Understanding Digital Literacy 

It is more important than ever to ensure that everyone is educated in digital literacy to ensure their ability to utilize digital technologies in the most effective way. The term digital literacy more broadly refers to smaller subsets of literacy including computer​ literacy, information literacy, and media literacy​ ​(Suwarto et al., 2022​). While computer literacy refers to the ability to use digital technologies, information and media literacy refer to how we find and use digital information.  

Information Literacy

Information literacy refers to our ability to determine what information we need, how to find it, and then how to incorporate it into our own writing and presentations in a responsible and ethical way (American College of Education, 2024). This includes understanding how to find reliable sources and providing attribution using references and citations to ensure our sources are clear to our readers. 

Media Literacy

Media literacy refers to our ability to use ​critical thinking skills to evaluate the​ validity and truthfulness of the sources we use to support our ideas and create our writing and presentations (Dell, 2019).  

Why It's Important

Both media literacy and information literacy impact how we collect information using digital technologies.  For example, an understanding of media literacy empowers us to recognize false and manipulated information being presented as factual online (Dell, 2019). A 2016 study conducted by Stanford of students from middle school through college found that without media literacy education many students were less likely to recognize fake information provided by biased sources (Dell, 2019). The development and utilization of critical thinking skills helps protect us from these types of errors and information literacy provides us with an understanding of how to search for reliable information utilizing responsible sources such as peer-reviewed publications.  

References 

American College of Education. (2024). ​DL5713 Digital age learning environments:​ ​Module 1 [Part 1 presentation]. Canvas.​ ​https://ace.instructure.com/courses​/1944593/​external_tools/118428​ 

​​Dell, M. (2019). Fake news, alternative facts, and disinformation: The importance of​ ​teaching media literacy to law students. Touro Law Review, 35(2), 619–648​.  

Kellner, D. & Share, J. (2005) Cloud Media Literacy [Image]. Flickr.  https://www.flickr.com/photos/environmentalinformatics-marburg/13890685063 

​​Suwarto, D. H., Setiawan, B., & Machmiyah, S. (2022). Developing digital literacy​ ​practices in Yogyakarta elementary schools. Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 20(2),​ ​101–111. https://doi.org/10.34190/ejel.20.2.2602