a huge topic of digital citizenship, and should be taught about when students are learning about digital literacy. Although, digital literacy kind of connects to every subject because students need to know about certain topics in order to develop the skills to know if the news is fake or not. There may be a fake statistic and if a student has a good understanding of graphs they may be able to spot the fake news more easily. I think NCTE is a great idea because of the growth of technology and social media today. Almost everyone has a phone or some type of electronic device that they can communicate with others. Education needs to change as society changes which is what NCTE is working towards with their goals centered around technology. They believe that Active, successful participants in this 21st century global society must be able to • Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology; Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought; • Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes; • Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information; • Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts; • Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.
1 Comment
Tamantha K.
6/10/2020 08:14:55 pm
Hey Meagan! My degree is also focused on K - Gr. 5 and I agree it's so important to start teaching about digital literacy at that age. So many kids are online at a young age and they need to become critical thinkers when viewing all the media we come across each day.
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