Digital Literacy:  Our Students Today

This session looks at digital literacy in our older international school students in Singapore.

We will examine how, for most of them, technology is embedded in their lives and education. The child that goes home at the end of the school day to do homework on the dining room table, with only a pen and exercise book, is a rare student in today's classroom. But does the competent and unthinking use of Word, MSN, SMS, email, Wikipedia and the ubiquitous Google really constitute digital literacy? Is there more we should be asking or expecting of our students? And if there is, do they hold back from it or do we?

The session will include:

• A presentation of the analysis done by Grade 11 students, looking at how their peers use technology on a daily basis. We have seen  the statistics for other ages in other countries, but what is happening here in International Schools in Singapore, now?

 

• A showcase of a small selection of middle and high school student work, showing how they approach traditional subjects in new ways with the digital technologies available to them.

 

• An opportunity to share your own experiences and opinions of digital work and its value in your classroom

Check back here next week and I will have uploaded the student samples shown in the presentation + a couple of others

 Audience:  Middle/High

Middle and high school teachers of any subject

 Workshop materials:

Presenter:

Helen Leeming

United World College of SE Asia -- Dover Campus

Head of Computing

hle@uwcsea.edu.sg

Mrs Helen Leeming is Head of Computing at United World College of South East Asia.  She bought her first computer in 1982, decided that it was amazing and has spent the majority of her time since trying to convert the rest of the world to her point of view. She has taught Computing and IT in the UK and Singapore to a wide variety of children; from inner city London to rural England and now in cosmopolitan Singapore. She still gets excited about being in a classroom and thinks that watching a child learn is one of the best kicks there is.

Projector/screen +sound with computer link-up