Chapter 8: Exploring Social Studies Through Digital Literacy

The Internet has changed educators’ conceptions of learning. There are more avenues of inquiry possible through the Internet. Pairing meaningful literacy strategies with innovative technology helps students learn to use the Internet to travel to the past and gain new insights into the present and future. Digital literacy is the ability to utilize, analyze, and create new representations of knowledge by using different sources found on the Internet or through various software programs (University Library: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008). As students learn to use digital literacy effectively, they travel smoothly across multiple forms of media using various linguistic registers for authentic purposes. Effective strategies equip students to analyze the validity of various sources and personalize the experience throughout this process.