Sunday, April 8, 2018

Webinar Reflctions

Integrating Digital Literacy into Core Subject Areas

   A webinar was presented by Mr. Jeff Meyer, the director of education for learning.com and resident expert for digital literacy solutions. He is passionate about the need to transform education to data-based and digital resources. In this webinar he discussed incorporating essential digital literacy skills into core subject areas and the standards requiring it.
   The instructor started introducing himself to the audience, he was very gentle and polite, then he started to tell about the objective of the webinar. He was trying to convince the audience about the importance of integrating digital literacy skills into core subjects. these skills can be used in mathematics, social, language and arts. He discussed with details four pillars of digital literacy that teachers should teach to students starting from early grades. The first pillar was teaching students how to work with keyboarding and digital essentials, and I see that this step is the most important one and it is introductory step. the second one was teaching students the safety skills and digital citizenship, they need to know how to hold problems, how to site resources, how to know credible from incredible online sites and the rules of school concerning using computers. then after learning these essential skills, teachers start educating students how to apply these skills and create applications, they become independent. In this pillar students start to collaborate with others, use technology to refine, edit and communicate their skills with others. they use these applications to conduct research, produce essay, analyse data, draw conclusions, draw charts and graphs... the last pillar was computational thinking and coding which is the newest and is being used in the United States student will start to think and solve problems like scientists, they will start coding.
   In my opinion, teaching students these skills will allow teachers to make online assignments and quizzes making sure that students know all the skills that they need to deal with technology, so the student will be focusing on solving the questions and thinking of the answers not the literacy skills. On the contrary, how would teachers integrate digital literacy skills in subject areas when they themselves don't know most of these skills? and how could they teach students these skills if the school itself doesn't follow any program?
    

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