Digital Literacy

According to dictionary.com the definition of literacy is "the ability to read or write". Today this definition seems as outdated as the factory-like education that our schools provide. Although literacy in it's tradational form, the ability to read and write, is obviously important, there is much more to being literate in today's technological world. This new literacy is referred to as digital literacy. Digital literacy refers to a persons ability to use technology effectively and efficiently. This not only includes the physical functions of using technological hardware and software, but the ability to locate information, sort through it, exercise critical thinking, and synthesize and make sense out of the vast troves of information.

One of the difficulties that have arisen with the rapid development of Web 2.0 educational technologies is that many teachers are not digitally literate themselves. As Barbara Jones Kavalier states in her article Connecting the Digitial Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century, "linear thinking instructors" are trying to use outdated methods to teach digitally literate students. The question is, is there any effort ongoing to train these teachers, and if not are our students missing out on the newest educational tools available via Web 2.0 as a result? It seems an easy solution would be to make IST professionals available to all teachers to "bring the teachers up to speed". Whether this will ever happen or not, who knows, but in reality the situation faced by many teachers who technologically challenged is not a new one. I'm sure a few decades ago educators were struggling with how to turn on the overhead projector, but it seems today there is a lot more at stake, as students are missing out on a lot more learning tools and opportunities associated with Web 2.0.