Digital Literacy for Effective Citizenship. (Advancing Technology)

Cybersafety, Digital Awareness, and Media Literacy Young people today consume huge amounts of information through various media outlets and simultaneously create and distribute their own messages via digital technologies. Because efforts to control access to information are fraught with difficulties, the most effective way to safeguard students from exposure to violent, racist, and sexual content, and other deleterious messages, is through education. (1) The initial focus of creating a framework for Internet safety has emphasized the role of the schools, where instruction on Internet safety and responsibility is needed to accompany the rapid saturation of schools by technology and Internet access. (2) This places educators in an important position to familiarize K-12 children in the schools with cyberspace and to instill a set of appropriate online behaviors for safe and rewarding use of the Internet. Digital Literacy and the Social Studies One of the challenges associated with digital awareness is how to facilitate the inclusion of these issues into the existing social studies curriculum. Digital literacy, like media literacy, seeks to incorporate into instruction the skills necessary to access, analyze, and evaluate all forms of information and communication. Digital literacy requires students to apply these skills to the information emanating from the Internet and other information technologies. Media education advocates have lamented that the integration of media studies into education has been a slow process? In fact, the United States has the dubious distinction of being the last among all English-speaking countries to develop children's competencies as informed users of communication and media technologies. (4) Digital literacy, however, is not a novel area for exploration in the social studies, and several skills that are essential for cyberliteracy are already an integral component of the content area. All state and national educational standards have literacy at their core. Throughout the United States, at least thirty-two states (64 percent) have included in their state social studies frameworks skills that promote media literacy. (5) These include competencies in understanding perspectives or points of view, critical thinking skills to analyze and evaluate the credibility of information, experience in accessing diverse forms of information, and exposure to digital environments. Despite the elements of digital education within the existing curricular frameworks, many teachers feel ill prepared to assist students in understanding digital technology. This is exacerbated by the fact that youth are well acclimated to the digital medium and have adjusted to it rapidly. Today's students spend more time immersed in an image-laden culture of television, movies, and video games than with static, printed text. In a study conducted by FamilyPC (February 2001), approximately 80 percent of teens reported spending one to five hours each week on e-mail. Nearly 75 percent spend a similar amount of time completing homework or research online, and 66 percent spend as many hours web surfing. Half of all teens still find time to watch more than six hours of TV a week. Almost 50 percent of teens report that they go online and watch television simultaneously at least some of the time. Given the digital environment in which youth are immersed, to become "a successful student, responsible citizen, productive worker, or competent and conscientious consumer, individuals need to develop expertise with the increasingly sophisticated information and entertainment media that address us on a multi-sensory level, affecting the way we think, feel and behave." (6) A notable connection between digital literacy and the social studies is the promotion of citizenship skills within a global environment. "Media education is the entitlement of every citizen, in every country of the world, to freedom of expression and the fight to information and is instrumental in building and sustaining a democracy. …