Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

A 2020 study revealed that learning how to code resembles learning a language like French or Chinese—challenging entrenched beliefs about coding.

During the Best of the Web webinar that I hosted yesterday I mentioned Mozilla's X-Ray Goggles product. It's a great tool that lets you see the code behind any web page and change that code to display anything that you want in place of the original text and images.

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a three-part post featuring the fourth interview in a multi-part series with participants in the Race, Memory, and the Digital Humanities Conference. The series features public intellectuals discussing digital literacy issues.

Jessica Marie Johnson is one of the country’s leading scholars on black code literacy. I’ve had the privilege of teaching with her at the Digital Humanities Summer Research Institute. At the conference my campus organized, she recently gave this thought-provoking and inspiring keynote address. (See Part 1 of DML Central’s introduction to Professor Johnson.)

Explore the online teaching tools we've rounded up for you in this list. There are 50 of them for lesson planning, assessment, collaboration, and more.

Where do you go when you want to learn about new EdTech tools? From checking out new blog posts (like this one!) to searching hashtags on social media, there are lots of ways to learn about new EdTech tools. When I attend a conference, I also stay on the lookout for companies that have just come on the scene. This way, I can connect with them, ask them questions, and see if their booth is “buzzing” with excitement from other educators, too.

Are you interested in teaching coding but don’t have any experience—or simply don’t know where to begin? Are you looking to integrate coding into other subject areas, like language arts or social studies? There are many online resources that provide free curricula—we touch on a few of the best below—and the organization Code.org, founded by tech entrepreneur Hadi Partovi, offers free training for teachers across all grade levels, including a national network of in-person local workshops to bring you up to speed. 

This is the third part in a multi-part series about participants in the Race, Memory, and the Digital Humanities conference. This series features public intellectuals discussing digital literacy issues.


Professor Marisa Parham of Amherst College, who has led the Five College Digital Humanities initiative has a long history with digital media. “My earliest experiences with computers and devices mainly stemmed from my grandfather’s obsession with Kaypros in the 1980s. I was 8 or 9 years old. He would take me downtown to ogle what must have been some iteration of the Kaypro II, which for some reason, we found more intriguing than the Compaq II, though I remember thinking that the Compaq was hideous to behold.

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a three-part post featuring the fourth interview in a multi-part series with participants in the Race, Memory, and the Digital Humanities Conference. The series features public intellectuals discussing digital literacy issues.

Jessica Marie Johnson is one of the country’s leading scholars on black code literacy. I’ve had the privilege of teaching with her at the Digital Humanities Summer Research Institute. At the conference my campus organized, she recently gave a thought-provoking and inspiring keynote address.