Elective for students Gr. 10, 11, & 12
Prerequisite: 9th Grade ELA/History
Required Supplies: None
Offered: Every Year
Duration: Semester
Today’s personal, social, political, economic worlds are all affected by digital media and networked public technology. Viral videos, free search engines, abundant inaccuracy and sophisticated disinformation online, digital footprints, laptops in classrooms and smartphones at the dinner table, twenty-something social media billionaires, massive online university courses -- it’s hard to find an aspect of daily life around the world that is not being transformed by the tweets, blogs, wikis, apps, movements, likes and pluses, tags, text messages, and comments two billion Internet users and six billion mobile phone users emit. New individual and collaborative skills are emerging. This course introduces students to both the literature about and direct experience of these new literacies: research and methods to control attention, attitudes and tools necessary for critical consumption of information, best practices of individual digital participation and collective culture, the use of collaborative media and methods, and the application of network know-how to life online.