Digital and Media Literacy Resources

I have been gathering resources for both students and teachers to build their media and digital literacy, and working on the best curation methods for each.  My goal is to empower learners, both student and teacher, to have these tools at their fingertips and utilize them when they are authentic and meaningful to their educational experiences.
Several of the ISTE Standards have focused this work.

Digital Self (Citizen 3b: Establish a learning culture that promotes curiosity and critical examination of online resources and fosters digital literacy and media fluency.

I have curated a list of online resources relevant to the instruction of Media and News Literacy, and shared these with faculty members through several mediums.  I utilized Wakelet to Curate online resources in a visually appealing way.  To spotlight this topic and maximize access to the collection, I featured Media Literacy in my most recent Faculty Newsletter.  In addition to the Curated collection I included new print titles related to the topic, as well as an article on the importance of this topic.  This is a tool that I have utilized often to provide Professional Development content to teachers, for them to use them when and how they find them most meaningful.  

Digital Agent (Citizen 3C): Mentor students in safe, legal and ethical practices with digital tools and the protection of intellectual rights and property.

I often create screencasts for students on how to follow ethical practices when using information and media created by others, but the access to these screencasts has not been consistent.  I typically share them within a Google Classroom for a specific project.  I want to empower students to be able to find and access this information independently anytime they need it, so I put together a YouTube Playlist.  I originally intended on creating a separate channel, but in the end that was too complicated, so I opted to make a Playlist dedicated to this topic.  This Playlist will be shared consistently with students during each project or inquiry instruction opportunity, and I will encourage them to bookmark/ save the Playlist for future use. By providing a consistent access point I hope to Empower my student Learners to follow safe, legal and ethical practices.

Cultivating Curiosity with Curation

I have been really inspired by the AASL Standards (Library) to incorporate curation intentionally into my instructional practices (Shared Foundation IV: Curate).  Curation is something that I have always done as part of my library resource sharing, but building it into student learning strategies to Empower them as learners is something new for me (ISTE standard I. Empowered Learner).  This year I incorporated curation into my Research Seminar class as one of their learning objectives.  Students had to think critically as digital citizens to evaluate web sources and collaboratively curate a list (ISTE Standard II. Digital Citizen). They are required to consider relevance and reliability of source content, and defend the usefulness of these sources to our intended purpose.
Research Seminar has a blended learning structure, which I organize around student generated questions about the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.  As they gathered sources, students contributed to shared collections, such as this one on "Clean Water", within our school libraries Destiny Collection.  This was both a new learning activity and new tool, and a great learning process for both myself and the students.  Some things worked well and others need to be adjusted after reflection. 
In looking at additional tools available, I explored Wakelet, which I really liked.  This digital curation tool allows you to easily gather all different types of sources and displays them in a visually appealing format.  There are so many applications for these curation tools within the library curriculum, and resource sharing for faculty.  I may utilize this tool with Research Seminar students next year, rather than Destiny Collections, because of the visual appeal and ease of access.  It generates a link to invite collaborators, which I could share through Google Classroom, streamlining that process for collaborative curation.  This would benefit students who struggled this year with the sign in process for Destiny Collections.  The visual format of Wakelet also lends itself to embedding content into a website, so I could share these resources beyond the context of the classroom.  Below you can see what that format looks like, which would be very functional, not only for student access to resources, but also sharing instructional tools and professional articles with teachers and faculty.  In the past I have created Smore Newsletters to share with colleagues, but I may try Wakelet as an alternative, because I can continue to curate topics and consistently share those resources.