Reading Assignment Part B: Reading Review Blog Post #2

Source

Below is my short-list of resources that I encountered and found the most valuable during my search. I've never created an annotated bibliography before, so this is my rough first attempt. As my understanding is that an annotated bibliography is meant to be generally objective about the source, I've included my own personal thoughts, rationales, and opinions about each source below the annotation!

Hopefully these are helpful!

• Approaches to Teaching Digital Literacy | Cultivating Digital Literacy

"Approaches to Teaching Digital Literacy | Cultivating Digital Literacy" Youtube, uploaded by Adobe for Education, 13 Dec, 2021. www.youtube.com/watch?v=svIcRFpOnxQ 

This video outlines what digital literacy is and different ways that it can be cultivated by educators, as told by different educators. It posits that digital literacy is “a way of thinking” that needs to be nurtured through exposure to technology in different contexts and experiences. While each teacher’s process is different, the general focus is on active learning opportunities for students coupled with collaborative opportunities. In these opportunities students are encouraged to create and make artifacts of learning. Additionally, there is a focus on explicit scaffolding for supporting student learning in Digital Literacy to ensure that students understand why and how to use different technologies for their purposes. 

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this resource as an opportunity to re-affirm some of my own personal thoughts about what digital literacy is and how we can support it in classrooms. I also found that the different approaches for how teachers are teaching digital literacy in their own classrooms was valuable for me to hear since we all know that there are certainly many ways to teach the same thing. Interestingly, I found that there were many foundational similarities, just that the path they took to reach those goals was different.

• BC’s Digital Literacy Framework

BC’s Digital Literacy Framework. Province of British Columbia, British Columbia, n.d. www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-12/teach/teaching-tools/digital-literacy-framework.pdf 

This framework has been designed for classroom teacher usage in British Columbia for teachers who are instructing digital literacy concepts. It outlines the skills and knowledge that students need to have in order to be successful as 21st century learners from grades k-12 based upon six characteristics identified by “B.C. educational leaders”. The language used here provides teachers and students opportunities to see what skills and knowledge they should expect to learn and teach. . Additionally, the page that this document is found on, includes the ways in which digital literacy skills from the framework are linked to BC’s Core (or “Cross Curricular” Competencies) for grades k-12. 

My thoughts: 

I chose this resource because I believe that this is one of the key resources that my district has based our own digital literacy framework on. As I am hoping to work closely with my district's plan throughout this course, it made sense to revisit this resource and refresh my memory in places. Additionally, it served as a good reminder that the digital literacy skills we are working towards are embedded within the core competencies, and are therefore not an additional thing to teach necessarily, but a way to teach something that we should already be teaching!

• Classroom Guide: Integrating Digital Literacy into your classroom practice

Classroom Guide: Integrating Digital Literacy into your classroom practice. Media Smarts, Ottawa, Canada, 2018. 

mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/guides/classroom_guide_digital_literacy.pdf. 

Designed as a guide to accompany a workshop for teachers, this document is a guide for how teachers can embed digital literacy content into their classroom practices. Along with describing the general skills and technology exposure you might expect students in different grades to have, it suggests ways to further their skills that will be developmentally appropriate for their ages. There are additional suggestions for ways that Digital Literacy learning can be integrated cross curricularly into things like language arts, social studies, health and more. 

Finally, tips are provided for teachers who are less confident in their own technology skills, classroom management while using technology, online identity, and more. The resource concludes with a variety of links to lesson plans for teaching digital literacy, a webography of further resources (based on the workshop that this is meant to be paired with- though they are also useful just as links to have regardless of the workshop), and an extremely useful list of resources that can be used by students to make media in classrooms (ie/ animation programs, audio editing programs, blogging platform options, video editing programs and more). 

My Thoughts:

This would be an excellent resource to use with teachers as they are beginning their digital literacy instruction journeys. I'd also be interested in seeing the accompanying workshop, though I've been unsuccessful at finding it so far. I think that the way this is laid out is incredibly user friendly, and gives just the right amount of information without creating overwhelm. The lists of resources are useful and a a great addition of information for when staff are ready to move into the actual teaching phase with students, and/or just for personal exploration and development if they are interested in learning new programming themselves. 

• Creating Access to   Digital Citizenship and  Media Literacy Education: A Legislative Solution to Support Digital Learning in Public Schools
  
  

“Creating Access to   Digital Citizenship and  Media Literacy Education: A Legislative Solution to Support Digital Learning in Public Schools” Common Sense Kids Action, 2017.  www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/featured-content/files/2017_dig-cit-white-paper_final.pdf 

This article outlines how schools in the United States have recognized the need for students to learn and be taught digital citizenship skills and media literacy skills. To that end, it describes how in 2016, Washington state “championed the nation’s first comprehensive digital citizenship and media literacy legislation”.It further includes 5 steps of recommendations for how the state intends to move forward in their promotion of instruction of digital citizenship and media skills, including school library’s roles in that teaching. Finally, it includes a glossary of terms and definitions for commonly used words/phrases related to digital literacy. 

My Thoughts:

I found this article to be interesting in that my district is currently using a newer digital literacy implementation plan and I found that there seemed to be a lot of parallels in the way that our district program is being implemented and supported vs how their plan is described (of course, we don’t have “legislation” but rather the BC Digital Framework also listed as a resource on this post).

• Developing Digital Literacies:  A framework for Professional Learning

Summey, Dustin C., and SAGE Knowledge Complete A-Z List. Developing Digital Literacies: A Framework for Professional Learning. Corwin, a Sage Company, Thousand Oaks, California, 2013, doi:10.4135/9781483387901.

Seemingly made for supporting anyone looking to support a school staff in forming digital literacy skills, Summey’s book provides an extensive look at Digital Literacies and a framework for how to best support teachers in developing their own digital literacy practices and their teachings of digital literacy. 

Items of particular interest include: ways to increase teacher engagement in digital literacy, how to best provide professional development opportunities to staff, different types of professional development that are effective, and how to create a needs assessment survey for staff. 
This resource is valuable to anyone looking to encourage staff to include digital literacy as a part of their classroom programming to enrich student learning.

My thoughts:

As this is the only "book" resource of the ones I've included on this list, it is certainly incredibly extensive. It covers far more topics than I had time to read within my few hours of searching and looking. However, in the sections that I did read, I found the information to be useful. For example, as a focus for me is finding out how to bring digital literacy to staff in accessible ways, the section on different types of professional development that could work, and the needs assessment survey suggestions were particularly helpful. While this would be a long read, I do think it is a valuable resource, and would be one worth potentially delving into further or having around as an extra reference for how to approach different situations in supporting teachers through digital literacy implementation.