Today I spent the day with 25 other teachers from around Central Otago at a course in Cromwell. It was an incredibly busy day with a lot of talking, listening, learning, teaching, sharing and discoveries and I was very lucky to be involved.
The main idea of the day was to set up an ICT Network between schools in our area to improve our Digital Literacy. Digital Literacy means how we read things we see on computers, how we think about what we have read and then how we respond to what we have read. We talked about all the skill that we need as learners (Teachers and students) to become Digitally Literate. We decided that some of the skills we need are…
• We have to know how to search for information on the internet (I have put a new search engine on the links for you to try called Quintura for Kids).
• We have to know how to use a computer (Type, Save, Use different programmes, Communicate using computers).
• We need to learn how to read and understand the information we find on the internet (i.e. not be confused by too much information and learn how to make sure our information is correct).
• We also need to learn how to react and respond to things we read on the internet. One way we can practice this is by thinking really carefully about the comments we leave on the blog.
There was much more that I learnt today that I am going to share with you and the other teachers at our school, but I thought that these 4 ideas would be a great place to start and this blog is a good way for me to share my learning with you.
Hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts
Mr Dyer
