COLLEGE REFORMS & TRAININGS, HED, PUNJAB

Digital SKills

Introduction

Digital skills are defined as a range of abilities to use digital devices, communication applications, and networks to access and manage information. They enable individuals to create and share digital content, communicate and collaborate, and solve problems for effective and creative self-fulfillment in life, college, work, and social activities at large. Entry-level digital skills, meaning basic functional skills required to make basic use of digital devices and online applications, are widely considered a critical component of a new set of literacy skills in the digital era, with traditional reading, writing, and numeracy skills. To thrive in the connected economy and society, digital skills must also function together with other abilities such as strong literacy and numeracy skills, critical and innovative thinking, complex problem solving, an ability to collaborate, and socio-emotional skills.

Digital Literacy

Technology has become ingrained into personal, professional, and social aspects of our lives. Educators must have digital literacy skills to better equip students to become productive citizens of society. Digital literacy means having the knowledge and ability to use a wide range of technology tools for a variety of purposes. Digital literacy is the ability to use and create technology-based content, including finding and sharing information, answering questions, and interacting with others and computer programing.

Students must have the competence to use and operate technology devices, software, and web programs to complete class assignments and produce products to extend their learning. Students have a wide range of access to digital tools such as the internet and web 2.0 tools technologies including social media, email, web services, blogs, podcasts, messaging and networking sites.

Teaching digital literacy is important not only in supporting students to become independent, critical learners but also in narrowing the gap between children’s lived experiences inside and outside of college.

Activity: PRE-RESEARCH GAME PLAN

Material needed: paper and pencil/pen

Ask the students to write down the steps they would take to perform a research on their relevant topic.

Topic: Three questions I have about my topic are:

Five (or more) words or phrases that I can use as search terms are:

Three ways I can combine my keywords into search strings are:

Two online databases I want to look at are:

Debrief

Teacher can fill out the worksheet first and give students an example of how to answer the questions. After students complete the worksheet, they are encouraged to discuss their answers with the rest of the class.

What’s at stake

Youth is growing up in the center of a technological revolution. Digital media defines their lives in unprecedented ways; they spend more time online, texting, watching TV and movies, and playing video games than they do in school or with their parents. The convergence of portable personal technologies, unfiltered access to information, and user-generated content profoundly impacts how teenagers grow and learn. The line between digital life’s perils and possibilities is thin. The stakes are high. Our youth know more about this world than most of the adults in their lives do.

Digital Literacy Assessments

Assessing students’ digital literacy skills ensures we are preparing them for life beyond the classroom. Young people’s confidence can also be misleading when applying digital literacy skills to research tasks and completing projects. Educators cannot take for granted that youth are well versed in digital literacy because they can use social media platforms and navigate through software with little to no assistance.

It is important for educators and students to have competency skills in digital literacy. Many established businesses have been uprooted and replaced by automation and digitization systems. Teachers can use rubrics and checklists to assess students’ digital competencies across content areas, by analyzing students’ products and tasks in reading, math, science, social studies, and writing.

Being Safe Online

The “9 key P’s” of digital skills are:

Passwords – Includes teaching students how to create secure passwords and systems/apps for creating and remembering passwords.

Privacy – Teaching students how to protect sensitive information such as address, phone numbers etc. What should and should not be posted on social media and how hackers can use this information.
Personal Information – Teaching students what is appropriate to share online and via what mediums.
Photographs – Includes teaching students about geotagging, facial recognition software, and general safety precautions around photo posting.
Property – Teaching students to understand copyright laws and property rights for online assets.
Permission – How to cite work and content taken from online sources.
Protection – Understanding viruses, cyber threats, phishing, cyber bullying etc.
Professionalism – Teaching students to be aware and professional in a globally connected arena.
Personal Brand – Ensuring students understand that how to create their digital brand

The key to effectively teaching the 9 P’s and ensuring your students understand and practice digital skills are to make it a seamless, core part of your curriculum and to model ethical digital behavior. Weave discussions and elements of digital skills into any conversation or lesson that involves technology, so students can see the relevance of digital skills.

Activity: WHAT’S TRUE ON THE INTERNET

Material needed: paper and pencil/pen

Ask students to answer the question as briefly as possible.

How do you decide if something you see online is true?

What details do you look for?

Debrief

Allow students to share discuss their answers with the rest of the class. Teacher should also provide solutions for this activity. Moreover, teachers can ask students solutions to common digital fraud. For example, how to avoid spam messages or calls.

Search Engines and research

A series of studies, at three Illinois universities, conducted, “when it comes to finding and evaluating sources in the Internet age, students are downright lousy.” The study attempted to debunk the myth of the digital native claiming that although students today may have grown up with technology, they don’t necessarily know how to best use it.

“They [students] were basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results. Consequently, the students did not know how to build a search that would return good sources. (For instance, limiting a search to news articles, or querying specific databases such as Google Book Search or Google Scholar.)”

Some said they were surprised by ‘the extent to which students appeared to lack even some of the most basic information literacy skills that we assumed they would have mastered in high school.’ Even students who were high achievers in high school/college suffered from these deficiencies.

In other words: Today’s college students might have grown up with the language of the information age, but they do not necessarily know the grammar. Just because you have grown up searching things in Google does not mean you know how to use Google as a good research tool.

This finding underscores the importance of teaching digital literacy right from school at the matriculation level. Students who are unable to effectively use search engines, which is today’s form of research, will be unprepared for the demands of higher education and the workforce.

Unhealthy Online Relationships

Exploitation: Some people use digital media to get teenagers involved in relationships they’re not ready for. They do this by finding someone who is vulnerable and then showering them with attention, sympathy, affection and kindness, all to persuade the victim that they love and understand them.

Abuse: Relationship abuse is when someone hurts, insults or scares their partner, tries to control what they do, pressures them to do things they don’t want to do or tries to keep them away them from their friends and family. Some of the ways that relationship violence can happen online are by:

harassing someone with threatening posts
“stalking” someone online
constantly keeping tabs on what someone is doing online as well as calling/emailing/texting them to “checkup” on them
making someone “unfriend” past friends
pressuring someone for photos
spreading lies or rumors
sharing embarrassing things like photos
spying on someone’s calls or posts or
threatening to do any of these.

What to Do If You’re in an Unhealthy Relationship?

Remember that personal relationships between teens and adults are never a good idea. Teens aren’t able to consent to elderly things with adults, and no healthy adult seeks out relationships with teens.

When you’re talking to someone online, watch out for signs that they’re grooming you for a unwanted relationship:

excessively flattering you, especially about how you look
suggesting that you move the conversation to private messaging or to a private online space
asking about times and places where you could meet or could communicate online in private
introducing irrelevant topics into the conversation
sharing or offering to share inappropriate images, or pictures of themselves
asking you not to tell your parents or friends about a conversation or about the relationship

If any of those happen, make up an excuse to get out of the conversation and tell your parents or another adult that you trust right away.

If you’re in an abusive relationship, help is available. Although it is can be hard, you can talk to friends, parents, teachers, or other adults you trust. If you have encountered any such situation either online or offline, tell a trusted adult about contacting the police.

If there’s nobody you can or want to talk to in person, you can call a helpline 1092519264444 of “FOSPAH, Federal Ombudsman Secretariat for Protection against Harassment”.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse