There are so many types of literacies that we’ll now associate with student development—from some basic financial and media literacy skills up to, of course, their digital literacy. Each one of these literacies have become very important in today’s world and, among them, digital literacy remains one of the most crucial fluencies that your students can develop.
While other pandemic-induced issues, like inequity, isolation, relationships, and SEL have been crucial focal areas, the effects of too much screen time on their daily development have also caught up with many students. As we continue to hone in on student mental health concerns, it’s often important for parents and educators to keep digital wellbeing in focus for kids.
EdTech has evolved to encompass so many angles for both education and technology. So many contemporary forms of technology have become real valuable pieces for classroom instruction and taken on new characteristics in a lot of cases. At the moment, there are important topics dominating the most talked about areas of EdTech. Here are some of them.
It’s a new year and hope springs eternal for all educators, administrators, and students. There’s a good chance you may have made a New Year’s resolution or two already and also a chance those resolutions might have already been broken. As we turn the page on 2018 and shift our focus solely to 2019, let’s take a moment to focus on what might be next.
Following millennials, Generation Z emerged in the mid-90s and is now getting set to make its mark on the world. Many of them are now in high school (depending on when you define the end of Gen Z), meaning they are preparing for their lives and careers. Like other generations, they are facing some challenges and incredible opportunities.
For decades, literacy has been considered the absolute most fundamental skill any person could have. With the emergence of the automated era and the now complete commonality of technology tools, the necessary skill has changed from literacy to digital literacy. People need to know technology—how it works, what they can do with it, and how to maximize efficiency.
Our world is changing—something that’s readily apparent to a lot of us but others are often shocked by just how much employees throughout today’s workforce need technology and rely on a super specific set of skills. So, as early on as elementary school, teachers are now exposing their students to basic coding in STEM classes and kids, generally, respond favorably to it.
Think about it. Today’s adults spend most of their working day using a computer to carry out a range of responsibilities from communication to projects and everything in between. They use programs, websites and office productivity software. Most of them probably also learned the specific, tech skills for their job once they had already accepted it.
One of the hottest topics in EdTech throughout the recent months has been the subject of digital citizenship (or digital literacy). By designing classrooms that are more conducive to the specific needs of the students it surrounds for 180 days, those inside will become more eager to learn and, with increased engagement, see better academic results.
What if we only went to websites that we knew, and navigated using the links supplied on the page. How many “degrees of separation” would we get between two websites that each would be considered significant resources for the subjects we were exploring? Learn more about that and get ready for Digital Learning Day!
