Digital Literacy And The Public Education

We are currently living in a digital age where our students are notably technologically proficient. This poses a challenge with how some of our students are currently learning (or trying to learn) in our classrooms. Many students have grown tired of reading dense texts for homework assignments and tired of listening to long, boring lectures from teachers at school. The way in which students are currently analyzing and interpreting texts that they read and videos that they watch have not been up to our standards here at North Windsor High School. The thing is, a lot of our teachers are also struggling between teaching with both print text and by digital means. North Windsor High School acknowledges the fact that many seniors graduate not having the digital skills and print text literacy necessary to lead successful lives after high school. We are beginning to implement some changes with our teaching methods and hope to incorporate technology and print text in different and more engaging ways.

There’s no denying that technology has grown to play a major role in education and learning. Students are using laptops, tablets, and smartphones to research, complete, and even collaborate on assignments, both in and outside of the classroom. Timothy D. Snyder and Thomas L. Friedman both have written articles expressing their opposing opinions on technology in the classroom. Timothy Snyder is a Professor of History at Yale University who has written five different award-winning books. In his article, “Why Laptops Are Distracting America’s Future Workforce”, Snyder explains to students and teachers why he is against technology in the classroom. Thomas Friedman is a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, author of six award-winning

Since children today have become digital natives; they will never truly know a world that is not touched with technology. This means that the educational paradigm has to shift in order to keep up with the needs of our young learners (Jo, 2016). In the last thirty years, technological advances

One would never think that that the digital divide would still be affecting America so greatly. From my unknowing perspective, I just assumed that many if not all Americans has basic tools such as having access to the internet. However, that is not the case, as it was made clear

In the past 2000 years, it seems that no monumental changes in the physical make up of human beings have taken place. Yet, in just the past 20 years, the ways in which we humans see the world have seemingly changed more drastically than ever before. In these last two

The first component of this multiyear plan is to create the short-term goal of assessing and improving accessibility of technology because “Inadequate access to and/or underutilization of instructional technology impedes students’ learning” (Ford & Moore, 2013, p. 407). The “digital divide” that exists among schools is a notable factor and this could help narrow the disparities among student achievement (Ford & Moore, 2013). Therefore, in a two-month timeframe, administrators and the school leadership team would determine the infrastructure of existing technology and analyze funding options for immediate and future needs. This strategy not only enhances the equitable use of technology in the classroom; which affects the school’s accountability ratings, it also provides an evaluation tool to document student achievement. The next step involves the principal collaborating with the Information Technology (IT)

Today’s students and teachers live In a digital age, where an explosion of digital tools and information are available to anyone with online access. One one hand, it represents unprecedented access to information, communication, creating and sharing. Today’s students go online to accomplish many activities. With this power, comes the responsibility for teachers to impart to students the principles of digital citizenship.

The tools used for mainstream education in America are, at an ever increasing rate, shifting from physical to digital. Schools across the nation have spent the last decade integrating technology into education in an attempt to make learning more engaging for students. As schools join the charge for digital instruction they must heavily evaluate their motives, the realistic applications of new technology, and the consequences it may have on their students.

Today, we are so accustomed and dependent on technology to communicate and inform our world (Bentley, 2014). According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017) Australia has a population of 24.7 million people, only 14.2 million of those people have access to the internet. That means that over ten million people in Australia, a young but well-developed country don’t have access to the internet. Nicholas Negroponte created a non for profit initiative called one laptop per child, in hope to continue to minimise the digital divide, this initiative has now rolled out in Ethiopia, Mongolia, Peru, Mexico, Rwanda and more. Technology is such a big part of our education system so what happens when some of our students don’t have access to basic

Professor Cathleen A. Norris and Professor Elliot Soloway write positive information about the benefits of the Internet in education. They say that, wealthy or not, the internet provides our youth with an unequivocal access to knowledge and unmatched ability to communicate. Specifically, Norris and Soloway argue that, “ For a

The article, “Digital Literacy Is the Key to the Future, But We Still Don’t Know What It Means,” is written by Marcus Wohlsen. He writes his article, to explain to the public what digital literacy is. Wohlsen knows that the increasing there is an increasing usage of technology in the

However, when asked their thoughts about the balance between digital consumption (reading, watching, listening) and digital production (making videos, building web pages) in their institutions’ digital literacy efforts, more than 66% answered that their unit leaned partly or entirely towards consumption. This may be due to the inherited pre-digital literacies noted above, designed for a time when students were considered to be consumers, or it may be driven by institutional leaders’ backgrounds in the mid- and late 20th century — the heyday of the consumer, before what Alvin Toffler dubbed “the prosumer” age.24 The United States’ multi-agency digital literacy portal reveals a similar consumption-oriented stance.25 However, as the third decade of the 21st century approaches, it is clear that digital tools have democratized creation, as well as made accessible many platforms for sharing one’s products.

But the nature of children’s experiences using computers in school varied greatly by subject and teacher objectives, and the data suggested that lower-income students use computers more often for repetitive practice, whereas higher-income students use computers more often for more sophisticated, intellectually complex applications. Differences between low-income and high-income children’s access to home computers were less subtle. Surveyed data indicated that only about 22% of children in families with annual incomes of less than $20,000 had access to a home computer, compared to 91% of those in families with annual incomes of more than $75,000. And among children with access, those in low income families were reported to use the computer less than those in high-income families, maybe because most low-income families with computers lacked a connection to the Internet. The two most predictive factors of children’s use of home computers were the child’s age and the computers capabilities. (Becker)

Compare and Contrast As schools promote 21st-century learning, there has been a push for literacies which encourage students to be 21st-century learners. The two overarching literacies, new and digital, has taken over the three R’s literacy, reading, writing, and arithmetic. New Literacies continuously change due to the new technology emerging providing

One of the new AASL Shared Foundations: Engage (2017) is that librarians “implement organizational policies and practices related to censorship, materials challenges, library records, and responsible use of information resources” (Shared Foundations Engage sect. para. 4). Subsequently, librarians demonstrate their leadership capabilities through implementing and disseminating information to their school