Digital Literacy
Digital literacy, especially in a world that’s becoming more and more technology-based, keeping up with ways of communication and basic skills and understanding of the principles of digital forms such as social media, linked-in, Microsoft excel, etc, is more important than ever. It’s also become in a way a standard and almost a requirement, as it’s essentially a measure of the fact that we should be able at least navigate a computer with ease. When I think about digital literacy and ways of sustaining and developing it, I often find myself turning back to what was taught in one of the Modules, I think one of the later ones, in the Insight to Impacts Coursera course. It reminded me of a moment in which it was mentioned that it was important to continually update your skills to make yourself as employable as possible. I think that digital literacy and the skills needed to be considered digitally competent would certainly fall under this greater category of taking the initiative to learn and keep up to date with an ever-changing society. By honing skills like knowning how to efficiently use the internet to complete research throught the use of keywords and special symbols like “ “ and + within the search bar to specify and obtain exactly what you want is really beneficial. Not only will it save you a lot of time, but it means you can redirect that energy to another aspect of the job, the project, or your personal life. Being digitally literate means being efficient and using your time wisely. When one knows how to use the internet and have it work for them instead of typing things in hopes to get some beneficial results in return, you are able to truly able to make the most of the vast number or resources. In doing this it’s also important to provide credit and knowing how to properly do this is something that needs to learned as soon as possible as it opens up your possibilities. No matter what your job or profession is, there almost always if not always is a digital application in which digital literacy will make one’s life easier. Given this fact, it’s important to be able to identify those fundamental skillsets and develop a relationship with each tool until it becomes familiar and like second nature. Some examples that come to my mind are for economists or individuals in finance the ability to not only be proficent in Microsoft Excel, but understanding the shortcuts and all the programming behind the platform intended for your ease of use is something that’s certainly worth investing. Another example would be if you’re a software engineer, simply getting to know the syntax inside and out, and understanding the structures of programs will allow you to make the most when coding.
How have you developed or demonstrated this competency this semester? Questions to consider (you don’t need to answer them all!): Sourcing information Give an example of a time you used digital tools to locate information you needed to complete an assignment. How did you determine your research question? How did you evaluate the sources you chose? How did …
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