Reflections on the Digital Literacy and Higher Education Winter Symposium

Public Domain Image from FirmBee on Pixabay
Public Domain Image from FirmBee on Pixabay

My first draft, unfiltered thinking from the end of our day reflections:

Of course, the opportunity to meet and greet is wonderful. As we have noted, it is easy to fall into “silos” in our academic roles, and being able to talk with librarians, media literacy scholars, education scholars, doc students, and others is always a good thing. I would like to think that we have already learned enough just by being here and sharing with one another. That said — and knowing Renee and Julie — I can only imagine that there will be new opportunities that are going to come from the conversations begun (continued) here. Even in the Virtually Connecting session this afternoon, I realized that there were at least half a dozen other people that I think should have been here.

Also, for my particular interest areas — teacher education, writing studies, and digital/media literacy — I think that there is a great deal of work to do. I was fortunate enough to be here for the summer institute in 2016, and then went to the UNSECO/GAPMIL meeting in Ontario. At the same time, I’ve switched from English to Teacher Education (as a departmental affiliation) and I think that is helping me rethink what I am doing and what I want to do in the near future. Ideally, I would like to see how other colleges/universities are integrating digital/media literacies into teacher education (and not just as a separate methods class) to make their programs — and their students — more robust and viable.

My interests also are moving toward graduate education, both MA and doctoral, in educational technology. What is it that we (as the scholars and educators on the bleeding edge of digital literacy) need to know and be able to do in order to teach these current teachers and future scholars? What do they, in turn, need to know and be able to do? How, specifically, can we be thoughtful about integrating elements of ISTE, ACRL, and other standards into our teacher preparation programs?

I suppose that I am also, as always, interested in helping my own children to learn and grow in their ever-connected world. As a parent, I fear that they are not really learning how to use technology in critical, creative, and collaborative ways through their K-12 schooling. The conversations this afternoon about the dominance of LMSs in 1:1 or BYOD is only reiterating what I had feared. Knowing how to login, upload an assignment, and check your grade is not nearly enough to become digitally literate. My children — and all our children — really need to have a thoughtful, integrated approach to digital literacy built in across the curriculum. They are not getting that right now, and it worries me on many levels.

Public Domain Image from FirmBee on Pixabay


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