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Collaboration Fluency | Global Digital Citizen Foundation

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Collaboration with partners that are both real and digital is a hallmark of the modern workforce. Let Collaboration Fluency show you how to come together.

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Teaching Media Fluency skills is crucial to the educational environment as technology continues to reshape how students think and react to digital media and the messages they receive. This is an important aspect of teaching that cannot be ignored. All students should be able to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a number of forms. This shapes their understanding of how media affects society. They also learn why Media Fluency is essential in the digital age.

Possessing Media Fluency skills fulfill a number of needs:

They develop critical thinking capacity

Students can better identify target markets

They help students recognize bias and misinformation

They hone the ability to distribute personalized media messages

These are just a few effective lesson ideas that can be taught focusing on Media Fluency. You can make a definitive impact on shaping the minds of students and broaden their critical thinking skills with such activities. In the process, you'll also provide an alternative perspective on media and how it is used. Students can look forward to building other important learning skills as an added bonus such as writing, researching, and analytical thinking.

1. Picture Prose

Students view an image of some sort. They then brainstorm about the events and characters that could be a part of the image. Next they write from a character point of view. They share their thoughts, feelings and the events that led up to the picture, or events that will take place after. This also supports narrative writing.

2. Fact or Fiction

Using Snopes.com, students will learn about urban legends and investigate why people believe in them. This happens through a discussion about sources of information. The focus is how to determine whether or not those sources can be identified as credible.

Introduce students to Snopes.com and to urban legends found on the site. Next, let them survey the information and identify additional sources to confirm whether the legend is true or false. Lead a discussion on how media can shape perception, whether true or false.

3. What's in a (Digital) Name?

This is about creating a safe persona on the Internet. For this Media Fluency lesson, students discuss online personas and profiles through researching and discussing their names. Have them investigate the role that situation and audience play in using a nickname or full name. Determine what name would be most appropriate for social media and email.

They discuss what name they would choose and why it would best represent them online. More importantly, they discuss how it can be perceived by that platform's audience.

4. Men, Women, and Media

Haver students explore representations of men and women and discuss their findings. They would construct a collage of images that represent men or women and discuss how each one is depicted in the media. The idea is to deconstruct those messages by identifying the source and how it may have influenced audience perception.

5. Copyright Capers

This Media Fluency lesson explores issues of copyright infringement through the discussion of downloading music from the Internet. Students will call upon prior knowledge and experiences on how they retrieve music online. Next they conduct Internet research to understand the history and legalities of copyright infringement. They would then synthesize the information and evaluate the content and their points of view. They will end up taking a stand on their beliefs of whether downloading is right or wrong.

6. Tech Reviews

Students get to employ analytical thinking in this one by reviewing a technology of their choice and researching reviews of that technology. The students will then use a list of evaluation and review questions to think about why the technology is used and why people choose one over the other. Have them write a personal evaluation of the technology and offer recommendations on the audiences it is best suited for.

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How to Teach Media Fluency Skills: 6 Cool Concepts to Try

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Teaching Media Fluency skills is crucial to the educational environment as technology continues to reshape how students think and react to digital media and the messages they receive. This is an important aspect of teaching that cannot be ignored.

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Ed Tech

There's a good chance you've done the "write on a sticky note and put it on the wall" activity - or have seen it happen before.
Padlet lets those sticky notes have images, links and videos AND be available with practically any Internet-ready device.
It used to be blocked by my school's Internet filter. This school year, the powers that be have allowed it through on student devices, opening up lots of possibilities in class!

Padlet is a great place for gathering ideas, sharing them and modifying them later. It's like a living, breathing webpage. Users can add links, YouTube videos, files and images to Padlet notes. They can move and arrange them. A link to a Padlet can be shared and Padlets can be embedded into webpages.

Here are 20 ways to use Padlet in class:

15. Collect videos to share in class

Looking for FREE Tech Like A PIRATE resources?
You'll find a treasure trove of additional ideas and activities related to t ​ ​​​​he book at TechLikeAPirate.com!

Looking for some more ideas? These sites have them!
Do you have an idea of how you could use Padlet in class? Post it in a comment below!

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20 useful ways to use Padlet in class now

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Ed Tech There's a good chance you've done the "write on a sticky note and put it on the wall" activity - or have seen it happen before. Padlet lets those sticky notes have images, links and videos AND be available with practically any Internet-ready device.

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21st Century Learners must be able to collaborate to prepare them for the workforce.  Collaboration Fluency is working as a team to with both real and virtual peers to solve problems (Crockett, Jukes, & Churches, 2011).  One way I use Collaboration Fluency in my current practice is by using Google Docs for writing.  Students write their pieces, then work with different partners to give each other feedback online.  I encourage students to give positive and constructive feedback in order to help their peers improve their writing.  I give students specific things to look for in their partner's’ papers such as introduction, details, conclusion, grammar and sentence structure, transition words, and editing.  The students are assigned a new partner for each item they are to critique.  Students use the comment section of Google Docs to give their feedback and suggestions.  Using Google Docs to peer edit is one strategy I currently use to promote Collaboration Fluency.

Media Fluency is an important aspect of teaching 21st Century Learners.  Media Fluency is the concept that videos and images can now convey messages with no text, and it is students’ jobs to use these tools to inspire others and solve problems (Crockett, Jukes, & Churches, 2011).  One strategy I would like to try to encourage both media and collaboration fluencies is Padlet.  Padlet provides a way to gather, share, and modify ideas by adding videos, files, websites, and images (“20 Useful Ways to Use Padlet in Class Now”, 2014).  I would like to use Padlet to allow students to create and collaborate on group projects. It could be a way for them to work both independently and together and share ideas.

Crockett, L., Jukes, I., &  Churches, A. (2011). Literacy is not enough: 21st–century fluencies for the digital age. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

20 useful ways to use Padlet in class now. (2014, November 03). Retrieved February 19, 2018, from https://ditchthattextbook.com/2014/11/03/20-useful-ways-to-use-padlet-in-class-now/