Drawing on your given text, your own thoughts in view of the seminars and your own experiences and observations, respond to the following question: Why should teachers care about digital literacy? Explain the potential benefits and/or challenges, depending on your reading.
As teachers we should care about digital literacy. Our lives are becoming more and more technologically advanced and as teachers our job is to educate generations of young children in all areas of life in order to allow them to grow up to be educated with the skills, knowledge and understanding that we need as adults. By teaching children at primary school level, we as the teachers, may be the only point of call and educational influence in that child's young life and therefore we need to be there for the child to prove that we can teach them all that they need to be able to prosper within this world.
Being digitally literate means having an understanding of the different modes of communication and being made able to have access to a broad range of materials in which to expand your digital literacy capabilities. It is vital as a teacher to care if your pupils are becoming digitally literate as there are numerous ways of presenting data and information and if a child has not been taught at school how to critically evaluate, engage and understand different ways in which a text has been shaped to convey information then as that child grows they will struggle with how to communicate as a majority of the world does: through technology.
Schooling is not wholly about what academic information you can teach to a child but it is also about supporting a child socially in order for them to grow into well rounded individuals. However, when we as teachers use technology to aid learning we have to ensure that the use of ICT does genuinely enhance the teaching and learning and is not simply treated as an add-on to the lesson. This is vital because as teachers we have to have a bank of appropriate ways in which to foster digital literacy learning within the classroom. It is interesting because as a teacher of specific set of pupils, who all obtain a specific skill set, we are the best person in which to consciously decide when and if we will incoporate ICT use within the classroom. Therefore we are in the most influential position in which to use our expert knowledge of ICT and use it to our benefit to aid the children within our class. For my an implication about my own practice I believe I should care about digital literacy as it is a large part of what children need in order to be equipped with secure knowledge of ICT before they reach adulthood.
Finally, I also believe it is paramount to equip children with the knowledge of internet safety in order to prepare them for the dangers of the internet. Children should be informed how to remain safe and they should be aware of their digital footprint as this can effect how they are seen by the public eye and by their future employers. If they are not taught how to be safe on the internet how can we expect they will take that initiative themselves.
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