Now that we've covered most of the parts of digital literacy, how do we tie it all together? How can we make sure our students are becoming digitally literate?
The best answer to this: PRACTICE!
We have to make sure that we are incorporating elements of digital literacy in every activity. Scaffold skills in every class. Keep building on lessons they have already learned.
Not sure how to do this? Check out some of the ideas of projects and activities in the teacher resource section that you can use in your classrooms to help our students build these skills. Also, reach out to the media staff on both campuses for help! We love to collaborate with you to help make impactful lessons!
Ways to develop digital literacy skills in our students:
Breakout EDU games: most of these lessons have clues that encourage students to locate and evaluate information, as well as work on their collaboration. These practical skills will help students on future projects. Both media centers have BreakoutEDU kits and platform access to help you plan escape room-like games, as well as access to digital games.
Project Based Learning (PBL): PBL is one of the best ways to encourage your students to grow their digital literacy skills. These types of lessons make students find information, evaluate its usefulness, and develop ways to present the information. Google for Education has plenty of lesson plans and ideas on Applied Digital Skills to help you incorporate a digital literacy element to your projects.
Practice what you preach: This will probably be the best way to teach our students how to become digitally literate. If we show them how to appropriately find, evaluate, and use digital content, hopefully they will begin to model. We all know that sometimes it's easier said than done, but if we can model our expectations, we can also help them meet those expectations.
Create a classroom Acceptable Use Policy: While we already have a great Acceptable Use Policy in place for the county, you may want to work with your students to create one specifically for your class. This will help them understand expectations from both the school and you as a teacher.