Digital literacies are all about the way we manage ourselves in online environments. They can refer to lots of different things.
Digital literacies can be confidence and competence with programmes like MS Office; this might include word processing (for example MS Word) and presentation software (for example MS PowerPoint).
They might be the ways in which you use Social Media programs for example Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, blogs or wikis. You will need to think carefully about your online identity at university. Prospective employers will use Google to see what information there is about you online. You need to develop a professional online identity which includes an appropriate email address. Use privacy settings on personal information and be careful about having potentially embarrassing photographs in public places!
At university you will find many different types of digital environments. The University Library has lots of digitised resources like ebooks and ejournals as well as traditional paper copies. You are likely to find your tutors use the institutional Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) which is called Blackboard. This will support your teaching and learning and contain a variety of different online tools such as discussion boards. Many tutors upload their lecture notes, module handbooks and reading lists to Blackboard and many use it for electronic submission of assignments.
There is also the vast range of information available on the Internet. An important aspect of digital literacy is being able to tell the difference between knowledge, information and personal opinion.
Digital literacies are not just connected to being at university, but are essential skills which can be transferred to other areas of your life and your future career path.
Before you get to university and in the first few weeks of arriving here the Internet can seem like a great place to find out about Lincoln, what to do here and the people you might be living with.
Some companies on the web and especially on Facebook may try to collect your personal details online. This may include flatmate finder or friend finding schemes or promises to try to help you to find work.
The University of Lincoln strongly advise that you do not share your personal information, especially your address, online. Be warned it may be that as a result your personal details will be made accessible for everyone on websites.
Just follow these three simple steps to avoid this happening:
1. If you have questions regarding your accommodation, please get in touch with the Accommodation Office directly and online. You can call them under +44 (0)1522 886214 or check out more information on the University of Lincoln website.
2. You can safely meet new friends on the official University of Lincoln Facebook page and the official University of Lincoln Students’ Union page without the fear of being exploited. Don't worry about meeting people - you will get involved in official Students’ Union Welcome Week activities as soon as you arrive in Lincoln.
3. If you want to make the most of your employment experience without compromising, please visit the university's official Job Shop site or see the team when you arrive in Lincoln.
Sharing your personal details online will leave you vulnerable during your time in Lincoln and the University of Lincoln and the Students’ Union advise you not to give companies permission for this to happen.
This student guide to social media from Leeds, York and Manchester will give you an introduction and guidance to social media and how to get the best from it.
Digital Literacies are also about the ways in which we leave digital footprints behind us whenever we use the Internet.
This means that everywhere we go online is recorded somewhere or other and information we upload thinking it is only for family and friends, for example an email or profile status or photos on Facebook, can find their way into the public domain.
You may have heard of emails which have gone 'viral'. This is where someone has made critical comments about a colleague or manager and either sent it to a distribution list inadvertently or a recipient has forwarded it on and suddenly the contents are the subject of the media and being sent around the world. Or someone in a position of responsibility, such as a social worker or a teacher, has made disparaging comments about their workplace on a social networking site like Facebook and this has been picked up and made public in a way the originator probably never anticipated.
Continually bear in mind the potentially public nature of the Internet, in particular in terms of your employability. Also, make sure you have a professional personal email address. No potential employer, or anyone in a position of responsibility, wants to see addresses like ilovechocolate@hotmail.com or gorystory@gmail.com appearing in their email box. Quirky email addresses might be fun for family and friends but they are unsuitable professionally. Use a more formal email address when contacting prospective employers or mentor, otherwise the impression you give may be very different from the one you were hoping to create!
One way of finding information on the Internet is to use a search engine such as Google but this will return thousands of 'hits', many of which may be irrelevant or incorrect. The Internet is not subject to any kind of quality control. Anyone can publish their own web pages, so you need to use it as a source of information with caution. It is an ideal place to practice your critical thinking skills as you will need to be able to judge the authenticity of any content you find there.
It is important to consider the following:
Practice asking these three questions every time you visit a website. It is a useful example of learning to become a digitally literate student and you may be surprised at how many fail this simple test of academic credibility.
Thsi interactive module from the University Library will introduce you to searching for academic sources further than just on Google.
Do you use the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia? Wikipedia as the name suggests, is a wiki – a collaborative web site created by an online community. In the case of Wikipedia, the online community is anyone who uses the Internet; potentially anybody can make a contribution. This has led to problems with articles suffering from significant omissions or containing incorrect information.
In 2005 the journal Nature published the results of a survey between Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Fifty entries were chosen from their websites and sent to an independent review panel. The panel were not told which encyclopaedia the articles came from but were asked to examine them for errors. Interestingly the panel found a similar number of errors in each. The biggest difference was that the errors in Wikipedia could be corrected in minutes while those in Britannica had to wait for a re-publication to take place. Details of this research project can be found at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
Wikipedia remains a controversial source of information, in particular within higher education. If you do use it, make sure you avoid those pages which are flagged as needing additional references. Wikipedia articles can be useful for getting an overview of a subject. However, referencing them in assignments is not be the best academic practice and may affect your grade. Peer reviewed and referenced sources of information are more appropriate information sources for your assignments.
