Welcome back to Season Seven of Linking Our Libraries!
We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Join us in working thorough skills library staffers can use to be more successful in their work!
Our Guest Host this week is Beth Russell, the Digital Skills specialist at Rockford Middle School, Center for Environmental Studies.
The Basics:
The world has gone digital! In the last few decades, much of the information and transactions we need for everyday life has moved online. This gives us a lot of flexibility, and opens up a lot of new possibilities for us all to explore. We can all receive a lot of benefits from learning digital skills to best work with the online world – including having podcasts drop right into your phone!
And of course, there are rules to learn and procedures to follow to work well in this world. Learning them in school is so handy for kids, who will be part of the ever-changing and growing digital opportunities that will keep developing.
“Cornell University defines digital literacy as ‘the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies and the Internet’.” This is the same sort of skills we help our patrons learn when they are using any kind of information, from any source. Information in the digital world is potentially more plentiful and more flexible, so needs some special thinking about skills.
From EdScoop’s article “How to teach digital literacy skills at the right time” “The technology and core standards of organizations such as ISTE, CSTA, and Common Core State Initiative stipulate that students need foundational digital literacy skills to demonstrate writing, reading, and mathematical achievement.” It is not enough for students – and the workers of the very near future – to know how to use information found in books. They need to know how to find and use it in a digital environment.
What are a few digital skills you might master, and might make sure your patrons – kids or adults – would want to know? We have a list – and there are so many more!
- Sharing information safely
- Working with people you never see in person
- Searching for and finding the best content
- Effective email
- Good social media practices
- Collaborating online
Resources for you to consult:
- Digital Skills For All
- Free Digital Skills Tutorials at GCFGlobal
- Digital Skills for Women 2020 – CloudKettle
- Teach Applied Digital Skills – Teacher Center
- Lessons – Google Applied Digital Skills
- Courses List – Google Digital Garage
- Free digital skills courses for all levels – FutureLearn
- Digital Skills Training | Skillsoft
- Digital skills critical for jobs and social inclusion – Unesco
- 5 Steps to Teaching Digital Literacy in the Classroom
- Digital Citizenship | Common Sense Education
- The Importance of Digital Literacy in K-12
- Applied Digital Skills | Libraries Ready to Code
Books Read
And now we have one of our favorite parts of each episode: sharing books! Each of us will share a book we are reading. Links to each book will be on our show notes page, with a link to Amazon.com. If you buy a nice book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits. Thanks in advance!!
- What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City, by Mona Hanna-Attisha
- The Diviners, by Libba Bray
- The Meaning of Birds, by Jaye Robin Brown
Conclusion
Thanks to Beth for working through all these ideas with us!
Thanks to you for joining us this week! It’s always better when you are here with us!
Be sure you are subscribed to Linking Our Libraries in your favorite podcast app – or just stream it on our website.
If you want to hear more about books, subscribe to our podcast Reading With Libraries.
Check back in with us next week for another library skill!