The topic of digital literacy is an important one as society is deeply embedded in technology. While I was growing up, technology was rapidly evolving, but teaching about digital literacy was never incorporated into any lessons we were taught. We were always told to "use reliable sources" but were never educated on how to detect when something online is a reliable sources. As a future educator, I know that digital literacy needs to be taught within the classroom.
These lessons need to begin as early as Kindergarten or Grade 1 as kids now a days have access to the internet at early ages. I believe that this type of lesson is best taught during an English Language Arts class or a Social Studies class, it can be incorporated with projects or reports the children need to create for the subject. For the purpose of this post, I would like to discuss digital literacy in a grade 5 classroom.
How can we educate grade 5's on digital literacy?
Grade 5 is a good age to start giving the children their own tasks to research the reliability of sources. Before sending them off to do this, it is important to sit down as a group and review exactly what needs to be looked at when looking at a source. In the article "How do we Teach Students to Identify Fake News" by Dr. Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrant, they discuss the idea of bringing real-world fake news examples that the students would encounter in the classroom to apply their skills in determining why it is fake. There are a few websites that would be helpful resources to teach the class as a whole. Can you Spot the Fake News Headline is a quiz that can be done as a class. It provides a few news headings and as a class, you need to determine what news headline is the fake one. This will build up the skills within students to steer clear of headlines that are fake news. Spot the Troll is a website that incorporates Twitter/Facebook profiles into a quiz. Some of the profiles will be fake/spams while others will be real. As a class, you can investigate the profiles together and vote on whether it is fake or not. Majority of the vote will be the answer you use, the website will tell you why you are correct or incorrect and highlight the aspects of the profile the viewer should be focusing on. After examining these quizzes as a class, the next step would be allowing the students to go online and examine a few articles that the teacher has chosen. They would be able to put their skills to the test and examine these headlines/articles and come to a conclusion on if it is fake or real. In the (National Council of Teachers of English), it states that students need opportunities to synthesize information, I believe by following the ideas provided for teaching digital literacy within a grade 5 class, the students would have the opportunity to do so.
Since a lot of individuals currently teaching or pursuing education to become a teacher did not grow up learning digital literacy in the classroom, it is important that we educate ourselves prior to educating our students.