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"Brett Pierce lays out the elements of digital storytelling and shows how students can lead in using digital tools to create narratives around curricular goals ..."

One student wanted to know why so many nurses were spreading vaccine misinformation.

Other participants drew parallels to popular crime-fighting myths found in shows like “Criminal Minds.”

But most of the college students who participated in a fact-checking workshop from MediaWise, the social-first digital media literacy initiative of the nonprofit Poynter Institute, were simply happy to report feeling more digitally savvy after the hour they spent learning to spot fact from fiction online.

MediaWise and its Campus Correspondents have been working since 2020 to slow the spread of online misinformation. In 2022, the goal is to train at 100 diverse colleges and universities, and availability is now opening up for another 25 workshops.

It may seem like digital literacy is pretty straightforward, but there are so many levels that educators need to know about this topic. We thought we would gather together a few things we believe are vital for teachers to understand digital literacy. 

For almost 20 years, instruction librarians have relied on variations of two models, the CRAAP Test and SIFT, to teach students how to evaluate printed and web-based materials. Dramatic changes to the information ecosystem, however, present new challenges amid a flood of misinformation where algorithms lie beneath the surface of popular and library platforms collecting clicks and shaping content. When applied to increasingly connected networks, these existing evaluation heuristics have limited value. Drawing on our combined experience at community colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, and with Project Information Literacy (PIL), a national research institute studying college students’ information practices for the past decade, this paper presents a new evaluative approach for teaching students to see information as the agent, rather than themselves. Opportunities and strategies are identified for evaluating the veracity of sources, first as students, leveraging the expertise they bring with them into the classroom, and then as lifelong learners in search of information they can trust and rely on.

Google announced today the gradual release of a new search feature which will help users get more reliable results. Search results in Google will now start showing an icon which when you click on it will display more information about the source site without having to actually visit it. 

"Talking to 4-year-olds about screen time, digital literacy, and cyber safety may seem premature. But waiting puts kids at a disadvantage ..."

Public libraries are beginning to catch up with the technological need for education. Several public libraries across the country can be used as models for honing in on local public libraries’ digital literacy instruction. 

By using these models, these libraries will be able to help narrow the digital literacy gap that is created by generational differences. Not only can this digital literacy gap be created by that age difference but from education and cultural considerations as well. 

"Discover distance learning resources on Adobe Education Exchange. Whether your educational institution routinely supports distance learning or is facing unexpected closures, Adobe assembled resources..."

In this blog post, Pip Divall, Clinical Librarian Service Manager at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and CILIP Information Literacy Group’s Health Sector rep, gathers together useful resources for tackling Covid-19 vaccine misinformation during the global pandemic.

"It is getting harder and harder to tell the difference between alternative facts and real facts online. In a world where anyone can get online and write opinions as facts or even distort real facts to make them say what they want, it is hard for adults and children to have the digital intelligence to tell the difference."

On this week's podcast, Simon and Jade primarily discuss the work of Ito et al. (2020), which focuses on "connected learning," a seemingly more holistic approach to education that incorporates socio-cultural contexts, multiple literacies, and technology into curricula. With additional references to Soule and Warrick (2015), as well as Ken Robinson's talk on Changing Paradigms, we ultimately conclude that there are no alternatives to real-life interactions. Technology itself is merely a tool we can use to enhance learning experiences and our lives, but not to completely replace those human connections and interactions we need to develop crucial 21st century skills.