Weekly Reflection Post #1 – Digital Literacy Frameworks

In this week we learned about frameworks for digital literacy. We went over this document. Which taught us all about digital literacy while informing the students of the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to partake in a digital society. The document went over eight topics, those being:

– Ethical & Legal
– Technology Supports
– Information Literacy
– Digital Scholarship
– Communication & Collaboration
– Creation & Curation
– Digital Wellbeing
– Community-Based Learning

Firstly, ethical & legal means making sure you are citing all of your sources. You follow the academic integrity guidelines. You also shouldn’t pirate any media as that is illegal.

There are a few other things to note though. Being ethical online is to understand everyone has their own world view and history. So no matter who you interact with, you should be respectful. As you do not know their background and history.

Secondly, technology support means you should be creative with the various types of technology you use and troubleshoot. For different tasks you should select different tools needed. An example is that to create a blog post, we are using OpenETC. But, this is my first time ever creating a blog. So, I had to first figure out how the website worked so I could create this post.

Once you are digitally literate it means you’ll know what types of technology are relevant to your work and studies, and any new technology you’ll be able to adapt to. For example, I want to go into game development. So I need to use apps like Unity and Unreal Engine as my coding softwares. I’ve never used them before but it only took me ten minutes to learn how they functioned.

Thirdly, information literacy means you understand that information found online was produced, prioritized, and presented using critical thinking skills. It can also mean you are aware that online information can come from someone biases since there are many different perspectives. You should take everything you see online with a grain of salt after all.

Once you are digitally literate it means you are awaree that technology can spread biased perspectives. Influencing your own understanding of the online world. I believe you should combat this by always being skeptical about what you see online. Research it on your own. So you can know what is the truth and what is false.

Fourthly, digital scholarship means using online resources for a number things. Ranging from learning, research, critical thinking, problem solving, analysis, and decision-making. You are respectful in online academic spaces and you participate in learning possibilities online. An example of this for game development is GameJams, where you have a weekend to code a game online in a team.

Once you are digital literate it means you use online resources to help narrow done your search. You also understand how technology can help in researching in your field. You will understand how to find, organize, interpret, analyze, use, synthesize, and communicate information to others online.

Fifthly, communication & collaboration means you will be able to use online tools to speak and worth together with other researchers in your field. With this skill you can create messages that will be interpeted exactly as you intend. An example of this is any online platform. Such as Youtube. You can create a video essay with all the necessary information needeed to communicate with your audience.

Having this skill allows you to treat others with respect online. For work, you will be able to work in a multitude of ways, whether it is online or in person. Lastly, you will be able to choose which tools are needed to collaborate with one another on tasks. It’s a useful tool which I use a lot with all of my friends online.

Sixthly, creation & curation means that anyone who is digitally literate will be able to create or curate digital materials for a varying audiences which can be accessed online. You use it as a means to express yourself and your own individuality online.

You use the online world to express your own ideas for all to see. You know to be respectful of others when you are creating your own material for others. It is a helpful tool so you can make informed decisions on where you share your work.

Seventhly, digital wellbeing means that a digital literate person will know how to use technology if it has negative impacts on your physical and mental health. They are aware on their own boundaries to keep their health in check and not use it to harm others using said technology. This handles all sorts of safety as you need to be aware to not share information that can harm you physically or mentally.

This is the most important factor in my own opinion as it is very dangerous and a thin rope to walk. You don’t know everyone you meet online. One person you think is good can be someone who wishes you harm and will use the information you give them to do so. Sharing your own life is a risk people online put themselves in.

Lastly, community-based learning means that a digital literate person will work together with others in a community to work and finish a project online. This can include from writing reports, a story, or even making a youtube video. Community-based learning implies allowing others to use fields they excel at in order for the entire group to succeed.

You use your own digital skills in a group to help everyone succeed towards the project. It allows you to communicate with your community to make decisions on how exactly the tools will be used in creating the project. You get to understand just how quickly information can be spread online.

I found this all interesting because I am actually a part of an online community myself. Where almost all of these safety hazards are at play. We don’t use informtion literacy but we use everything else. As we write stories between ourselves as characters from media. Citing where the characters originate from. We use a variety of different writing styles that Discord provides us. We research these characters to make sure we write them as accurately as possible. We communicate with one another on our ideas and plans so we can make sure it all comes across well. We create our own stories as these characters. While behind it all we are a community who are there to help each other out. Watching out for one another’s physical and mental health.

Seeing how the community I am apart of reflected in being digitally literate makes me feel nice as I am surrounded by like-minded people who also know the dangers of the internet. It helps me feel safe and reinforces my knowledge on the online world being dangerous. But at least with my own communtiy I feel as if I follow these quite well already. Even if we don’t use information literacy we do acknowledge that anyone can post anything online. So it is nice to know I already have practice of all eight strategies.