Digital Literacy

Post for SCED 4200.
The topic of digital literacy is an important one in my discipline.  In fact, our national standards are called the Standards for Technological Literacy (STL).  The goal of technology education classes is to help students become more technologically literate-this includes, but is not limited to digital literacy.  I would say that overall I am fairly digitally literate.  I use the internet daily, usually for school related work, but also frequently for personal use.  I am also able to build repair, and troubleshoot computers, setup TVs and audio systems and setup home networks.  I find that I am able to pick up on most computer programs with relative ease.

There are some technologies that I am not as familiar with, for example my phone has no internet access- I've never used a smart phone or Ipad simply because I would rather be paying for more important things like food, rent and tuition.  I am confident though that I would pick up these things quickly. Two other popular technologies that I don't use are texting and facebook.  An occasional text message would be convenient for me, but not worth an extra $20 per month; and I don't see the point of having an entire conversation through text messaging when a phone call would suffice, I really don't have that much to say anyways.  I don't have a facebook account mainly because I don't really have anything that I need to share with everyone.   I think the idea of reconnecting with people you have lost contact with is great, but it doesn't seem that facebook really used for that any more.  Even dentists and grocery stores have facebook and twitter accounts - Why would I want to be friends with Smith's food and drug or want to know what my friend ate for breakfast and how many hours are literally wasted daily on facebook and twitter?


Most of the online texts that I read are instructions for class assignments or things that I am researching for a class.  When I'm using online texts for personal reasons I am usually checking emails (many of which are also school related) or reading news articles.  Other times I'm just looking for information out of curiosity of for a personal project, for example recently I was researching specs on different electric motors.  When teaching I'm planning on having my students do research online to find answers to questions that they might have.  I think it is important to teach students to find information rather than just telling them-it's a good skill to have.  one digital technology that I am really impressed with is Google Docs.  I think that it's a great tool for collaborative work and when I have my students do groups projects I would like to require them to use Google Docs and have them share it with me so they can collaborate and I can monitor their progress.  Using Google Docs could even be a lesson in class.