Digital Literacy Curriculum

To live, work, and prosper in the 21st century, your students need proficiency in both language literacy and digital literacy. LGL DL Edge provides 60 lessons that prepare them with the technical knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the 21st century. Research demonstrates that student equity and inclusion depend on mastering internet literacy, digital communication skills, critical thinking, and problem solving. “Technology and social media are rapidly changing the way that citizens consume, create, and share information” (Office of Education Technology, US Department of Education).

Our digital lessons cover these key categories.

• Internet overview
• Tech devices
• Information data
• Content creation
• Communication
• Safety, security, & privacy
• Digital citizenship
• Technology

The 60 highly interactive lessons use video, music, games, and rewards to help learners understand difficult digital content. Learners get experience with content creation, messaging, data, privacy, security, online environments, and digital citizenship. Each lesson provides direct instruction and practice for whole-class, small-group, or individual learning. Lessons are also aligned with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards.

Crucial to academic and social growth is digital citizenship.  Danny Wagner, an ed tech and media expert, writes: “Character strengths are essential components to digital citizenship, and through social and emotional learning (SEL), we can give students the foundation to handle problems with clarity and heart” (Wagner, 2017).

We created our LGL DL Edge course with lessons that integrate SEL strengths with digital content, combining serious real-world technical skills with art, graphics and authentic situations that model:

• Collaboration
• Equity
• Global citizenry
• Self-expression

You know your students use the internet. In fact, a recent survey by Common Sense Media found that in 2021 students ages 8 to 12 used it for 5 hours and 33 minutes a day and students ages 13 to 18 used it for 8 hours and 39 minutes a day. Mastering this lesson ensures that they each know the internet’s essential skills.

• Browser
• Pages
• URL
• Read
• Refresh
• Load
• Update
• Search

Look around you. Does it seem like everyone is on a cellphone? According to Pew Research Center (2021), 97% of Americans now own a cellphone and a whopping 85% own a smartphone! In fact by the time your students are 18 years old, 96% of them will own a smartphone.  Because digital literacy and inclusion go hand-in-hand, ensure that each student knows how voice, images, apps, and data get to a mobile phone and the basics of smartphone connectivity.

As Galileo might have said if he had lived in a digital environment such as ours: “There are as many apps as there are stars in the sky.”

Many of your students may have experience with apps and app stores as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic and their increased usage of virtual applications. This lesson will deepen their understanding of app functions and app stores for these operating systems: Mac, Windows, and Android.

This lesson will help your students recognize the differences between credible sites and those that contain fake news and false information. It’s crucial that they deepen their critical thinking skills by building digital literacy bridges from their academic lives to their everyday lives. Lesson content includes the five steps necessary to identify credible information and data.

This lesson will help your students understand file-naming conventions for different content types. This will make searching locally and in the cloud easier.