Digital Literacies: The Importance of Detecting Reliable Information

           According to Nicky Hockly ‘digital literacies refer to our ability to effectively make use of the technologies at our disposal’. Two of their most important subskills are search and information literacies, that is to say ‘the ability not only to find information amongst the mass of sites and sources afforded by technologies, but also to evaluate that information.’ We consider fundamental for our students to know when to trust what they are reading online and when to suspect the information is not reliable. In order to do this we can encourage them to pay attention to the layout, whether the sources, authors, date of last update, copyright and address are present on the web page or not. So as to help them develop these subskills we could work with guidelines similar to the ones offered by the British Council and Lesley University (see reference).

           In our opinion, teachers should also try to fully develop these subskills since the websites that offer the opportunity to design material are not always reliable.  As teachers, we need to be aware of the aforementioned factors so as to choose which websites to use and which not to. In our experience, we have worked with Discovery Education’s page which we found trustworthy, even though we had troubles downloading the word-search puzzle created there. This is why we will not share the PDF version with you. Another reason is that the size of the font used by the page was too small, and the label of 'Discovery Education' was too big.

During this lesson, we tell our students -at primary school- a story where the different animals play the different instruments. This word-search puzzle allows them to identify the written words and become acquainted with their spelling.
We invite you to try this tools and if you find some other webpage where to create a word-search puzzle with a better printed version please leave a comment and share it.

References:

• Hockly, Nicky. (2013) Digital literacies: What are they and why should we care? (https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/digital-literacies-what-are-they-why-should-we-care)

• Lesley University (2007). Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria for the Classroom (https://sites.google.com/site/eiawebsite/Home/evaluating-websites-lesley-univ)
• http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/WordSearchSetupForm.asp?campaign=flyout_teachers_puzzle_wordcross

Digital Natives and Teaching

           An important aspect to take into account in material designing is the fact that most of our students are regarded as ‘digital natives’. This is a term coined by Marc Prensky and it means that they were born surrounded by technology and know how to use it ‘instinctively’. With this kind of students we can use online material and design activities which are meant to be solved with their computers or even with their cell phones.

           Although it is true that most of our students are ‘digital literates’ of the digital language, not all of them are. In some contexts, many students do not have internet access or computers at their homes because of different political and social situations they live in. We should be aware of this and base our teaching on what they have experienced and on the knowledge they have about technology. Moreover, some students may allege that they know a great deal about technology and software while they may not know basic tools such as Word Processor or information-searching. We should encourage them to learn more about these tools so they can become ‘digital literates’ and profit from them.
           Taking into account that technology will keep being developed and will become a more essential tool in people’s lives, teachers should guarantee that every student has a fair chance in developing his/her digital skills. In our country, Argentina, we have the advantage of having the netbooks provided by the State (from the Conectar Igualdad program) and we should not forget that. It is true that they not always work and that schools may have Wi-Fi connection problems, but it is the teacher’s task to help students and guide them to solve the problems they may have with the equipment.

           Once that we have the necessary equipment, we can design tasks that include technological tools to solve them. The teacher should try his/her best to make tasks meaningful, so students can be more engaged in doing them.

           For more information on this topic, you can read Marc Prensky’s article on ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants’ following this link: https://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/PRENSKY+-+DIGITAL+NATIVES+AND+IMMIGRANTS+1.PDF