The visit from Science World made me realize (AHA) a couple of things:

Aha: Digital literacy is about being able to read and know what is been presented on a website and about 79% of students only judge what we see in front of us.

Aha: Lateral reading is a skill that can be taught to students to debunk fake websites. Skills that they can practice getting better at filtering the information that is presented to them online.

But it left me with a couple of questions:

Hmmm:

  • How do we teach digital literacy if the students don’t always have access?
  • How do we teach this to K-5?
  • How do we help the students when the parents give them too much access? the problem)

It is important to always talk about advancements in technology with our peers, but also with our students and younger people; they are usually the ones who hear about those technologies faster than us as they have more time to access information online. We also get used to what we have and work, but younger generations always want what is newest and brightest to get away from adults.

There is a saying from kids I’ve heard, “Once my parents find that platform and learn to use it, we need to find a new one”. As they get older they want to reach older or more targetted generations, they join different websites meant for the “aging people”. I was there when MySpace was the “it” thing and facebook was first invented…