Simply stated, students are often not provided with opportunities in school to practice the web literacies necessary to read, write, and participate on the web.
I completely agree with this. When I was in middle school and high school the only thing we ever used the Internet for was for research or to write papers.
The World Wide Web has become this generation’s defining technology for literacy. This technology facilitates access to an unlimited amount of online information in a participatory learning space
I agree with this. It is also so easy to get any information you want really quickly.
When we encourage students to use technology, do we remind them of the risks of placing their information online and give them choices of how much personal information to reveal? Do our students recognize the ways in which Facebook’s privacy settings continually shift without user permission, and what posting a photo today might mean for their future employment opportunities? Do students recognize the importance of password-protecting their devices and having different passwords across platforms?
These are all really important questions that should be raised to all students. I think a lot of young people don't understand the consequences of poor decisions on social media.
nstead of teaching how to use a hashtag and how to tweet and retweet, I give my students meaningful tasks to help their learning
This goes more in depth and helps students understand why to use a platform such as Twitter instead of just using it mindlessly.
Digital skills would focus on which tool to use (e.g., Twitter) and how to use it (e.g., how to tweet, retweet, use TweetDeck), while digital literacy would include in-depth questions: When would you use Twitter instead of a more private forum? Why would you use it for advocacy? Who puts themselves at risk when they do so?
I feel like when I was in high school I was taught some digital skills but they never went into depth about why we needed to know those things.
Digital skills focus on what and how. Digital literacy focuses on why, when, who, and for whom.
I like that this distinguishes the difference between digital skills and digital literacies.