Digital Literacy

In the sixth episode of our online radio programmes - JISC On Air - we are exploring how universities and colleges can help teaching staff, researchers, support and administrative staff to develop their digital literacies - those capabilities which prepare an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society. In part two of the show, we will be looking at how digital literacy underpins the academic success and employability of students.

At Cardiff University, the Digidol team are investigating how what they call "digital literacy" can be embedded in all staff and students across all levels and areas of the university. The project is one of 12 being funded at different institutions by JISC, an expert on information and digital technologies for education and research, and I interviewed members of the team for one of a series of podcasts for the organisation recently.

"The Minister for Education and Skills, Leighton Andrews AM, commissioned a review of digital classroom teaching in September 2011. He set up an external task and finish group to lead the review. The aim was to identify 'which digital classroom delivery aspects should be adopted to transform learning and teaching' for those aged 3 to 19."   Includes a link to the report: "Find it, make it, use it, share it: learning in digital Wales" which has many references to the importance of Information Literacy in education.

Purports to be the most comprehensive people search engine because it searches "the deep web" also known as "invisible web", the term "deep web" refers to a vast repository of underlying content, such as documents in online databases that general-purpose web crawlers cannot reach. The deep web content is estimated at 500 times that of the surface web, yet has remained mostly untapped due to the limitations of traditional search engines.

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. 

This is a good advice paper on copyright and digital images. It's part of a growing collection of useful material on the JISC Digital Media web site.

The emphasis should be on building digital communication skills so that students can share and develop their ideas and aspirations online, says Dr Abhay Adhikari

This blog post has a useful taxonomy of literacy.

how are new and emerging technologies changing learning and teaching? how is our perception of academic literacies changing in response to this? when, where and how is learning and teaching taking place? what is the role of students as partners and facilitators of learning in a digital age? what demands does this place on traditional learning spaces?

Digital literacy includes a large variety of skills, which users need in order to function effectively in digital environments.

"Our children are surrounded by computers at school and at home. They run their social lives through mobile devices, immerse themselves in video games and get a top-up dose of ICT in the National Curriculum."

The first in a series of little guides from JISC Digital Media. Also includes topics such as screencasting and finding digital resources.

This animation explains the basic intellectual property rights issues associated with using content you've found on the Web for teaching.

A briefing paper from the Strategic Content Alliance (SCA), detailing the steps you need to take to license a piece of content using Creative Commons

is a 3 hour self paced class combined with a performance assessment of your information fluency skills

This calculator is designed to help users and organisations understand the level of copyright risk when publishing Open Educational Resources

A Qedoc learning module available for download

A new, general overview of copyright from JISC Digital Media

Definitions.