Digital Literacy

Two years ago, in Towards a comprehensive definition of digital skills, I depicted digital literacy according to five different categories, being those categories technological literacy, informational literacy, media literacy, digital presence and e-awareness. Explaining these concepts with a single example (that is, all the concepts using the very same example for all of them) is not always easy, so you end up using different examples with each category or concept. Today I just found that single example that can be used to explain all of them...

Scholars and teachers alike agree that today's students need more than alphabetic literacy to communicate effectively in a world increasingly suffused with digital media and information. 

The SLIDA report has recommendations for further and higher education on how to develop effective institution-wide strategies and practices which better support effective learners in a digital age. A number of case studies are included from both FE and HE institutions.

Learn how to identify, locate, evaluate, organise and effectively use information. This is an excellent set of information literacy materials, paid for by the Scottish Government.

Useful checklist for Learning Providers to use to see how digitally literate their learners are and also whether or not they are digitally excluded from any resources within their institution.

Summary presentation of a recent Cambridge research project aiming to development an Information Literacy curriculum for undergraduate students. There is also a comprehensive Wiki of resources. The sixth slide is interesting: placing digital literacy as part of the wider information literacy landscape.

Three tools to support information literacy skills including boolify, comparison search and who-is

BiblioBouts, an online social game that covertly teaches students how to do library research while they go about the business of completing a research-and-writing assignment.

Lots of advice and guidance on managing your digital identity.

We are entering a time of history where we will need more than intelligence, we will need the increased application of diverse intellect. We will need a workforce and citizenry filled with local, state and national leaders who see the concept of dialoging about new ideas as an important use of time.

Literacy today depends on understanding the multiple media that make up our high-tech reality and developing the skills to use them effectively. A 2006 article from Educause Quarterly Magazine

JISC Digital Media exists to help the UK's FE and HE communities embrace and maximise the use of digital media - and to achieve solutions that are innovative, practical and cost effective. 

 "Etextbooks and online learning communities are just a few of the ways colleges and universities are dabbling in digital. This graphic breaks it down."   Excellent Infographic looking at the electronic landscape in education including comparision of iPad and Kindle Fire, VLEs and reinventing the textbook. 

Over the past 18 months I've been having a series of discussions with Bill Johnston (a colleague of mine here at Strathclyde) around notions information and digital literacy and of what it means to be a digital university.

A film outlining the use of film technology in university teaching by Dr Jon Anderson, Cardiff University in the School of City and Regional Planning

Doug Belshaw -  JISC infoNet Guardian Professional, Tuesday 24 January 2012 16.41 GMT

Today the Guardian will launch a campaign to improve IT and computer science teaching in schools and universities - and we want input from as many teachers, lecturers, pupils, parents and developers as possible