“In 21st-century communication, the boundaries between core literacy practices, such as learning to read and write, and more applied production and presentation practices are becoming blurred. Creating multimedia documents, putting together and critiquing videos, finding information and resources on the web, and understanding images and graphics are all becoming important aspects of communication.” (Collins, 2017)
With technology so commonplace, it is essential that students acquire transferable technological literacy and competency so as to participate and contribute to their communities.
Shepard (2004) argued that learning should be authentic and connected to the real world. Authentic learning requires students to use knowledge and skills and perform tasks to solve worthy problems resembling “real-world” contexts (Wiggins, 1993). The use of technology as part of the pedagogical practice in teacher education courses serves as an opportunity to integrate authentic opportunities for acquiring technology literacy as a competency.
These are the kinds of new literacies that will be required in the digital world our children are entering:
- The ability to invent, work through, and complete an original digital project for an educational web game or interactive simulation
- The ability to manage a project online in a wiki-based networked environment
- The ability to create digital media artifacts using wikis, blogs, and websites, and to publish and distribute these artifacts online
- The ability for social-based learning, participation, and exchange across age groups and levels of expertise in a networked environment
- The ability to use information as a learning tool, to search for information purposefully, and to explore information
- The ability to surf websites and experiment with web applications and tools
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