While not directly related to my Google Alerts for Diverse Children's Literature and Diverse Characters in Children's Literature, this week's topic of "Technology, Language Learning, and Literacy" is a very relevant and important topic related to my profession as a school librarian. As a I reflect on the evolution of the school library program in my school district I still believe our district was foolish in eliminating the program in 2013 due to budget cuts, which is when technology became more integrated into the educational environment. In subsequent years we talked about "Libraries of the Future" and "21st Century Skills for Learning," all the while removing the heart of where much of those literacies were taught, practiced, and applied.
In reading the article "Empowering English Language Learners through Digital Literacies: Research, Complexities, and Implications" by Chang Yuan, Lili Wang and Jessica Eagle, I feel that there is even more evidence for a comprehensive digital literacy program. The article identifies a framework developed by American scholars Spires and Bartlett (2012) that identifies three main categories of cognitive and social processes association with digital literacies. They are locating and consuming digital content, creating digital content, and communicating digital content. Even though this article is aimed at improving English language acquisition for non-native speakers, I believe it offers solid support for the importance of digital literacy for all students.
In this 21st century technologically-driven global society, digital literacy has become essential for individuals to be successful in living, learning and working. Engaging our students, especially ELLs, in activities designed to utilize critical thinking, collaboration, and creating as a means to communicate helps to build these digital competencies in an authentic, meaningful, and applicable way. Present throughout our American Association of School Librarians (AASL) Framework for Learners and our newly adopted K-4 Library Curriculum are the words create, communicate, collaborate, and critically think (also known as the 4Cs for 21st Century Learning).
Creating, communicating, and evaluating digital content are not only digital literacy tools that benefit ELLs. These concepts and skills benefit our students as a whole.
I agree that people today should have a digital literacy framework as we live in a technology world now. Skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, and more need to be interwoven with digital technology skills. Nowadays, the world is at our fingertips but just because it is there does not mean we know how to find it, how to interpret it, and how to make it useful to us. It pretty much aligns to your sentence on how creating, communicating, and evaluating digital content benefits students as a whole. It is hard to believe but there are many types of “students” that this would benefit!
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