As technology advances and new technological tools are created for our classrooms, it is important that students can effectively participate in the digital world. According to Web Literacy 2.0, “knowing how to read, write and participate in the digital world has become the 4th basic foundational skill next to the three Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic.” (Chung. A., Gill I.B., & O’Byrne, n.d.). By being able to read, write and post online students develop an understanding of the importance of having meaningful engagement online. The impact of having web-literate students could also provide a more powerful learning experience in our classrooms.
One misconception I had, was that being web literate only meant you knew how to code websites. Being web literate is much more than that. Students who are web literate can distinguish what information is the most reliable, be able to interact with people online, are aware of how their posts online could affect themselves and others and are able to create and share their own ideas online (Lawrence, n.d.)
How do we go about making our students more web literate? Mozilla (n.d.) has created several lesson plans and tool to aid teachers in implementing various activities and lessons to help promote web literacy. On Mozilla’s (n.d.) site, teachers can click a topic and see lessons created to help teach web literacy. These lessons range from beginners to advanced students and can be modified to fit the needs of the students and teacher. There are more tasks and lessons to discover on the left sidebar under “teaching activities”.
Suggestions for implementation:
One set of lesson plans that I felt was the most beneficial comes from this section of the Mozilla (n.d.) site. Teachers can peruse the lessons and incorporate many different topics like how to discern what information is the most important and create educated opinions about what they read. It is important for students to be web literate to maximize their ability to be productive online participants.
Want to know more? Check out this brief explanation created with PowToon:
YouTube Video – Web Literacy Introduction (Azzaro, 2016)
References:
Azzaro, S. (2016). Web literacy introduction. [Video]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-8HAnYNE_8
Chung. A., Gill I.B., & O’Byrne. I. (n.d.) Web literacy 2.0. Retrieved from: https://mozilla.github.io/content/web-lit-whitepaper/
Lawrence. C. (2017). A definition of web literacy (And how students can benefit). Retrieved from: https://www.teachthought.com/technology/a-definition-of-web-literacy-and-how-students-can-benefit/
Mozilla. (n.d.). Web literacy. Retrieved from https://teach.mozilla.org/teach-like-mozilla/webliteracy/
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