How Should Adolescents Critically Use Digital Media?

There is no question that technology is heavily ingrained in into students’ lives both educationally and personally. However, there are still many questions surrounding how students should use these digital spaces. What digital spaces should students use? What should their interactions on these spaces look like? In the 21st century, the use of digital media texts is crucial to develop the skill set that students need in order to be successful in their education and professional lives. In this article I will discuss the benefits and importance of digital media inclusion, what this practice should look like in the classroom, and how students should use it.

Critical digital literacy not only involves using several methods of presenting a text, but different methods of texts itself. In the 21st century, information is hardly gathered from print media and documents anymore. Rather today, information is gathered through podcasts, blogs, online articles, pictures, and videos. It is these sources that students will encounter in their everyday life and need to understand how these sources exist and should be created, analyzed, and interacted with. As Buckingham mentions in his article, it is important to not “water-down” technology as to best prepare students for what they will encounter. Buckingham makes an important and accurate argument that in most schools, the technology is available for educators to promote critical digital literacy, but these resources are not utilized properly.

The explains the important impact that critical digital literacy has on a student and has a nice reminder for educator about using different modes of texts. It is explained that critical digital literacy is absolutely critical to a student as they create their identity by sifting through and analyzing texts within their culture.

The last idea that this video introduces is the different methods of exploring digital literacies. These include skills in decoding, meaning making, analyzing, using, and persona. This thinking map gives more ideas into what ideas and skills are included in these methods.

In Julie Warner’s chapter entitled “Critical Digital Literacies”, she discusses these methods more in depth. Warner makes the argument that decoding is the most important aspect of critical digital literacy for students. She discusses that the way that many student are interacting with digital media sources now are as consumers and this interaction limits their knowledge and ability to mold these sources to their needs. Warner continues that students must analyze these sources in order to be educated on where they stand in society as producers, consumers, or somewhere in between. To continue this argument, decoding a digital source gives students the ability shift back and forth between being producers and consumers as they so choose while also giving them the perspective as a consumer to analyze sources more objectively.

When planning for implementation of critical digital literacy it is important to plan for what the purpose that digital media will serve rather than the platform you should use. Terry Heick has written about ten strategies to help students use digital media for critical thinking that is a great place to start when planning for implementation. The three most important strategies are to amplify cognition, illuminate interdependence, and modeling intellectual tolerance. To amplify cognition, students will document the process of an idea from formation, through its changes and influences, and finally how this idea can be presented and how its presentation will impact its audience. Illuminating interdependence is crucial to digital literacy, this practice teaches students to gather information from their source, whether it be a podcast or a video, by making personal connections to the source and promote interaction with the source such as creating a response video, blog entry, or comment thread. Finally, modeling intellectual tolerance is a way to lead students in how they should interact with these sources by showing examples of questions they should be asking about the sources and finding answers to their questions using digital media.

There are many benefits for students when they are interacting with digital media in the classroom. These benefits include intellectual benefits, social benefits, and creative benefits. The intellectual benefits are that students develop problem-solving skills from producing information on different digital media platforms. Students are able to express themselves creatively through the use of digital media such as social media, podcasts, videos, etc. Finally, students develop social benefits from their interactions on digital media spaces where they are actively discussion information with the author and other consumers.

Resources:

Class Readings:

• Buckingham, David. “Digital Media Literacies: Rethinking Media Education in the Age of the Internet.” Research in Comparative and International Education, vol. 2, no. 1, 1 Nov. 2007, pp. 43–55., doi:10.2304/rcie.2007.2.1.43.
• Warner, Julie. “Critical Digital Literacies.” Adolescents’ New Literacies with and through Mobile Phones, Peter Lang, 2017, pp. 143–159.

Outside Sources:

• Heick, Terry. “10 Strategies To Help Students Use Social Media For Critical Thinking -.” TeachThought, TeachThought, 2 July 2018, www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/10-strategies-help-students-use-social-media-critical-thinking/.
• “Media Benefits for Children and Teenagers.” Raising Children Network, Australian Government Department of Social Services, 12 July 2017, raisingchildren.net.au/pre-teens/entertainment-technology/media/media-benefits.

Video:

Dowling-Fernau, Lisa. Youtube, YouTube, 2 Apr. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyPwfvQ5cHE.