Digital Natives: Navigating Literate Worlds

Quotes

"At the same time there is a public and political awareness about the importance of digital literacy related to education and not such a strong emphasis on testing as in many other countries." -- Digital Natives, Chapter 7

I found this very interesting.  There is a great deal of criticism over standardized tests in the United States, and the fact that teachers often "teach to the test".  Yet, here is an example of a country that doesn't emphasis standardized tests.  Instead, they focus on project-based learning and providing media to students.  I'm curious as to how well the students in this country do.  We're told that project-based learning is the best way to approach education.  We want to use project-based learning because it's fun and has the most benefit, and who likes giving tests anyway?  I found it very interesting that there is an importance placed on digital literacy, because sometimes I don't think we put enough on it.

"The Internet has brought about major changes in many aspects of culture and society.  It has fundamentally changed the ways in which activities and exchanges are carried out across sectors...While numbers of our old routines have remained, in many instances these routines have been added to, augmented, and in some cases, supplanted by applications of the Internet." -- Digital Natives, Chapter 8

The Internet is a monumental thing.  I remember being in elementary school without it, and now I can't imagine not having access.  I wouldn't be able to go to school or communicate with people like I do now.  What this chapter had to say about the presence of the Internet in our daily lives is so accurate.  I would even say that this could apply to technology as a whole.  We all have cell phones.  Most of us have Smartphones.  We still perform the same tasks as our parents or grandparents.  We go to school, go to the store, talk to friends, only instead of picking up the landline or getting in our cars and driving to campus, we pull out our phones or log onto our computer or open up Facebook.  Because the Internet and technology are such huge parts of our lives, to ignore their importance is not benefitting anyone, especially the students who don't know how to probably search for information when using it.

"Older citizens tend to feel more obligated to participate in elections and government-centered activities whereas young citizens tend to favor more personally expressive or self-actualizing politics." -- Digital Natives, Chapter 9

I found the discussion of young people in politics incredibly interesting.  I agree with a lot of what this chapter had to say on the issue.  People in my generation and younger don't participate in politics the way that the older generations do.  I feel as though a lot of us are more informed, because we have such easy access to what's going on in the world.  Social media has connected the younger generation in ways that they have never been before.  After the Supreme Court ruling this week, I could not log onto Facebook without seeing something about it.  People have been adding the rainbow filters to their profile pictures to show their support.  This is part of the self-expressive politics.

The Role of School

Schools and teachers should be responsible for the development of digital literacies, because the development of digital literacies does help with reading and writing.  As we've said before, today's people are interacting far more often with text.  Just because that text happens to be digital doesn't mean it's not an important part of education.  One quote from the book reads:  "The results show a strong relationship between students' digital literacy, their general school performance, and the educational background of the parents."  Students who have developed their digital literacy skills do better in school.  Another piece of evidence to this is when the book talks about the doctoral student who was observed students type an entire question into Google to find an answer.  These students have clearly never been taught how to search for information on the Internet.  Whether or not they have been taught how, students are going to attempt to find answers through the Internet.  If they're going to do it, then we as teachers might as well teach them the proper way to do it.

Meme

I feel as though we're all guilty of this at some point.  Whenever we're not sure of an answer to a question, we immediately pull out our phone or open up our computer and type it into Google.  I've been guilty of doing this even when teaching when a student asked me a question I was certain of.  I've seen other teachers do this as well.  Students, obviously, do this too.  When working on homework, if unsure of an answer, or unable to come up with an idea, will type the question or topic into Google.  I'll admit that I even searched digital literacy memes tonight to try to come up with something for this metaphor.  As a society, we are very reliant on Google.