In this post, the first in a series on life skills, Olha explores how digital literacy and greater digital awareness in the classroom can be developed for students and teachers alike.
While it seems that teenagers are using digital media constantly, their daily use of it is limited to social platforms like Instagram and they are not always aware of the dangers that lurk within their screens.
I have recently conducted a quick and rough survey with teachers I am in contact with worldwide and it came as no surprise that teenagers use a limited range of digital platforms. They actually have little knowledge of what is on the internet, how to use it, what to avoid and have little desire to explore.
Understanding the digital world
I recently read in the news about a 12 year-old boy who stole the family car and drove cross-country to meet up with a man he had only met online. Children and teens are not always sensitive to the dangers lurking on the internet, especially if they are unhappy and unable to talk about their issues to those around them.
Texts that deal with topics like online safety and also clarify the negative and positive aspects of online communication, like the below from Talent, have a great value in the English language classroom. They offer a familiar and important context for discussion and exploration. Discussing the topic allows students to reflect on their own behaviours and raises red flags about potential dangers. All students will have experience and opinions to share.
Talent Students Book 1, page 39
Digital literacy in the classroom
The future is digital (so we are told), and we want our students to study and work so they are ready for their future success. However, for most students their use of digital technology is very limited and they are not exploring its potential for learning. Listed below are a few things I do with my teen and adult learners with mobile phones in class:
- They have a good dictionary like Cambridge Dictionary, open while reading a text and are allowed to look up a maximum of 5 words per text. This focusses them on choosing words key to global understanding and develops learner autonomy.
- After reading or listening to a fact-based text, students come up with 2 or 3 questions they still have on the topic. They then google the topic and try to find answers to their own questions.
- During speaking activities e.g. talking about a sport they’d like to try, they can bring up images or facts on their phone to share with their partner/group to exemplify what they are explaining.
- To extract key information from a text, students work in pairs to write a tweet summarising it. I have done this with the acts of Romeo and Juliet and there were 5 small groups of students working on one act each. They then sent them to each other and analysed them. Somehow a summary becomes more motivating when turned into a tweet. A bigger challenge is to ask the students to write it as a twoosh (exactly 280 characters), which some students rise to.
While it is understandable that schools ban mobile phones because they can be a distraction, there are many ways they can add to a lesson or alternatively the activities above could be adapted into homework tasks.
Digital literacy beyond the classroom
We can ask students to do research online for homework. For example, before starting a new unit, ask students to find out 3 interesting facts on the topic to share in the class before opening the course book. This will arouse curiosity in the topic, activate schemata and vocabulary, and encourage students to use the internet for more than just social media.
We should also introduce students to websites and apps that can help them develop their language skills. There are many such apps, which can be off-putting, but I suggest different ones to individual students depending on what their language learning needs and interests are. If one student needs to practise reading more and is interested in current affairs I suggest reading a newspaper like The Guardian online. For a student struggling with a particular aspect of grammar, I may suggest a specific grammar app like the English Grammar in Use app.
Digital literacy is a life skill, which students need to build and understand its dangers as well as potentials. In the next post in this series, I will explore emotional development.
To learn more about making use of digital resources in the classroom, read Deborah Hobb’s blog on Using mobile devices to open up the learning environment.