Informatization and Digital Citizenship

This chapter examines the bases for informatization and describes the conditions for meaningful and responsible participation in the informatized society, both in the workplace and in the civic world in general. Where eighty percent of U.S. labor is concentrated in the service sector, and technology permeates workplace functions, society is becoming informatized: driven by information. Information and digital literacy are required worker skills. Additionally, workers need to use information and technology ethically. Governments and workplaces need to set the conditions for knowledgeable, responsible, and participatory citizens and workers so that institutions and society as a whole can improve. Because informatization intersects with globalization, responsible cross-cultural interaction also needs to be addressed.

Borderline Fields of Information Architecture

This chapter addresses the complex relationships between information architecture and information overload from the viewpoint of the information professional. It is discussed in the light of information literacy, which cannot be considered without a discussion of other related literacies. Special attention and extended length will be given to data literacy, which is relatively new, but is on the way of gaining particular weight with the growing importance of data-related issues. As borderline fields of information architecture, information overload, the different literacies and personal information management play dissimilar roles. Information overload is the symptom, while well-known approaches and tools of information architecture, information literacy and other literacies, as well as personal information management offer different tools to alleviate these symptoms. Notwithstanding, there is undeniable connection between them, which should be made subject to further research.

Teacher Candidates' Perceptions of Technology Used to Support Literacy Practices

This study explores teacher education candidates' perceptions of technologies used to support K-12 student literacy development. Candidates selected technologies for future adoption based on impressions of each technology's ability to support student literacy development. Technologies included broad-based applications (blogs, wikis, podcasts, digital storytelling) as well as more specific applications (Prezi, Glogster, Voicethread). Results indicate that candidates selected first those technologies they saw as useful in presenting content in a teacher-directed paradigm. They then considered technologies that allowed for student authoring and manipulation representing more student inquiry-based approaches. Data were disaggregated for secondary versus elementary candidate populations.

Mobile Technologies and Web 2.0

This chapter explores changing definitions of literacy that build on the key concepts of New Literacies and existing Web 2.0 practices such as blogging, social networking, and other shared and collaborative media spaces (Davies & Merchant, 2009). The chapter also describes concrete examples of mobile-based literacy ideas that build on such a framework. The focus on teacher education, and literacy education in particular, examines and considers new definitions of literacy practices with connections to mobile technologies. Although mobile technologies offer possibilities for multi-modal and collaborative literacy practices, it is suggested that we should also stay grounded in some of the principles of print literacies (the prerequisite skills of the reading and writing processes), while also fostering Web 2.0 and New Literacies (as defined and discussed by Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, 2006). Specific examples of Web 2.0 technologies that can be implemented with mobile tools are shared and discussed.

Transforming K-12 Classrooms With Digital Technology

Powerful emerging technologies, data systems, and communications have converged to change how we play, work, communicate, learn, and even what we think. It is fundamentally changing our institutions and support systems, especially our schools and their classrooms. Thus, the teachers that use these classrooms need to also change. If schools and classroom designed for a 20th century industrial age are to survive, then how do they need to be transformed to respond to the rapidly changing needs of today's 21st century students? There is currently much “hype” on what technology can do for students and their classrooms. This chapter explores what the research says works regarding the integration of digital technologies for schools, teachers, and most importantly the 21st century students that today's classrooms are intended to serve. However, with most emerging technologies, the research has not kept pace with the ever increasing advance, so this chapter also highlights some of the promising new technology devices, programs, and educational practices in need of quality evaluative research. By exploring how today's students and their learning needs are being changed by current and emerging promising digital technologies, a personal vision for the reader should begin to emerge on how schools might transform their 20th century teachers and classrooms into spaces, including virtual spaces, that better serve today's 21st century students.

Media Literacy, Co-Innovation, and Productivity

This research analyzes the connections between media literacy and context of the knowledge economy, establishing a relationship between so-called co-innovative sources (ICT, organizational innovation and qualifications of employees) of the business environment and media literacy. It seeks to verify the behavior of media literacy as a co-innovative source, as fundamental as the three other ones to the viability and sustainability of companies. Authors start from a literature review related to media literacy and knowledge-based economy and then raise their own model that integrates the co-innovative sources and media literacy (the ‘Tetrahedron of Co-Innovative Sources') with which analyze media literacy in the business context. To verify the proposed relations, the research uses the Celot and Pérez Tornero's (2009) framework (proposed in the “Study on Assessment Criteria for Media Literacy Levels” delivered to the European Commission) with official statistical sources in Europe, returning results with which to test the hypothesis that a higher level of media literacy of citizens of a country has a positive influence on its companies and businesses.

The Power of Digital Literacy to Transform and Shape Teacher Identities

In this chapter, the authors focus their attention on the case studies of three beginning teachers and their use of digital storytelling in their preservice education English Language Arts classes. They undertook this research to determine if preservice teachers who are exposed to new literacies and a multiliteracies pedagogy will use them in transformative ways. The authors examine their subsequent and transformed use of digital media with their own students in the classroom setting. One uses a digital story to reflect on past injustices. Another finds new spaces for expression in digital literacy. A third uses the affordances of digital media to raise critical awareness of a present global injustice with secondary school students. The authors explore their shifting perceptions of multiple literacies and critical media literacy and how these shifts in thinking help shape or transform their ideas about teaching and learning in English Language Arts.

Digital Competence

This chapter presents a proposal for a conceptual framework of digital competence, which is a civil right and need and is vital for appropriate, intelligent study and functioning in the real world, through means that technology and the internet offer the citizen. Digital competence in the 2010s is a multifaceted complex of a net of literacies that have been updated, reformulated and transformed under the influence of technology. The framework of the digital competency includes eight fields of digital literacies. At the top of the net is digital ethics literacy, outlines the moral core for proper use of technology; at the base are technological literacy and digital reading and writing literacy, comprising the foundation and interface for all the digital literacies, and in between are the digital literacies in these fields: information literacy, digital visual literacy, new media literacy, communication and collaboration literacy and social media literacy. These interconnected literacies compose a synergetic complex of the digital competence framework.

Teacher Training and Digital Competence

Teacher training in all fields should include advanced digital competence for teachers and their teaching, not concentrating only on ICT user skills of teachers. These issues should be part of both initial teacher training and in-service training. The training should consider aspects of using ICT both as a learning tool within subject teaching and as a tool used by learners for their homework and learning-related actions outside school sceneries. Recently, digital competence has become a key conception in debates on the kind of skills and understanding learners need in the Knowledge Society. The wide meaning of digital competence offers the necessary framework (i.e. the knowledge, skills and attitudes) for working, living and learning in the knowledge society. In this paper the focus is on how pedagogically the skill area can be addressed and what tools there are available to help the teachers and students.

Creating Global Classrooms Using Universal Design for Learning

Media and digital content has become an integral part of our lives. Digital content has expanded the opportunities for accessing information for individuals with special needs and classrooms with culturally diverse students. Because the digital content is taught through multiple modes, it provides access to information previously available only through print formats. By incorporating universal design into the classroom, the students are using media and digital literacy skills, preparing them for the global world in which they live. In this chapter, a description of universal design will be provided, how to use the digital and media content to create a classroom that honors diversity, and how to use universal design for teaching different languages. The concepts of universal design and the global classroom are pulled together through project or problem-based learning. Finally, a glimpse into the future classroom technology is provided.