Digital Thoughts

Digital Literacy: "the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and analyze information using digital technology."  -Wikipedia

While that is concise definition of digital literacy, it fails to illustrate that people can use their digital literacy in different ways (for evil, or for good! well.. not quite) For example, in my own family I see how different we are in terms of how we use our digital literacy. 

I apologize in advance for the... random nature of this posting. I had a lot of ideas that kind of flowed into each other to create this...product.

First there are my parents. My father uses his cell phone mostly for work, sending e-mails and participating in phone conferences. And while I rarely see him use it, he is more than capable of navigating his laptop. My mom on the other had is just as literate, but in a different way. She can be found talking to friends and family through the means of text messages, e-mails, facebook and instant messaging. While at first she was opposed to using the internet for something such as looking up a phone number for a store or restaurant, now she seems to think of nothing else. (To think it took me 5 years to convince her that the Internet is your friend.)

Then I've got myself and my siblings. To keep something that can be long and drawn out, nice and simple, let me say this. My older sister uses technology for research, school work, socializing and having a laugh. My younger sister uses it for those same reasons, though there seems to be an emphasis on the socializing aspect. (Maybe this has something to do with the age group? She's 18.) And finally my brothers who are now seven years old are capable of using technological to research (they love looking up astronomical facts) and for entertainment purposes (it is hard to tear them away from the Kinect or their Nintendos).  

While all of my family members were capable of locating and understanding information using digital technologies, we put an emphasis on different aspects. Does this have anything to do with our varying environments or when we were born, or simply what we value? Maybe...but moving on.

My use of my skills with technology are much like those of my older sister. (Though sometimes I enjoy the entertainment aspect more than I should) But those sentiments aside, I must say thatI like to consider myself digitally literate. I have always been fascinated with technology (and games.. who didn't love oregon trail?) but I know for sure that I'm still learning. There is always some shortcut key I didn't know about (or simply refuse(or forget) to use) or some website that someone introduces to me that blows my mind. 

This idea of constant learning makes me take a step back and think of myself as a future educator and member of the teaching field. No matter how much I like to believe that one day I'll have the majority of the answers, I know that there is always something for me to learn. "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." -Socrates ....  I love that quotation because when it comes to today's world, you have to be open to almost anything. And most of the time, you are being taught even though you are supposedly the teacher. While we hope we can teach our students what they need to know, we need to be aware that are some things they just know more about. For example, I had a class full of 8 year olds explaining how a certain feature of a SMART board worked. Me, the obviously older individual who considers herself digitally literate learned something from her students. I think the one thing that this course taught me most was that in order to be digitally literate...you need to open your mind to the wonders that are technology, and be prepared to ask a lot of questions, and search for a lot of those answers.