Schools integrating digital literacy into classroom curriculum

Manitoba is asking teachers to train students to evaluate the quality of artificial intelligence-generated content across all subjects areas.

The province’s education department published new digital literacy guidance on its Framework for Learning website last week.

The resources recommend teachers use digital tools to simulate real-world scenarios, brainstorm solutions to community-based challenges and expose students to different cultures, views and experiences.

“Nurturing responsible digital citizenship and reflective practice,” is now deemed critical to support authentic, social and purposeful learning.

“It’s about time,” said Monica Gadsby, vice-president of the Manitoba Association of Education Technology Leaders, also known as MAETL.

“Kids are all on their own algorithms. It’s shaping their worlds completely differently. We have to reach to where the kids are at.”

Manitoba’s new guidelines are meant to replace the Literacy with ICT (information and communication technology) initiative established more than 20 years ago. The initiative was last revised in 2015-16 — long before the launch of ChatGPT and Claude AI chatbots.

Following a handful of years in a technology co-ordinator role, Gadsby returned to the classroom this fall for the first time since the AI boom began.

Gadsby said she recommends looking at students’ YouTube feeds and asking them to Google themselves to find out how they’re portrayed, as well as how information is available about them, online.

“Kids live in meme worlds, so how are we tapping into that?” she said, noting that her goal is to help students ask questions and identify patterns, related problems and solutions.

The middle school teacher recently introduced online artivism, the intersection of art and activism, to her class. She assigned students a project that involved making a meme about a social justice issue that troubled them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given MAETL regularly provides expertise on technology-related issues in the education sector, the province’s new resources endorse Gadsby’s approach.

Education Minister Tracy Schmidt was unavailable for an interview Tuesday, but said in a statement that the new framework stresses critical thinking, healthy online communication and using digital tools in an ethical way.

It also aims to reduce screentime by encouraging students to “make responsible decisions about the use of technology,” Schmidt said.

Her department has identified “holistic digital fluency,” as a key skill that students need in the 21st century, along with six global competencies that were announced during the 2022-23 school year.

For the better part of the last four years, teachers have been directed to prioritize the six Cs — creativity, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, citizenship and connection to self.

The shift to view lessons through these competencies reflects the increasingly interconnected nature of the world students are growing up in, Gadsby said.

The middle school teacher noted she’s interested in fostering technoskepticism — the practice of examining how technology is negatively impacting humanity, without rejecting it outright.

Manitoba’s new guidelines recommend teachers find opportunities for students to explore “real-world issues and make a positive impact in their digital, local and global communities.”

“We’re kind online and we balance our time,” said Michelle Carlos, co-president of the Manitoba School Library Association.

For Carlos, a library learning consultant, being a digitally literate citizen means “respecting yourself and others in online communities.”

Students need to be explicitly taught how to protect their private information online and outdoor play time, she said, noting that foundational digital literacy skills are critical to build AI literacy.

“We’re hopeful this refresh gives us renewed purpose around digital learning, digital citizenship,” she said about the province’s new guidance.

Given technology is interwoven into student lives, it only makes sense for digital literacy to be embedded across content areas, Carlos added.

Manitoba’s new resources suggest using online tools to help students collaborate, examine biases, tweak their creative processes and “promote understanding and reconciliation.”

Teachers are being asked to assess digital literacy using three categories — emerging, expanding and extending.

The province has released reflection questions to help teachers modernize their lessons accordingly.

maggie.macintosh@winnipegfreepress.com