Promoting Digital Literacy & Citizenship

PRINCIPLE 4: "Effective online teachers teach and model ethical online interaction, while helping students develop digital literacy that will poise them for success."

When I took the @ONE Digital Citizenship course, we were encouraged to design activities that had lasting purpose beyond the present online course; and that would promote digital literacy skills.

Toward those ends, here are four examples of web-based activities that I include in some of my online Child Development classes.

1. Library Research Orientation

"You Are Invited!

Dear Students:

I am very pleased to announce that our wonderful and innovative Merced College Librarian, Joey Merritt, has collaborated with me to present an online Library Research Orientation meeting!

The session is scheduled for this Thursday, May 10, from 1:00 to 2:00 PM. Join the meeting by clicking this link:

https://MercedCCD.zoom.us/j/216634635

If you have never participated in a Zoom conference before, you may need to do some simple set-up steps. Please click the link a little ahead of the meeting time. You will be guided on how to set up your system.

Questions???

Please post all questions to the Announcement (click the Announcements tab on your left). I will respond as soon as I can. I may need to refer some questions to our tech experts, since I have not tried this before.

Please Join Us if You Can!"

The importance of this Library Research Orientation is to teach students about ethical research practices, such as avoiding plagiarism; as well as learning to identify and utilize credible online sources.

2. Sign Up with the California Early Care & Education Workforce Registry

Hello, Students:

As you know, one of my goals for you in this course is to develop a sense of professionalism in the context of Early Childhood Education. Toward that end, one of your activities this week is to register with the California Early Childhood Workforce.

About the Early Care and Education Workforce Registry:

As explained at their website,

"The California ECE Workforce Registry is a state, regional and local collaboration designed to track and promote the education, training and experience of the early care and education workforce for the purpose of improving professionalism and workforce quality to positively impact children."

Watch this short (2:35) video about the CA ECE Workforce Registry.

Please also watch this video (4:57), about how to create your Registry Profile and obtain your membership card.

What are the benefits to being a member of the Registry?

"There are many benefits to being a member of the Registry. Registry participants can:

• Build a professional profile that can be securely accessed and updated anytime.
• Electronically store education, training, employment and professional growth accomplishments, including transcripts, permits and other pertinent documents.
• Search for jobs. Search and sign up for trainings.
• Create a resume and share professional qualifications.
• Be recognized as an Early Care Education Professional.
• Use Registry ID on Registry Membership Card when signing into trainings and submitting education and training data to ensure that the information is quickly attached to your profile."

Register at the Early Care & Education Workforce Registry website.

Capture a screen shot or print a copy of your membership card. To earn credit for this assignment, you must return here to submit a screen shot or scanned copy of your Workforce Registry membership card.

Please notify me if you have any problems with the Registry. If you are already registered, you may simply submit a screen shot or scanned copy of your membership card for credit.

3. Create Your E-Portfolio

Another assignment for my Child development classes is for students to create an e-portfolio, using Portfolium. This facilitates students collecting and saving samples of their best work, which they can use later as they apply and interview for jobs in early childhood education. Documents may include a Statement of ECE Teaching Philosophy; professional goals; lesson plans, etc.

4. Participation in OER Resource Development

Earlier this year, I was invited to join a team of colleagues to develop an OER textbook for a Child Development course in Health, Safety and Nutrition. I am very pleased to join in that effort; but frankly, the going has been much slower than I would like.

Similarly, I have joined a coalition of early childhood instructors to create a repository of OER materials specifically for Child Development and Early Childhood Education. Presently there is a dearth of such materials on the web. Therefore, we the practitioners ourselves had to take on the long and laborious process of collecting and curating OER content.

I plan to offer, as an extra credit activity for advanced students, to participate in the gathering and categorizing of OER content for CD/ECE. I believe this will be an excellent opportunity to promote digital literacy and citizenship among those students.

Reflection:

Each of the above activities has an element of usefulness beyond the course in which it is assigned, on web-based platforms. The Library Research Orientation facilitates my online students enjoying Library training comparable to that experienced by campus-based students. Librarian Joey Merritt said that no other online instructor had tried this to date. I was pleased for my students to learn about avoiding plagiarism, selecting credible online information sources and other topics relevant to the ethical and responsible use of digital information. With the Workforce Registry and E-Portfolio assignments, students begin products that can support their pursuit of careers in Child Development and/or Early Childhood Education. I have fallen behind in my effort to get students involved in collection and curation of Online Educational Resources. I hope to be developing and implementing that project within the next year or two.