Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

This video clip is a bit old, but I still like using it to spark conversation on why we need to teach differently in today’s classrooms. When we have almost instant access to factual information, we shouldn’t be asking students to simply recall those facts. The Teaching Innovation Progression Chart highlights Research and Information Fluency as one of the key strands for student success. In a student-driven classroom, teachers should be modeling strategiesto guide student investigation, designing challenges that promote synthesis of resources to address an authentic task, supporting students as they acquire, evaluate, and apply information, and facilitating and formatively assessing authentic tasks where students are engaged in research and using information fluently. In these classrooms, we should see students constructing questions to guide research, selecting the most appropriate digital tools and information sources, assembling and synthesizing information to address authentic tasks, and using tools to powerfully display and interact with information. 

Let's take a look at what Information Fluency skills are and how they can help you and your students use information wisely and constructively.

Consuming information online is no more than a click, scroll, or swipe these days. All searches are not created equal and rarely do we think about fact checking what we find on the Internet. I am not alone in thinking about how “…the Internet is actually changing the way we read the way we reason, and even the way we think, and all for the worse” (The Death of Expertise, Nicols, 2017, p. 111). In higher education, I think it is imperative we teach our learners and colleagues about what it means to participate and interact in digital spaces and places. How can our institutions help students, staff, and faculty “be” online and consider how both information and digital environments impact knowledge sharing and learning?