Digital literacy and digital citizenship comprise many skills and dispositions that our students need to learn in concert with the curriculum content they must master. I’m working on creating a six week course to help educators better understand the principles of digital literacy, digital citizenship, media & information literacy, and digital equity, so that they can be better equipped to help their students with these topics. I’ve created a UbD (Understanding by Design) plan for the course, am keeping in mind ISTE’s 2017 Standards for Educators (still in draft form), and have thought through Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning in my planning. Underlying my design strategies are my goals for impacting the learning of both my course participants and their students.
I used Schoology to create the course, and it is in constant evolution. If you’d like to take a peek, create a Schoology account and use the Join code XMWSG-QTZKJ.
In my search for other courses on digital literacy, it does seem that I’m filling an unmet need with my Schoology course; there are just not a lot of free courses on digital literacy as compared with other topics. For example, there are only a few MOOCs that address digital literacy, and of those many are only peripherally about digital literacy as they focus more on technology integration basics or digital culture. A course from Cyberwise titled Digital Literacy for Teachers and Administrators looks like it could be really interesting, but the content will have to remain a mystery because I would have to pay $150 to view the course. (Mine is cheaper!)
If I weren’t already so far into this Master’s program, I’d probably be very interested in the graduate certificate in digital literacy from the Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Renee Hobbs is one of the professors; I heard her speak at South by Southwest Edu a few years ago and have cited her work in my literature reviews. She’s terrific, and I bet I would totally geek out over that certificate program.
Microsoft offers a digital literacy course. Included is a 30 question quiz that you can take without registering; if you want a certificate you have to provide your name and email address. The quiz focused only on parts of a computer and on specifics of various Microsoft programs. This focus on basic computer vocabulary makes up only a small part of one’s overall digital literacy so doesn’t go nearly far enough in promoting true literacy. Finally, my district has HooNuIt by Atomic Learning, and there is a course within HooNuIt on 21st Century Skills. These courses are designed for and by educators and usually contain excellent content. I may be adding the link to this HooNuIt training to my Schoology course.