2/12/14 My Digital Literacy

Digital literacy is the ability to use technology to navigate, evaluate, and create information.  It touches almost everyone in the world today.  Though digital literacy is very beneficial, it started off very quickly causing many to fall behind.  Most fields require its workers to be some what digitally literate.  Technology is also important when communicating with family and friends.  Digital literacy is helpful in daily life for personal enjoyment and managing events with others.  I want to learn how to use electronics more effectively, efficiently, and safely.  I would like to easily choose and know how to use the best format available when wanting to record information digitally.  Digital literacy is a very important skill set.  In today's world, it would be quite difficult to live without having at least some digital literacy.  So much revolves around it, and more and more is becoming that way as time goes on.  There are digital natives and immigrants.  A digital native is someone born into the digital age.  This does not mean that he or she is automatically digitally literate.  They still have to learn everything in order to become a digital citizen, or a person who utilizes information technology aiding them in engaging in politics and society.  Somebody that adopts technology later in life is a digital immigrant.  Digital natives are hindered in their education due to the fact that teachers today are almost all digital immigrants.  Studies show that technology has changed the way students process, read, and perceive information.  Luckily at Peninsula Catholic, we all use Google Chrome for much of our academic work.  This helps us to gradually grow our digital literacy as we progress through our classes.  This blog that you are reading right now is a product of this progressive learning environment.  Digital literacy has proved most successful in producing successful, lucrative economies in countries around the world.  I found a Ted Talks on digital literacy at the website http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78&scrlybrkr=e1737340.  I like how in this video, Doug Beshar compares it with learning to play a musical instrument.  It takes a while for gestures to get engrained.  It takes practice.  He also mentions memes.  They are ideas, behaviours, or styles that spread in a culture.  They have been around for more than one hundred years.  There is a picture from 1905 of a cat in a dress sitting in a chair with text below that reads, ¨What's delaying my dinner.¨  His point is that when people have ideas, they use tools to communicate it.  In the digital world of today, it is much easier to communicate information.  Mr. Belshar says that there are eight essential elements of digital literacies.  They are the cognitive, constructive, communicative, civic, critical, creative, confident, and cultural with the remix at the center.  Real digital citizens utilize these elements to communicate their remix on information they want to share.  Digital literacy is very important.  I am looking forward to learning how to be more digitally literate in my life.