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"In today's world, literacy goes beyond just the basic ability to comprehend text. Today's students will also need to master a new skill-digital literacy. Cornell University defines digital literacy as "the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies and the Internet." Digital literacy, by this definition, encompasses a wide range of skills, all of which are necessary to succeed in an increasingly digital world. As print mediums begin to die out, the ability to comprehend information found online becomes more and more important. Students who lack digital literacy skills may soon find themselves at just as much of a disadvantage as those who cannot read or write. Because digital literacy is so important, educators are increasingly required to teach students digital literacy in the classroom. In many ways, this is similar to what educators have always done in teaching students to read and write. In other ways, however, digital literacy is a brand new skill. Most students already use digital technology, such as tablets, smartphones, and computers, at home. Many students already know how to navigate the web, share images on social media, and do a Google search to find information. However, true digital literacy goes beyond these basic skills."

" I've spent a lot of time lately reflecting on the way I teach literacy in my classroom and about the ways that the digital text I often use to teach now is inherently different from the text I used to teach reading ten years ago. In an earlier post, I talked about some of the ways that I think using digital text in shared reading, such as when reading projected blog comments or tweets, is actually superior to the traditional text we have long used. Even if you are not convinced that digital text can work better than traditional text, it is difficult to argue that digital text is not here to stay or that it is not becoming increasingly important. It is and will be a significant part of our students' lives both now and in the future. If this will be true, it only makes sense to begin to teach children strategies for reading this new form of text."

"Digital environments mediate the navigation, length, and complexity of texts, requiring composers to adapt to audience, tone, and purpose in ways that previous generations were never required. Digital environments have disrupted the writing process as we once knew it due to an interwoven combination of traditional narrative sequencing, hyperlinks to other digital sources, infusions of multimedia texts like videos and podcasts, and interactive response fields. A new Digital Writing Process SOARS!"

"Students are doing more reading on digital devices than they ever have before. Not only are many teachers using tablets and computers for classroom instruction, but many state tests are now administered on computers, adding incentive for teachers to teach digital reading strategies. But casual digital reading on the internet has instilled bad habits in many students, making it difficult for them to engage deeply with digital text in the same way they do when reading materials printed on paper."

"In celebration of Media Awareness Week (November 2-6, 2009) we are encouraging students, teachers, and the general public to create videos, digital stories, text, images or any digital media that showcases the different ways they are Media Literate. To get things started, we have created a video that is hosted here on our YouTube Channel (also located at http://drop.io/medialiteracyvideo). Watch the video and then we encourage you to create your own short digital representation of media literacy. Anyone can then upload their video responses or link to any digital artifact you create here in the comments to this video. Celebrating and Sharing: Teachers and students are encouraged to take part in this exposition of student media literacy, we encourage you to promote your activities with local media outlets and draw attention to the critical importance of developing media literacy in the digital age. We hope you choose to participate in this exciting event with your students. You may attend the Media Literacy evening in person on Monday, November 2, 2009, from 7:00 - 8:30 PM CST at the St. James-Assiniboia School Division's Professional Staff Development Centre (PSDC) - 150 Moray Street (access off of Portage Avenue) or via our uStream channel (http://www.ustream.tv/lwict) where everything will be archived. If you have any questions regarding any aspect of this event, leave us a comment here. Category: Education Tags: lstu manace literacy medialiteracy mediaawarenessweek media education lwict "

"Do your students have access to quality, digital texts? Students with digital devices in their hands should know where to go to access digital texts. There are many websites and apps where students can go to find high-interest, leveled content to read. I love tools that let students skim and search for short passages of informational text or dive into an interactive storybook.  When it comes to making your classroom library more tech-friendly you can add some of these favorite independent reading apps and websites to your student's devices. At the bottom of this post I have a special bookmarking tip to turn websites into app icons.  This list of independent reading websites and mobile apps includes a range of favorites. You might choose a particular resource connected to your current unit of study, or introduce a few over the course of the year. "

"Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for decades; however, with the introduction of generative AI, such as ChatGPT, there has been a newfound focus on how technology tools can impact the educational landscape. The AI revolution in industry is upon us and is beginning to establish itself as a permanent part of educational practice as evidenced by Lucarillo, Nagel, Hardman, and others. Therefore, it is crucial to equip teachers with the skills to use AI in ways that ensure a high-quality education for the students in classrooms across the globe. The urgency to upskill teachers is highlighted by the gap in skills that already exists in classrooms today, underscoring the digital divide. Just as in any content area, students come to classrooms with varying readiness levels and educational needs; using AI is no different. For example, there are preschoolers who play games on an iPad with empowered intelligent tutors. My prereading granddaughter uses AI predictive text programs, dictation technology, and iconography to text me from her mother's phone and to locate videos and programs she wants to watch. Some children, like her, have access, while there are many others who have no exposure or use of AI. Educators are encountering students at different AI literacy levels, and this divide will continue to grow. Therefore, teachers need to build the skillsets to increase their AI literacy and integration to develop more digital equity, serving students who are at a low readiness level, as well as those who are using AI as a writing partner."

The greatest challenge is moving beyond the glitz and pizzazz of the flashy technology to teach true literacy in this new milieu. Using the same skills used for centuries-analysis, synthesis, and evaluation-we must look at digital literacy as another realm within which to apply elements of critical thinking... Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, sound, images), to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments. According to Gilster,5 the most critical of these is the ability to make educated judgments about what we find online.

Mentor texts in our classrooms could open up students' possibilities to these decisions-the options they have as writers. They can see that they are the decision makers and that multi-media requires creators of digital text to make many decisions so that their messages are clear and powerful.  Rather than be formulaic, I want my students' mentors to be pieces that open up what is possible in their own work.

"When we think of digital literacy, we usually think of research-finding, evaluating, and properly crediting digital sources. The "research" connotation makes sense, as it is the sheer volume of sources and media forms on the "internet" that stand out. But we are living in a world where the internet is disappearing, replaced by sheer connectivity. Are you "on the internet" when you tweet? Skim through a social reader like Flipboard? Send a text? Mark up a pdf and sync it with the cloud so you can access it later? Are the cloud and the "internet" the same thing? As the internet dissolves into something more seamless-that no longer requires a clunky web browser to make itself visible-we might adjust our perspectives in parallel."

"Calif. District Pushes Digital-Text Initiative Forward"

"The concept of literacy is notoriously elusive and hard to define. Aside from the shallow and intellectually-impaired  definition that sums up  literacy in  reading and writing printed text, any serious and profound investigation of literacy does, by implication, entail an analysis of the new ways of learning and meaning-making afforded by digitality. New digital media have provided learners with novel and revolutionary ways of producing, discussing, sharing and interacting with text. These ways, to say the least about them, are multimodally complex and call for an integrated set of skills that go beyond the mere ability to code and decode meaning. In this sense, to be literate in such a multimodal environment requires understanding and using a wide range of interconnected literacies. We are no longer talking about a single literacy as was the case since the invention of writing some 6000 year ago, we are, instead,  in front of multiple new emerging  and interdependent literacies. Today's students are asked to have a working knowledge of these literacies in order to be able to thrive in a globalized knowledge economy. Katchy Schrock has this wonderful resource where she features some awesome mini-posters defining the key literacies making up today's Literacy (with capital letter) landscape.  These visuals are ideal for classroom inclusion. I invite you to check them out and share with your colleagues."

Free service makes it easy to generate vocabulary lists from any digital text. The Vocab Grabber creates a word cloud of the most frequently used words in that pasted digital text. Click on any of the words in the word cloud to see the definition.

"There are two main methods for capturing text while using your iPad.  One way is by using Siri to carry out an ever growing variety of commands and tasks.  The other method is through dictation accessed via your iPad keyboard.  While Siri is a perfectly capable tool to use for dictation, and might be your preferred way to capture text, we have found that our favorite digital assistant especially shines when asked to answer questions and perform tasks.  Thomas recently wrote about some of his favorite uses for Siri on his iPad.  Dictation, however, is more of a quick and dirty way to collect your thoughts and have them transposed right onto your iPad screen whenever you typically would need to enter text in an app.  Think of it as an alternative to typing.  While a very helpful tool, there are some initial challenges to dictating effectively on your iPad or other iOS device.  The manner in which we speak doesn't always translate exactly to how we write-or even how we collect our thoughts.  As a result we've collected some tips to help you be the most efficient at using dictation."

"In today's post, we have picked out for you some of the most popular iPad apps for creating digital portfolios in this year. Our selection is based on your feedback on what we have been posting this year in terms of both page views and social media interaction. These apps are ideal for students to use to document their learning in a multimodal format that include a mixture of text, images, drawings, audio, video and many more."

"Visualize this: A calculus teacher downloads an open-source digital calculus textbook. She deletes a chapter that isn't relevant to her class and replaces it with one from another open digital textbook that she's used in the past. She reads through the book, embeds several YouTube videos where relevant and an occasional humorous photo to keep students' interest, adds links to related websites and study aides, and uses a special app to create quizzes within the text that test the students' knowledge of the course material."