Digital Literacy: Ideas, Plans, Strategies and Collaboration

Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants (Teaching Tolerance, 2020).

Teaching Tolerance provides seven lessons that teach important digital literacy skills to students. They have lessons designed for different grade levels bands: K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12.
Within the 3-5 band lessons include:

-Evaluating Reliable Resources,
-Understanding Online Searches
-Participating in Digital Communities
-Privacy and Security Online
-Producing Digital Information
-Sensible Consumers
-Activism Online

These lessons help promote students to become critical consumers, as well as encourage them to leave a positive digital footprint.

Teach your students the ins and outs of online safety and communication with Digital Passport™, Common Sense's award-winning suite of digital citizenship learning games for elementary students (Common Sense, 2020).

Common Sense Education provides many great resources and lessons that can help teach students the importance of Internet safety and important digital skills. Digital Passport, allows you to assign six different interactive games that teach students critical digital citizenship skills. Digital Passport is designed for students in grades 3-5. It is very user friendly and allows you to assign to Google Classroom.

Here is a great article from Edutopia that provides ideas on how to embed digital citizenship into a project for students. As my school continues to encourage teachers to create more PBL opportunities for students, this can be a great guide. Check it out!

I found this pedagogy wheel and feel that it connects perfectly with the Web Literacy Skills and 21st Century Skills wheel we had analyzed during module two [Web Literacy Skills]. As I think about ways to embed different apps into my instruction, this wheel provides a ton of different suggestions. I appreciate that this wheel has apps that are specific for Apple and also Google. All students have a Chromebook, however, we also utilize iPads. I am excited to explore these different apps and see how I can incorporate them into my instruction.

Consider this working with this new taxonomy or ladder of engagement when assigning your students media projects: consuming, curating, creating, critiquing, and publishing (Edutopia, 2020).

This article is a great read! It directly connects to module six's readings. As I think about the design of my lesson plans, this taxonomy will help promote critical consumers of the Internet and will help students to become more aware of what they are reading and researching.

The acronym CAPES is an awesome strategy for students to use when considering the credibility of a source. I have an anchor chart posted with this acronym and the following questions that prompt their thinking. I also have created a graphic organizer, that requires students to answer these questions when selecting sources.

CAPES stands for:

-Credentials: What makes the author an expert? What is their bias?
-Accuracy: Is the information up to date? Is the information factual?
-Purpose: What is the purpose of the information?
-Emotion: Is the item designed to evoke an emotional response? Is it positive or negative? Does it eliciting anger, frustration, or empathy? How does this item make us feel?
-Support: What supporting evidence can you find from another site or source?

(NAGC, 2020)

Teacher-recommended tools for promoting collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, and equity whether students are in school or at home (Edutopia, 2020).

Within this article are a plethora of apps and websites that enhance instruction. These apps and websites can be utilized for both face-to-face learning and also remote learning. One app that was mentioned was #EquityMaps. I just downloaded it and am very excited to use it. This app, allows teachers to track who is speaking and participating in class.

Twitter provides so many great opportunities for student engagement. Although, students do not have their own Twitter, I have begun to utilize a Twitter template. This Twitter template is on a Google Doc. The Google Doc is shared with all students and they have access to edit it. Each student has created their own profile and they can see their peers Tweets. These suggestions that the article presents, are very creative and I am excited to utilize them in my classroom.

The Applied Digital Skills curriculum consists of free resources designed to build digital literacy in education and for jobs (Google, 2020).

Google for Education is a great tool that has many detailed lesson plans, that focus on digital skills and strategies to teach students. For late elementary school, they have over 142 plans. These are free. I also appreciate, that they have lessons that offer ways to expand your knowledge on Google platforms, such as Google Slides. I have benefited greatly from using this resource.

Book Talks have increased student engagement drastically during my ELA block. Students always look forward to engaging in book talks with their peers. I use FlipGrid as a platform, where students can record and respond to their peers' book talks. FlipGrid is very user friendly and kids have the opportunity to be very creative! As for teachers, it is a great platform to showcase student work.