ASSIGNMENT – Share a Digital Literacy Tip for Classmates

CATEGORIES: ASSIGNMENTS ARCHIVE

This is an archived version of an activity that asks students to share a digital literacy tip with their classmates, which I used in WRTG 2090 in Spring 2011.

SHARE ONE TIP BEFORE MID-TERM

Before mid-term, you will share at least one digital literacy tip with the class. You will most likely share the tip with your classmates in class, but you should also briefly describe the tip so that you can include it in your Mid-Term Portfolio. You can decide where you want to post the written description: in a comment on this blog entry or on your own blog. Tips that are particularly well-written may be featured on the Digital Students Blog.

Purpose

The purpose of this activity is to help everyone further develop their digital literacy skills by sharing what they know with each other. The tip you share before mid-term may be quite simple, such as a shortcut for how to do a common task on your computer, tricks for doing something in a particular application, shareware or online tools you find particularly handy, or something along those lines. Just keep the purpose in mind: to help your classmates develop the kind of digital literacy skills that will help them make more effective and efficient use of technology to accomplish their goals.

Topics

Your tip may be relevant to either Mac or Windows operating systems — it need not be relevant to both. Just so you know, about one quarter of the students in our class use Windows, and most of those use Windows 7, although a few use Vista. The rest use Macs, and most of those use OS 10.5, although a few have 10.4. Apparently only one student and I use OS 10.6!

To avoid duplication of tips, you were directed (both in class and on several calendar entries) to sign up for the tips you might like to cover on the Sign-up Sheet for Digital Literacy Tips, which is in the SIGNUP SHEETS folder on Google Docs.

If you can’t think of a tip based on what you already know how to do with computers or on the internet, try exploring the Help menus on your computer’s operating system or applications. Also try searching Google for tips for how to do various tasks.

You might also take a look at the following web sites to see if you come across anything relevant, such as a handy online tool, Firefox or Google widget, or piece of shareware, but keep it simple. You may also find the sites below helpful later on, when you want to identify tools to test out and review for a project you’ll complete after mid-term.

If you remain stumped for ideas, please talk to me! One possible alternative to sharing a digital literacy tip would be to contribute a definition to the Digital Students Glossary.