As an educator, you’ve most likely made extensive use of the internet to deliver content and create engaging lessons (maybe you even have a YouTube channel like other teachers). Online content – videos, articles, quizzes, you name it – has become an integral part of the teaching process everywhere.
What are the six steps involved in teaching digital literacy?
What is Educational Digital Literacy?
The ability to find, evaluate, and use online information safely and responsibly is defined as digital literacy in education. Children, for example, should comprehend the concepts of copyright, plagiarism, and the use of resources such as videos, hyperlinks, charts, and interactive content. These abilities enable students to critically examine any topic.
Digital literacy refers to the use of smartphones, laptops, tablets, and other internet-connected devices.
Your students, like you, have taken advantage of readily available online resources, becoming YouTube and smartphone game experts. The distinction between you and them is in information evaluation and curation.
How do you persuade 14-year-olds, for example, to open every result, read the content, look for quality indicators, find the author, and give them credit?
Or, more specifically, how do you explain the ability to filter online content and think critically about it?
Continue reading to find out the answers to these questions.
6 Steps for Teaching Students Digital Literacy
If you are asked to teach digital literacy to your students or if your lessons include exercises that require students to research on the internet, you should consider taking these steps.
Step 1: Show Students How to Use Google to Find Reliable Information
“Finding reliable information” includes online search, online resource reputation management, and the ability to identify scams and low-quality, unverified information.
Here are some of the most critical points to remember:
Engage your students in a lesson about fake news. You can search for a historical fact on various predetermined websites and try to find fakes by identifying authors, website quality, and cross-checking information.
Step 2: Teaching Google Search Techniques
Marie Fincher, a SupremeDissertations educational research expert:
“Once your students understand what trustworthy information is, it’s time to teach them how to find it.” There are a few techniques for using Google’s search bar that will be useful for writing academic papers in the future.”
According to Fincher, these are the techniques for finding reliable content faster.
For more options, use “OR.”
People may use similar terms to describe the same concept, so teach students to compare them to obtain accurate information. This is how it appears in Google.
Limit Search Results to Reliable Websites
This technique can help you find quality information in some cases.
For example, if your student types “site:edu” (or “site:ac. uk” in the United Kingdom) before the aUKual search request, the results will be limited to educational institution websites.
Use “Site” to find results from a single website.
To find quality content, search for information on a single trustworthy website. If a reliable source has information on a topic of interest to students, this may be useful to teach them.
The trick is to add “site:example.com” before or after the search terms.
To demonstrate how these Google search techniques work, try them out during class.
Your students should use them not only to find homework-related material but also for other purposes.
Consider teaching your elementary students using a kid-friendly search engine like Kiddle before moving on to Google.
Step 3: Promote Critical Thinking Online
As your students explore online resources, take the time to demonstrate the importance of evaluating their quality by thinking critically about each one.
For example, request that they locate an article on a topic of your choosing. When everyone has finished their searches, instruct your students to ask themselves the following questions:
“If your students suspect that the information is untrustworthy, have them compare it to content from several other websites,” suggests Bridgette Hernandez, an education writer at TopEssayWriting. “They’ll learn how to check the accuracy of the information they’re using when writing homework this way.”
But, more importantly, you will demonstrate the value of thinking critically about every piece of content they come across while surfing the web.
Step 4: Educating Students on the Ethical Use of Online Resources
Have a talk about intellectual propTalkight, and the right way to cite online information. You must explain what plagiarism is and why everyone should avoid it.
