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Digital Nation is a multiplatform project that includes this interactive Web site and a one-hour FRONTLINE documentary to air Winter 2010. The project aims to capture life on the digital frontier and explore how the Web and digital media are changing the way we think, work, learn and interact.

"What is 21st century learning? It is collaboration. It is creativity. It is critical thinking and problem-solving. It is research and information literacy. It is digital citizenship. It is responsible use. We expect our children to develop these skills. We integrate these skills in our every day lessons so that our students can grow and expand their knowledge. We create spaces so that our students can create and collaborate, whether it is a physical space or a virtual space. We expect our students to be good digital citizens, using devices, programs, and tools responsibly.  We want our students to ask questions and explore for answers.  We expect our students to learn, grow, and then reflect on that learning. So, wouldn't we expect the same skills for ourselves as educators and professionals?"

Understanding the "Why" of any initiative should be a key step prior to implementation. Without a clear understanding of our "Why" how are we to judge the success of what we are implementing. How will we know which steps take us in the right direction if we have no concept of why we are journeying. In our implementation of ICT (Information & Communication Technologies) and now Digital Technologies, a lack of clarity on the matter of "Why" has often been the most significant challenge to success. 

"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."

How do we prepare students for work that hasn't been invented yet? While it's difficult to predict what the social and economic climate will be like in the years to come, we can analyze trends and extrapolate future scenarios.

"Museums and galleries may be our first port of call when visiting a new city or planning a class field trip, but they are often overlooked when it comes to their digital offerings. What tends to happen when searching for digital resources is that we focus on digital search techniques, meaning we easily miss some of the best resources created by real world institutions. These days many great galleries, museums, memorials and world famous locations want to share their mystery and wonder beyond their physical walls, and with that comes a world of free teaching resources. For students, this connection between the real word and their study not only helps cement knowledge, it can also help foster the lifelong learning we all hope to encourage in our students"

"As I am coaching teachers in learning how to learn and teach FOR the 22nd century, I realize that the gap between being able to read traditional forms of information, communications materials in geneal and reading on new platforms, in new genres and in general new digital forms is widening drastically. Not too long ago, I wrote a post titled, Our Notion of Literacy and Iliteracy Calls for an Update.  I define literacy as the ability to read and write and being able to express and communicate our ideas to others. So, in our world, which is BOTH analog AND digital, we need to be literate in both. Especially if we are educators, in charge of teaching our students to be literate for THEIR future. The digital world is not going away, nor can it be ignored in terms of being and staying (critically) informed, lifelong learning, communicating, connecting, collaborating and contributing. One realisation for me was that new forms of reading and writing did not ONLY have to do with the skillset of learning the logistics of how to read and write on digital platforms, but had EVERYTHING to do with a new mindset that allows for new forms of reading and writing versus merely substituting the way we have done it in analog form before."

" 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."

A large proportion of the readers of Digital Photography School classify themselves as beginners - so we thought it might be helpful to have a page set up that collates some of our Digital Photography Tips for Beginners. Below is just a selection of some of our digital photography tips and tutorials aimed more at the beginner photographer.

"With the wide variety of resources available for teachers, there's no reason we shouldn't be promoting the importance of behaving safely and responsibly in the digital world. Speaking of resources, check out the nifty infographic shown below, one that can be used to address various aspects of digital citizenship."

"When we made the decision to equip our students with iPads, either for class use for our younger users or 1:1 for students in the senior school and sixth form, we knew we were unlocking a host of opportunities. Some were easily identified, others have gradually revealed themselves through an iterative process. An illustrative list in no order of priority includes the benefits of instant access to the Internet without the hassle of booking IT rooms; enriched digital communication; a range of handy apps; a virtual multimedia studio; and the creation of our own iBooks and iTunesU resources tailored to the learning needs of our students. What we did not perhaps appreciate was the impact digital devices could have on the physical learning environment. "

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.

"In a perfect world, all of our students would come to school every day well rested, well fed, clean, healthy, happy, feeling good about themselves and ready to learn. But some of the time, and perhaps for a significant segment of our students, that is not the reality. So yes, schools need to be clear on their priorities and make tough choices in supporting students while making sure their basic and psychological needs are met before we can aspire to assist them with their self-fulfillment needs. It's a delicate dance schools must do in supporting students with their varying needs; a balancing act of sorts that comes with great consequence. What complicates this even further is the reality of the very dynamic, digital world our students are growing up in. With a shifting world, comes shifting needs. And along with shifting needs comes a shifting role that schools must take on in order to best prepare students moving forward. We must revisit the graphic above to explore and best support students with their changing needs in our DIGITAL WORLD. In some cases, students get these emerging needs related to our shifting world met at home, but for others, this is not the case for a variety of reasons."

"Most children enter kindergarten as technology users, but their knowledge of how to use it safely and appropriately varies as widely as their abilities to print their names and tie their shoes. As their first teachers, it is unquestioningly our duty to develop digital citizenship alongside scissor skills and sharing. Collaborative, project-based learning experiences provide many authentic opportunities for students to acquire and practice digital citizenship skills that will see them safely into adulthood as they begin to develop and manage their first digital footprints. In Manitoba, we have a Literacy with ICT Developmental Continuum that fosters critical and creative thinking skills as students learn to use ICT safely and responsibly. How does this actually look in kindergarten? "

"This recent example aside, the idea that games can be fun and educational is starting to take hold in the educational community.  That these fun learning games can come in the form of games like Minecraft, rather than "skill and drill" games is icing on the cake for students and teachers.  The number of recent popular press articles heralding a rising trend of digital game use in the classroom has made the team at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center wonder: just how common is this practice?  And further, which teachers are choosing to use digital games in their teaching, what particular goals do they have for that game use, and what kinds of outcomes are they observing among their students? With these questions in mind the Joan Ganz Cooney Center surveyed nearly 700 K-8 teachers about their use of digital games in their teaching (a follow-up to a similar survey we conducted in 2012 with BrainPop). I wanted to share a few of the highlights from our full set of findings."

"Digital literacy: I'm sure you've been told this is important for students in the 21st Century. But did anyone mention it's also important for teachers too? Believe me, it is! Digital literacy is about digital skills, skills which help you use tech, create with tech and be safe using tech. So obviously as students increase in their use of technology we have to support them in how to use it wisely, correctly and safely. The same applies to teachers."

"Much of the conversation around children's use of technology focuses on the potential risks and harms of exploring the digital world. While protecting children is an essential focus, it cannot be the only one. As children's lives become increasingly digital, we also have an obligation and an opportunity to reframe the discussion using a whole child approach, in support of children's ability to learn, create, connect, play, and, more broadly, in support of "well-being" - a state inclusive of happiness, health, safety, and comfort. With this goal in mind, The LEGO Group and UNICEF have brought together a global coalition and initiated a new multi-year project called RITEC - Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children - to empower business and policy leaders to protect and promote children's well-being in a digital age."

"I used to teach a class called photojournalism. I usually referred to it as "digital journalism," because people assumed we were a photography class. Students created videos, podcasts, documentaries, and blogs with the goal of sharing their work with an authentic audience. On the surface, this might not seem all that practical. After all, newspapers are slashing their budgets and laying off staff. Why teach an elective class in a subject that doesn't connect to a decent job market? But here's the thing: whether we feel like it or not, we are all citizen journalists. We are all researchers. We are all sharing information online and publishing it on social media. We are all curating and producing content even if only a fragment of the population creates videos, podcasts, or blog posts. Social media is a fusion of space (social) and publishing (medium). Although it can simply feel like a place to hang out, every social media platform uses elements of traditional media. Just look at the terms: subscribers, news feed, followers, publish."

"While tablet computers in the classroom are wonderful tools, they still have not reached the level of intuitive use that we often feel as we interact with our analog world.  As an example, there are lots of pictures of the moon that we can look up using our web browser, but seeing it first hand through a telescope offers a different level of engagement.  In the classroom, we often need our analog world to interact with our digital devices.  In the coming days I will be sharing ideas that allow teachers to use real world objects to interact with their digital iPad classroom"