Information Literacy and Digital Citizenship
What is Digital Literacy?
Digital literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies and the Internet.
Digital Literacy Definitions from American Library Association
Digital Literacy Definitions and Resources, University of Illinois
Digital Equity and Digital Inclusion from the National Digital Alliance
What is Information Literacy?
- Information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to "recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.
- See also Information Literacy defined from Wesleyan University
Student Research: The Right Information at the Right Time from Edutopia, December 19, 2012.
Website Evaluation Strategies
5 Ws of Website Evaluation: Who, What, When, Where, Why
11 Hilarious Hoax Sites to Test Website Evaluation from the TeachBytes blog.
- Included in the list is the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus that we discuss in the book.
- This site includes a link to the Checklist for Evaluating Websites from the University of Southern Maine.
- For commentary on student responses to fictional the Northwest Tree Octopus website, see an interview with Donald Leu from the University of Connecticut, "Don't Believe Everything You See on the Internet."
- Website Evaluation Guide: Examples of Sites That Are Credible, Maybe Credible, Not Credible from Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, Palmer, Arkansas
- How to Determine a Website's Credibility from the Global Digital Citizen Foundation
- This site includes a link to the Checklist for Evaluating Websites from the University of Southern Maine
OER State Policy Tracker, SPARC
Search Engines and How Students Do Research Online
Google Timeline
September 4, 1998: Google first incorporated as a company by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
- "They created software that would figure out how many times each relevant website was linked to from other relevant websites and sorted those and then laid them out for you, all on a clear, simple screen" (quoted from The Writer's Almanac, September 4, 2019)
1998: First Google Doodle
2000: Google AdWords launched (today it provides 86% of the company's revenue)
2004: First public version of Gmail (today Gmail used by 1.4 billion people worldwide)
2006: Google buys YouTube (today YouTube is the second most visited website, after Google)
June 2006, the term "Google" added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a Verb
2016: Google Assistant artificial intelligence program launched
September 4, 2019: Google fined $170 million for illegally collecting children's data on YouTube
Some material for this list from Google Turns 20: The 20 Biggest Milestones in Google's History, Android Authority, September 27, 2018).
Advent of Google Means We Must Rethink Our Approach to Education, by Sugata Mitra, June 17, 2013. Mitra is a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University and winner of the $1 million TED Prize 2013.
- Mitra refers to the importance of SOLE (Self-organized learning environment) where a group of students work around a computer to solve problems and answer questions that matter to them.
14 Great Search Engines You Can Use Instead of Google, Search Engine Journal (October 2, 2018)
Top 15 Most Popular Search Engines (September 2016)
Diagram of Search Engine. Jakob Voss on Wikimedia Commons
How To Create Google Scholar Alerts from the Free Technology for Teachers Blog. Google Scholar is a powerful search tool for students and teachers.
Now You Can Ask Google Search to Compare, Filter and Play explains new ways for the search engine to support more open-ended searches.
Why Teachers Worry about Students Online Research Skills outlines a 2012 survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project., "How Teens Do Research in the Digital World."
- 2462 AP and National Writing Project teachers surveyed
- Internet has significantly impacted how students do research
- Students expect to find information quickly and easily
- How students use the Internet for research
- 94% use Google
- 75% use Wikipedia
- 52% use YouTube
- 42% use peers
- 41% use Cliff Notes
- 25% use news sites (NBC, Fox, etc.)
- 18% use print or e-textbooks
- 17% use online databases
- 16% use a librarian
- 12% use books
Google has continued to be the dominant search engine with 66.7 percent of use as compared to 15.4 percent for Bing and 13.4 percent for Yahoo. Yet, the Boston Globe reported that reviewers found Bing outperformed Google in video searches while Google remained the top choices for general searches as well as searches related to maps, social media, shopping, and travel.
- Bray, H. (2012, June 23). Which search engine hits the mark? The Boston Globe, pp. B5, B9.
Class Learning Activity
- Ask students to conduct general information, map, social media, shopping, travel and video searches using different search engines and compare the results.
- How do their findings compare with those from the Boston Globe?
- What do students see as the advantages and disadvantages of different search engines when conducting different kinds of searches?
- How do their findings compare with those from the Boston Globe?
Google Tools for Teachers and Students
Using Google Tools to Help Students Become More Self-Directed, Self-Aware Learners
Nathaniel Woodruff, a science teacher at Amherst High School, received a Fulbright grant to study the Finland educational system - one of the best in the world. During his Fulbright experience, Nat observed that Finnish educators supported students in becoming self-directed, self-motivated, and self-aware learners. Students were taught to identify their strengths and weaknesses and were able to target deficiencies and take steps to rectify them. Building on the knowledge gained from the Fulbright study, Nat developed a system of interconnected Google sheets that create an interactive learning experience, where students take an active role in both their learning and evaluation processes. These sheets allow students to calibrate self-assessments and participate in determining their final grade based on quantitative evidence. An initial study showed that more accurate self-assessments lead to improved test performance. In this session, Nat will present the key components of this system along with a summary of results based on data collected from high school science classes.
12 Ways to Be More Search Savvy from MindShift
For the latest information on search engine usage, see the site, Search Engine Watch
Try Handwrite from Google that lets you write search terms with your fingers on a mobile device.
For a report on students and online research, see How Teens Do Research in the Digital World from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (November 1, 2012).
Visual Search Engines display information in different formats including outline, map, carousel, tag cloud and text. Grokker, Kartoo, Viewzi, SearchMe, and Quintura are popular visual search engines.
For a comparison, see Search Engine Features Chart from the website Search Engine Showdown.
Kid-Friendly Search Tools
- Duck Duck Go
- Kid Rex
- Kiddle (developed by Google)
- Wacky Safe (developed by Microsoft)
- Safe Search Kids (available as an app)
- International Children's Digital Library (find books in English and native languages from around the world)
Copyright and Copyright Laws
Can You Show Netflix in Class? Copyright for Teachers Made Simple
Finding Copyright Friendly Photos for the Google Image Generation
The (non-existent) 30-Second Rule. Teachers and students are not allowed to use up to 30 seconds of someone else's music without permission.
Digital Copyright Slider from the American Library Association's Copyright Advisory Network offers a sliding graph that shows what works published in the United States are subject to copyright protection and which are now in the public domain and free for teachers and students to use.
Children's Internet Protection Act
- Straight from the DOE: Dispelling Myths about Blocked Sites presents information about the rules for teachers and schools under the Children's Internet Protection Act.
Creative Commons Licenses
About the Creative Commons Licenses
OER State Policy Tracker from SPARC* (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Consortium)
Social Bookmarking with Diigo
Diigo is short for Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other Stuff
What is Diigo and What Does it Do
historytime, Robert Maloy's Diigo site
72% of Online Adults are Social Networking Site Users from Pew Internet & American Life Project (August 5, 2013).
Big List of Social Bookmarking and Networking Sites
Using Wikipedia in the Classroom
- Wikipedia and its sister projects develop at a rate of over 10 edits per second
- English Wikipedia includes 5,235,679 articles and it averages 800 new articles per day
- Welcome to Women in Red (WiR), a WikiProject whose objective is to turn "redlinks" into blue ones within the project scope: women's biographies, works by women, and women's issues.
How One Physicist is Giving Women Scientists the Wikipedia Pages They Deserve, MarketWatch (August 8, 2018)
Should Students Use Wikipedia? from the blog, Wired Science.
A Teacher's Guide to Wikipedia from Edudemic
47 Alternatives to Wikipedia from Neatorama (February 23, 2015).
Wikipedia's Global Breakdown: Number of Edits
For a perspective on the use of Wikipedia by teachers and students, see The History Teacher and Wikipedia: Teaching and Learning in an Era of "Instant Historying" from the journal, The History Teacher.
Citizendium is an alternative to Wikipedia seeks to be a trustworthy free encyclopedia. Contributors use real names and "gentle expert oversight" is used to help maintain integrity and reliability.
- Wiktionary (Dictionary)
- Wikibooks (Textbooks)
- Wikinews (News Source)
- Wikiquote (Collection of Quotations)
- Wikisource (Source Documents)
- Wikiversity (Educational Research)
- Wikivoyage (Travel Guide
- Wikispecies (Data on Life Forms)
- Wikimedia Commons (Media Files)
- Wikimedia Incubator
- Meta-Wiki
- Wikidata
- Wikimania
e-Books and Homegrown Digital Texts
A Next-Generation Digital Book, Mike Matas, Ted Talk (March 2011) based on the book Our Choice, Al Gore's sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.
See the trailer for Al Gore's e-book, Our Choice from Push Pop Press.
Interactive eBook Apps: The Reinvention of Reading and Interactivity reviews the development of increased interaction within digital book designs and content.
Teachers writing their own e-books is an emerging trend. See "Teaching Writing It Their Way," by Dave Saltman, Harvard Educational Letter (2012, July/August). Teachers can also involve students in creating digital books and digital materials for classes. Tools and resources include:
- ibooks Author
- CK-12 Foundations Flex Book
- Digital Textbook Playbook from the Federal Communications Commission
From Paper to Pixel: Digital Textbooks and Florida Schools. Marcia Mardis, et. al. Florida State University PALM Center, 2010.
Can e-Readers Help Reluctant Readers Enjoy Books? from EdTEch Magazine.
e-Book Reading Apps:
- ICDL Books for Children--International Children's Digital Library
e-Book Readers from 2006 to 2010
e-Learning Research and Trends
An Assessment of College Students' Attitudes Toward Using an Online Textbook from the Interdisciplinary Journal of e-Learning and Learning Objects (2013).
Kids's eBook Reading Nearly Doubled Since 2010, Scholastic Reading Survey Finds(January 2013).
E-Book Reader Ownership Doubles in Six Months (as of May 2011), reports the Pew Internet & American Life Project. For more recent research, see The Rise of e-Reading from Pew Internet Libraries.
In 2011, 8 percent own tablet computers such as the iPad, although the growth of this technology has not been as dramatic as that of e-readers.
Digital Citizenship
Link to Special Topic Page on Teaching Digital Citizenship
Cyberbullying and Bullying in Schools
STOMP Out Bullying™ Image by Christopher Hayes
Cyberbullying Reserach Center University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire
See Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying. S. Hinduja & J. W. Patchin, Corwin Press, 2008.
App allows Students to Report Bullying
CU Researchers Launch "Cyberbullying Detector" Program for Social Media, The Denver Post (June 22, 2018)
- BullyAlert is an Android mobile app for Instagram with plans to expand to Facebook and Snapchat
Respect Rap on YouTube shows elementary school students uses music to teach about respect in school.
For more resources, link to LGBTQIA Students and Bullying on the TEAMS-Tutoring in Schools wiki.
Text of a 2010 Massachusetts Bullying Prevention law.
- Resources and Ideas for No Name Calling Week from Facing History and Ourselves
Cyberbullying Study One of the First to Research Elementary School-Aged Youth reported by the Christian Science Monitor (July 25, 2013).
- 11,700 third, fourth and fifth graders surveyed by the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State College.
- Both bullying and cyberbullying increased from Grade 3 to Grade 5
- As kids move up in grade level, the anonymity of the bullying decreases
- One-time meanness more common than the repeated kind
For complete summary, see Cyberbullying among 11,700 Elementary School Students, 2010-2012.
For current research and additional information, go the the Cyberbullying Research Center
Bullying and Cyberbulling: What Every Educator Needs to Know. Elizabeth Kandel Englander. Harvard University Press, 2013.
Resolution on Confronting Bullying and Harassment, National Council of Teachers of English, 2011
http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/Young%20Kids/Hectors%20World/THINK.aspx
New York's Cuomo Signs Cyberbullying Bill into Law, Education News, July 17, 2012.
A. S. King and C. J. Bott Talk about Bullying features a dialog between a young adult author and an expert on bullying prevention.
Researchers: Cyberbullying Not as Widespread, Common as Believed features a paper presented in 2012 at the American Psychological Association conference that cyberbullying is "a low-prevalence phenomenon, which has not increased over time and has not created many 'new' victims and bullies, that is, children and youth who are not also involved in some form of traditional bullying."
Click here for interactive information about cyberbullying from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
For Most Bullied Gay Kids, Things Do "Get Better," Study Finds. In this study of 4000 teens in England, half of the gay and lesbian teens said they had been bullied in school, but that bullied dropped dramatically once they got older.
Professor Garfield Learning Lab Cyberbullying offers interactive activities to explore the issue and create effective responses.
It Gets Better offers videos from LGBT youth about their struggles and successes in overcoming prejudice and discrimination.
See also the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful Education Act which mandates California schools teach about the contributions of women, people of color, and other historically underrepresented groups. On January 1, 2012, the state updated these guidelines to end the exclusion of people with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from history and social studies lessons.