Aaron Swiney's List: DGL Vocabulary

• The definition I most frequently use is this one: digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement. Then it's worth knowing its main characteristics:

  • It supports and helps develop traditional literacies
  • It's a life-long practice
  • It's about skills, competencies and critical reflection on how these skills and competencies are applied
  • It's about social engagement

• Digital literacy is more than knowing how to send a text or watch a music video. It means having the knowledge and ability to use a range of technology tools for varied purposes. A digitally literate person can use technology strategically to find and evaluate information, connect and collaborate with others, produce and share original content, and use the Internet and technology tools to achieve many academic, professional, and personal goals.

• It has become commonplace to claim that children are engaging more than ever before with technology and digital media, in forms such as video games, music editing, animation, social networking sites, video sharing, and other different forms of online communication. Young people are therefore often considered to be better equipped than older generations to live and learn in the 21st century, a belief summed up by Marc Prensky (2001) in his description of today's youth as 'digital natives'.
• At the same time, media literacy experts pointed out the growing role that television, film, advertisements and online media have played in people's lives over the past half-century. The ways that these media work are not always transparent and both children and adults may find it challenging, for example, to work out who owns and produces particular media and technology, and what corporate interests are being represented by them. Media literacy also involves the interpretation and production of shared meanings, and the ability to access, analyse, evaluate and create messages across a variety of contexts.
• Literacies in contemporary society are multidimensional, multimodal and changing, and cannot be understood as one single set of skills. Young people may display high levels of literacy in one medium but less developed levels in another. Effective digital participation requires that students are proficient in various literacies and able to adapt their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills to widely differing modes of communication.

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• Digital Citizenship is a concept which helps teachers, technology leaders and parents to understand what students/children/technology users should know to use technology appropriately. Digital Citizenship is more than just a teaching tool; it is a way to prepare students/technology users for a society full of technology. Digital citizenship is the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use.  Too often we are seeing students as well as adults misusing and abusing technology but not sure what to do. The issue is more than what the users do not know but what is considered appropriate technology usage.

• Mark Ribble had identified nine elements that together make up digital citizenship, which can be grouped into three categories. They are:
                                                                                                                   

  			Digital Rights and Responsibilities the privileges and freedoms extended to all digital technology users, and the behavioral expectations that come with them
  			Digital Communication   the electronic exchange of information
  			Digital Access   full electronic participation in society
  			Digital Etiquette   the standards of conduct expected by other digital technology users
  			Digital Security   the precautions that all technology users must take to guarantee their personal safety and the security of their network
  			Digital Literacy   the capability to use digital technology and knowing when and how to use it
  			Digital Law   the legal rights and restrictions governing technology use
  			Digital Health and Wellness   the elements of physical and psychological well-being related to digital technology use
  			Digital Commerce   the buying and selling of goods online

• The digital society is here, so what is digital citizenship? Just as we are citizens of a physical country, so are we citizens of the digital world. Just as we need to obey the laws, and not harm anyone, that same spirit exists in the digital world – and it impacts the physical world as well. The mean words and pictures that are posted online, can hurt people in their daily lives at school and in their community.

• A digital identity is an online or networked identity adopted or claimed in cyberspace by an individual, organization or electronic device. These users may also project more than one digital identity through multiple communities. In terms of digital identity management, key areas of concern are security and privacy

• Digital Identity has been described as “the sum of all digitally available information about an individual.” It’s your digital footprint—the evidence of your life in tweets, Facebook updates, pins, blog posts and other interactions on the Web.
• With the combined advent of the social Web and mobile technology, we live at the very beginning of a historic change in the evolution of human communication. Consider this: Your great-grandchildren will know significantly more about you than you will ever know about even your own parents. Increasingly, you share where you go, what you do and what you think—and in real time—creating a detailed digital footprint. What’s more, by leveraging countless layers of social connections, any one episode in that story can reach a global audience

• Our digital identity can exist in many forms and for many different purposes. Its existence on the Web becomes a currency that can be unscrupulously traded and abused.
   
  It has never been more important to protect the concept of "who we are". We are at the beginning of a new discipline of Web Science in which such issues need to be researched across disciplines. This text offers an excellent starting point for work in this area."

• An individual’s digital identity which is used for transactional purposes has crucial functions which give it legal personality. The author argues that an individual’s digital identity also has the characteristics of property which can, and should, be legally protected. Identity theft is defined using the emergent concept and the study shows that digital identity is property which capable of actually being stolen and criminally damaged.

   

  The study examines the emergence of attendant legal rights and duties including a new right to digital identity and its legal protection.

• igital Security and Privacy for Human Rights Defenders

   

        

     

  Digital Security

   

  Human rights defenders are increasingly using computers and the Internet in their work. Although access to technology is still a huge issue around the world, electronic means of storing and communicating information are getting more and more common in human rights organisations. However, governments are also developing the capacity to manipulate, monitor and subvert electronic information. Surveillance and censorship is growing and the lack of security for digitally stored or communicated information is becoming a major problem for human rights defenders in some countries.

• Journalists everywhere need digital security skills more than ever; we will need them even more in the years to come.
• Yet, individual journalists. along with newsrooms and even journalism schools have been slow to even address digital threats, let alone take them seriously.
• One caveat: You can’t stop with this guide. The pace of technological innovation is only advancing, and intelligence services, criminal actors and other digital predators are constantly finding new ways to steal, copy or access other people’s information and communications. So even if a journalist were to master all the concepts and tools listed here, it will all be moot if the same journalist does not make a concerted effort to keep him or herself continuously updated about changing digital threats and protection methods.

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• People often ask for tips on staying safe in cyberspace while traveling in “real” space. It’s odd to think that our physical location affects our digital lives, but various state and non-state threat actors can have a real impact on digital security during business trips or vacations. I’d like to share the following seven tips, written from the perspective of an American who travels overseas.

   
   
  1. Back up your devices before traveling.  Should you lose your device or suffer theft of the device, your data will be stored safely elsewhere. Do not store the backup on mobile media (like a USB drive) and pack it with your luggage! Leave the backup at home or at the office in an appropriately locked container.
   
  2. Ensure all electronics are encrypted and protected by a passphrase. Should your device fall into unwelcome hands, encryption and passphrases will frustrate casual adversaries. These countermeasures may also reduce or eliminate the need to report the loss to organizations outside the company. Don’t store the passphrase with your device.
   
  3. When possible, bring a minimum number of devices, and keep them with you as much as possible. The purpose of this tip is to reduce the likelihood of theft or tampering with devices left in hotel rooms or vehicles. Keeping electronics close isn’t always possible, depending on the nature of the activity. Do the best you can, perhaps relying on friends for assistance.
   
  4. When using cell phones, stay off the local telecommunications network if possible. In high-threat countries, foreign intelligence services may tamper with phones via the telecommunications providers. Avoid roaming on these networks. To make voice calls, consider acquiring a disposable phone in-country, or use Skype or a similar application.
   
  5. Be wary of wireless networks. Don’t connect to a wireless network you don’t recognize. If you aren’t sure what’s available, ask someone in authority. Connecting to a wireless network can be a risky proposition, but maintaining connectivity on the road is a business imperative.
   
  6. When connecting to wireless data networks, activate your VPN as soon as possible. VPN software is available for almost all mobile and laptop platforms. Connect back to your corporate network when doing anything on the Internet.
   
  7. Never accept or install software updates of any kind when traveling. Reports indicate some intruders push Trojaned application updates to hotel network users. It’s better to update your applications before traveling and then avoid updates until you return home.
   
   

  Finally, a bonus – if possible, and especially when visiting high-threat countries, bring only “disposable,” clean devices. On the road, do the minimum amount of business necessary, using the seven principles above. When you get home, relinquish your loaner devices to your IT or security team. They may wish to perform forensics to determine if you brought home any unwelcome guests, like rogue software or hardware additions.

• Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

• The Critical Thinking Community attributes to Linda Elder a definition of critical thinking proposed in 2007. Elder states that critical thinking is "self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically." Fair-mindedness, complemented by rational decision-making in a reasonable manner that emulates empathy, is a characteristic any employer would be lucky to have in all of its employees.

• Using Elder's definition of critical thinking, public relations, sales and marketing employees utilize their critical thinking skills in making decisions related to the public perception of the company and the company's products and services. For example, packaging a product that appeals to certain population groups based on stereotypical assumptions isn't generally a good marketing tactic. However, using marketing techniques that create widespread appeal, regardless of the target market's ethnicity, gender or other characteristics, can prove to be beneficial for the company and may result in the product being accessible to a broad range of customers.

  For example, a car advertisement that appeals predominantly to women buyers may need to avoid any stereotypical images to enable the product to appeal to a broader consumer base. Thus, marketing professionals must use critical thinking skills to examine their branding concept from a perspective that eliminates gender in advertising the car's features. For example, if the car is eco-friendly, that feature could serve as the advertisement's focus rather than gender.

• Why do I find it so useful? Lots of reasons, but the most obvious one is ...
   ...it measures the core of what people in modern organisations do.

   

  Think about how much we have to take in, digest, analyse and decide in any one day at work. At school we struggle to learn French conversational phrases or the capitals of African states over many weeks. Any one day, by contrast, demands that we understand and take hundreds of decisions about areas from finance and product design to the problems of the relationship between members of a team.

   

  And that's what Watson Glaser addresses - our ability to:

   
   
  • define a problem;
   
  • discriminate the information important to solving a problem;
   
  • recognise assumptions;
   
  • create and select hypotheses;
   
  • draw valid conclusions and check whether inferences are valid.
   
   
   

  Put simply, I'm using critical reading in researching this article, you're using it in reading it and if you start thinking about whether to use this test. Goodwin Watson used it in 1925 and Edward Glaser in 1937 when they were developing the test. And we'll use it outside work in evaluating newspaper articles, our children's excuses for being home late and the rationale for a plumber's invoice. Critical reasoning is at the core of 21st century human enterprise.

• In order to understand plagiarism, it helps to understand the process of sharing and creating ideas in the university. All knowledge is built from previous knowledge. As we read, study, perform experiments, and gather perspectives, we are drawing on other people’s ideas. Building on their ideas and experiences, we create our own. When you put your ideas on paper, your instructors want to distinguish between the building block ideas borrowed from other people and your own newly reasoned perspectives or conclusions. You make these distinctions in a written paper by citing the sources for your building block ideas. Providing appropriate citations will also help readers who are interested in your topic find additional, related material to read—in this way, they will be able to build on the work you have done to find sources.

   

  Think of it this way: in the vast majority of assignments you’ll get in college, your instructors will ask you to read something (think of this material as the building blocks) and then write a paper in which you analyze one or more aspects of what you have read (think of this as the new structure you build). Essentially, your instructors are asking you to do three things:

   
   
  • Show that you have a clear understanding of the material you’ve read.
   
  • Refer to your sources to support the ideas you have developed.
   
  • Distinguish your analysis of what you’ve read from the authors’ analyses.
   
   

  When you cite a source, you are using an expert’s ideas as proof or evidence of a new idea that you are trying to communicate to the reader.

• plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward.
• According to U.S. law, the answer is yes. The expression of original ideas is considered intellectual property and is protected by copyright laws, just like original inventions. Almost all forms of expression fall under copyright protection as long as they are recorded in some way (such as a book or a computer file).
• • turning in someone else's work as your own
  • copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
  • failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
  • giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
  • changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
• copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not (see our section on "fair use" rules)
• Most cases of plagiarism can be avoided, however, by citing sources. Simply acknowledging that certain material has been borrowed and providing your audience with the information necessary to find that source is usually enough to prevent plagiarism. See our section on citation for more information on how to cite sources properly.

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• To avoid plagiarism, all students must document sources properly using Footnotes, Endnotes, or Parenthetical References, and must write a Bibliography, References, or Works Cited page and place it at the end of the research paper to list the sources used. Of the three ways to document sources - Footnotes, Endnotes, and Parenthetical References, the simplest is using Parenthetical References, sometimes referred to as Parenthetical Documentation or Parenthetical Citations.

   

  Check to see which type of documentation is preferred by your teacher. Most word processors have superscript, Footnote and Endnote capability. If you are required to use Footnotes or Endnotes, it is well worth the effort to master this feature on the computer a few days before your paper is due.

•         Digital Rights and Responsibilities are the "privileges and freedom extended to all digital technology users, and the behavioral expectations that come with them" (Ribble & Bailey, 2007). In other words, your students have the privilege and freedom to engage in technology use during school as well as at home. However, there are expectations that accompany the privileges and freedom to use technology. Students must act responsibly as they participate in the digital world.

• Definition: Having the right to use any and all digital technologies, while using it in a accountable manner. As a technology user you have the right to confidentiality and liberty of individual expression. (2008)