Reflection on Digital & Media Literacy

This course opened up my eyes to how important it is to make sure we are creating literate individuals and how literacy is always changing.  I have always been aware of how technology is an ever changing entity, however before this class, I never really thought about what that means for the skills students need to learn in order to be literate and how big of a role media and digital sources play in determining how literate an individual is.  This will impact my role in education because it gave me a whole new lens to look through as I am working with teachers to design lessons to best meet the needs of our students.  

Students not only need to know now to read a text and make sense of it, but they need to learn how to interpret a variety of media sources.  Students not only need to learn how to write for a desired audience and purpose, but they need to learn how to create, produce, and publish their work.  Since there is so much that goes into becoming literate individuals, there needs to be just as much that goes into the teaching to prepare students for these situations.  As I continue to work with teachers, I am going to focus on giving them more ways to integrate these different ideas, sources, and types of products that students can create.  Students need to be exposed to, and become proficient with, a variety of different tools and resources throughout their education.  

Something that I still need to work on is providing teachers with meaningful examples of technology use that is truly integrated with the curriculum and not just an add-on to their lesson.  I know that the best way to reach students is to provide them with relevant and meaningful experiences.  The great part about using technology is that it often opens up the door to the outside world and increases the ability for students to connect with the lesson.  The problem is that I often see, or even think of myself, ways to integrate technology that will enhance the lessons but they still are things that are pretty similar to what they have been doing in the past.  My area of focus needs to be how to help the teachers create authentic uses of the technology where it fits into the lesson or project seamlessly because the use of technology is essential for allowing the students do something that they couldn't do without the technology.  Since the technology opens up the doors to new situations and new applications, I want to ensure that what I am helping the teachers with is really using technology most effectively. 

One of my goals as the Technology Instruction Coordinator this year is to work with teachers to develop more digital writing pieces in our curriculum.  I am planning on working with the teachers to use a few of the story writing apps and sites that I learned about from the "Cool Tools" assignment in the Digital & Media Literacy course.  We are planning on developing digital writing guidelines to go with the units that the teachers are currently teaching.  This would give the teachers guidance for how they could give the students opportunities to not only produce a quality piece of writing, but to create it in a digital way that can then be published and shared with others.  Some of the programs that I want to use within these writing units are My Storybook, Storyjumper, and Storybird.  I think that all of these tools would be appropriate and motivating for the students to use to produce their stories digitally.  They would engage the students in the publishing process and publishing the work would make it a more meaningful experience for the students because they are writing for more than an audience of one.