Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

[April 08, Journal of Higher Education]
An assistant professor in Northwestern University's sociology department, has discovered that students aren't nearly as Web-savvy as they, or their elders, assume. Ms. Hargittai studies the technological fluency of college freshmen. She found that they lack a basic understanding of such terms as BCC (blind copy on e-mail), podcasting, and phishing. This spring she will start a national poster-and-video contest to promote Web-related skills.

April 2008 : THE Journal. Students see a distinction between the writing they do for school and the writing they do in their personal lives. While the vast majority of 12- to 17-year-olds (85 percent) engage in some form of electronic writing--IM, e-mail, blog posts, text messages, etc.--most (60 percent) don't consider this actual writing.

Anybody can post information on the Internet, making it possible to find "proof" of any ideas or beliefs you can imagine. Yet to many students, "If it's on the Internet, it must be true." Alan November has put together some very cool examples of web sites to use when teaching students to authenticate information that they find online.

Alex Hayes, Janet Hawtin and other members of the TALO list are mobilizing a "Learning in the 21st Century" f2f round table and discussion on Safety and Privacy online. It will hopefully involve not only educators but also parents, students, IT staff, management and other members of the community. It is extremely important that people listen and become aware of the different perspectives.

What to do with all those cell phones, PDAs, and iPods tucked away in students' backpacks? Forward-thinking administrators have found a 'smart' solution: Load them with educational content and welcome them into instruction.

More netiquette tips for kids from the Boston Public Library.

a very powerful article about the need to improve how filitering occurs at schools or other public facilities like libraries; ignorance among people like the late Justice Rehnquist and other US Supreme Court justices is disconcerting; it appears that the 19th century education practices in the training and professional development of our doctors, lawyers and chiefs in service to us through our government exacerbate the modern day problems with technology use and an open society.

In his article, Thompson offers an exploration of the meaning and application of Web 2.0; evaluates how Net Generation students, who will enter the classroom with Web 2.0 expectations and experiences, will reshape institutions of higher education and their practices; and examines what some of these IHEs are specifically doing to meet the needs of the next generation of students. Thompson suggest that in order to move our educational practices forward, it is incumbent upon us to recognize and react to our changing student population.

[CoSN Conference, Mar 2008] Author Daniel Pink discusses what it will take for students to succeed in an outsourced and automated world--and how schools should change their approach to education accordingly.

Slick video made by the Pearson Foundation for COSN that explains the shifts that need to happen if we are going to enable students to become fully digital literate.
\nThe Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) provides a voice for K-12 education leaders who use technology strategically to improve teaching and learning. CoSN provides products and services to support leadership development, advocacy, coalition building, and awareness of emerging technologies.

[May 2008] Offers strategies for helping students make informed decisions, and become critical thinkers, savvy researchers and ethical contributors.

Via Dan Shareski. Is the way we read changing the way we think? Interesting implications for our students, who have grown in this environment yet are often taught in "the old way".

This is the cover story for the current issue of the magazine so it is attracting a lot of attention from readers. You can follow the commentary at: http://digg.com/tech_news/Is_Google_Making_Us_Stupid_Nicholas_Carr

With Photoshop's ease in alteration of photos, students need to be taught to authenticate visual and textual information as part of any good digital literacy program. A recent photograph of Iranian missles was displayed by many prominent news organizations (including the BBC, the L.A. Times, and the New York Times) before it was noted that portions of the dust clouds beneath the missiles were identical. Online news sites have been abuzz all morning, engaged in a debate over what, exactly, this means. As the New York Times notes, this is not the first time Iran's state media has altered photographs for political ends.

Analyzing and assessing sources is an essential part of all inquiry-based learning projects, but our multimedia world means that we have to teach kids not just how to assess data and arguments, but also how to discern emotional appeals made through pictures, music and video.

We are facing a new frontier in the ever growing challenge to close the skills gap impacting many of us in business. The deficiency in digital literacy has created a need for companies to evolve in the understanding that literacy in technology has become equally as important as literacy in the English language; our workforce must be technologically fluent to compete in a global economy.

Includes sites w/ bogus info - use to each digital literacy.Thanks to Angela Maiers for the link.

From the education team at MyeCoach: How to decipher a URL.

The code doesn't cover every possible situation -- nor does it say educators have unfettered use -- but it's aimed at providing clearer guidelines to help teachers and students understand when they can use material without seeking permission or making a payment.

Teaching literacy-reading and writing-is a core mission for schools, but today's young people increasingly "read" 3-D computer simulations and "write" via social networks such as Facebook. A growing chorus of experts say schools should add these forms of communication to their literacy mission as "technology literacy."