Digital Citzenship -- B7 -- Lam
How can we promote digital literacy in math, science, and healthful living classsrooms
A good way to promote digital literacy/digital citizenship in math, science, and healthful living classrooms is to have students make infographics using Canva or another similar tool to tell a story with the data that they have collected. For example, a health classroom could collect data on the impact of having a healthy life through nutrition and exercise and gather data from valid sources, and then create an infographic showing the impact through their quantative data. With this, we teach students digital literacy in many ways -- creating a computational artifact with computational tools like Canva, Adobe Spark, etc; searching for reputable sources of information and making sure that the information is correct; making sure that students understand the underlying data when it comes to a study (or in essence, when a article starts with "studies show..." what does that mean?); and teaching students how to cite data or information that was not originally theirs, as well as have students understand the impact of copyright and fair usage of images on the web. The last part is important as a lot of pictures on the web are not free/fair use and were created by someone to promote or enhance the author's writing.
Promoting Digital Citzenship in Teachers through PD
In Choi, Cristol and Gimbert's study of teachers & their levels of digital citizenship, I noticed a common thread of anxiety amongst teachers when navigating and using internet resources, especially when it came to self-efficacy.
We can help support teachers with promoting digital citizenship by helping teachers see the wealth of resources online through social networking sites. One thing that my former district in Houston does is a Twitter chat with teachers in the Houston area, and the district actively encourages teachers to participate online and give feedback to the district as well as share resources and things that they do in their classrooms. A former teacher & colleague of mine participates in a Twitter chat amongst mathmatics teachesr and is comfortable sharing and discusssing her courses online. Participating in Twitter chats can help promote digital citizenship and bring awareness of local, state, and national issues in education and can help teachers be more active in promoting best practices & change in their districts & states. A PD on Twitter and its uses (and potential drawbacks and privacy issues) could help teachers be more comfortable with the tool & help maybe increase adoption of Twitter as a way to communicate & encourage discussion.
Comments
Students also need to learn how to read the data they find online and how to tell if what they are reading is accurate. Right now there is tons of data out there about COVID and not all of it is completely accurate. Students need to be taught how to analyze sources.
The idea of all the teachers participating in the Twitter Chat is a great idea. The first time I learned about Twitter I had no help in understanding how it worked. It would be good for teachers to learn how to use such tools before being able to help the students.