Are Our Digital Natives Digitally Literate?

This week our Technology Leadership Team met to develop a vision for technology integration at Sendera Ranch Elementary. We discussed that we have digital natives who interact constantly with technology but yet lack the skills to find, filter and create digital products... they lack digital literacy.

Knowing the need to foster and facilitate digital literacy in our students the Technology Literacy team, through a collaborative process developed our vision that took into account the future skills our students will need, the vertical alignment of skills so that students can progress with technology for academic use/learning. The committee also took into account where we presently are as a campus and what our next steps should be with our technology integration.

We can all agree that students must have strong literacy and math skills to be successful in life. What we are finding is that in order for students to function successfully in life they must also become digitally literate. It is in their life. They were born surrounded by it. How they use technology as learners... that is where our job lies.

Beyond the vision the technology leadership team came up with goals for the campus. These goals may seem big if one was attempting to do it all at one time. However, just like when we teach students to read or develop number sense, we do it in small steps, bit by bit.

Knowing these are the goals for our campus for next year, what are the ways you can look ahead and backwards plan. How can opportunities for students to learn some of the "soft skills" with technology early on, so that students can enter into larger more involved projects with confidence and skills to create work that reflects not just their technology skills but their depth of understanding?

In an eSchool News  article it discusses the ten skills every student should learn. They were:
1. Read
2. Type
3. Write
4. Communicate effectively and with respect
5. Question
6. Be resourceful
7. Be accountable
8. Know how to learn
9. Think critically
10. Be happy

Technology can be the antithesis of these or it can be the vehicle that gets them there. We have the power to make that happen. The most important thing we can do is provide exposure through experiences and modeling. A quick article that may help to brainstorm ways to reach that is mentioned in the blog post: Finding Time for Tech by Katie Currens.

Another great resource is the US Digital Literacy website: http://digitalliteracy.us/. This has great resources to utilize and shares digital skills that students need to be successful citizens.

Finally, the district created a check list of technology skills for K-2 and 3-5 that is directly taken form the Technology TEKS. This is a great tool to use as a guideline as we move forward and vertically support one another as we develop our students' digital literacy.

What are ways you and/or your team are intentionally planning to meet the goals developed from our technology vision? Share your ideas!