Working on this blog has really focused my thoughts on the concept of digital literacy. When I started out last autumn it was one of the first topics I posted on, and at the time I assumed that it would all get clearer as time went on.
Not so, what seemed black and white then has become greyer and greyer as time has gone on. Clearly, as teachers we have a duty to help learners towards a judgement of what is, and what is not, 'good' information. But that's quite a tall order because it's a call that I find hard to make for myself.
You can trust a text book or journal on the library shelves. Online news and comment is of variable quality (for example, I feel safe with the BBC's output, but am less certain about some other news sites) but how do you judge the credibility of blogs, video-sharing sites or social media?
Jisc (formerly the Joint Information Systems Committee) is the public body that supports post-16 education in the ICT area. It says that developing students who can learn and thrive in a digital society is a key role for universities and colleges.
It talks about digital literacy, saying that they are a package of capabilities that fit someone for living, learning and working in a digital society. That package has seven elements, one of which Jisc calls Information Literacy.
It says information literacy is about finding, interpreting, evaluating, managing and sharing literacy (Jisc's digital toolkit can be found here) How that happens in practice is something I plan to look into further.
Source:
JISC www.jisc.ac.uk (Accessed 3.1.15)
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