• Digital literacy is the ability to effectively and critically navigate, evaluate and create information using a range of digital technologies. It requires one "to recognize and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms".^[1] Digital literacy does not replace traditional forms of literacy, it builds upon the foundation of traditional forms of literacy.^[2] Digital literacy is the marrying of the two terms digital and literacy, however, it is much more than a combination of the two terms. Digital information is a symbolic representation of data, and literacy refers to the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently, and think critically about the written word.

   

  Research around digital literacy is concerned with wider aspects associated with learning how to effectively find, use, summarize, evaluate, create, and communicate information while using digital technologies; not just being literate at using a computer.

• A digital citizen commonly refers to a person utilizing information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government participation.
• People characterizing themselves as digital citizens often use IT extensively, creating blogs, using social networks, and participating in web journalism sites.
• Although digital citizenship potentially begins when any child, teen, and/or adult signs up for an email address, posts pictures online, uses e-commerce to buy merchandise online, and/or participates in any electronic function that is B2C or B2B, the process of becoming a digital citizen goes beyond simple Internet activity
• An open Internet as delegated by a state’s government is necessary to instill a sense of trust, legitimacy, and participation in the state’s citizenry

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• Digital identity is a psychological identity that prevails in the domains of cyberspace, and is defined as a set of data that uniquely describes a person or a thing (sometimes referred to as subject or entity) and contains information about the subject's relationships to other entities.
• Currently there are no ways to precisely determine the identity of a person in digital space. Even though there are attributes associated to a person's digital identity, these attributes or even identities can be changed, masked or dumped and new ones created.

• Digital security is a type of information security affecting all aspects of digital communication, including computers and the internet, telecommunications, financial transactions, transportation, healthcare, and secure access.

• Critical thinking is a type of reasonable, reflective thinking that is aimed at deciding what to believe or what to do.^[1] It is a way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false
• Critical thinking clarifies goals, examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, accomplishes actions, and assesses conclusions.
• The weak-sense critical thinker is a highly skilled but selfishly motivated pseudo-intellectual who works to advance one's personal agenda without seriously considering the ethical consequences and implications.

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• Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time.
• It is a form of intellectual property (like the patent, the trademark, and the trade secret) applicable to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete
• Copyright initially was conceived as a way for government to restrict printing; the contemporary intent of copyright is to promote the creation of new works by giving authors control of and profit from them.

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• What is Plagiarism?

  Many people think of plagiarism as copying another's work or borrowing someone else's original ideas. But terms like "copying" and "borrowing" can disguise the seriousness of the offense:

• According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarize" means

  • to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
  • to use (another's production) without crediting the source
  • to commit literary theft
  • to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

• All of the following are considered plagiarism:

  • 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)

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• he definition of digital rights and responsibilities is having the right and freedom to use all types of digital technology while using the technology in an acceptable and appropriate manner. As a user of digital technology, you also have the right to privacy and the freedom of personal expression.

• collaborative media

   

  Definition: “Collaborative media” is the term we use to refer to digital media that enables broad-range participation where the distinctions between production, consumption and design are dissolving. Read the open-access article Designing Collaborative Media: A Challenge for CHI? as an introduction to the concept.

• Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share basic common themes. Privacy is sometimes related to anonymity, the wish to remain unnoticed or unidentified in the public realm.

• A social network is a social structure made up of a set of actors (such as individuals or organizations) and the dyadic ties between these actors. The social network perspective provides a clear way of analyzing the structure of whole social entities.^[1] The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.

• A blog (a portmanteau of the term web log)^[1] is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Until 2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often were themed on a single subject.

• Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct.^[1] The term comes from the Greek word ethos, which means "character". Ethics is a complement to Aesthetics in the philosophy field of Axiology. In philosophy, ethics studies the moral behavior in humans, and how one should act. Ethics may be divided into four major areas of study:
• "most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, and the law", and don't treat ethics as a stand-alone concept.
• "a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures"

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• “Independent learning is a process, a method and a philosophy of education whereby a learner acquires knowledge by his or her own efforts and develops the ability for enquiry and critical evaluation”

• What this means in real terms:

   

  In practice, most learning involves independent elements such as:

   
   
  • Finding and collecting information
   
  • Making decisions about what to study and when
   
  • Carrying out investigations or projects
• Completing homework, extension work or coursework assignments

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• Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth. Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false.

• digital immigrant

  Definition of digital immigrant
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  noun
  • a person born or brought up before the widespread use of digital technology: chances are many digital immigrants will find managing online privacy a daunting prospect

• A digital native is a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts. Alternatively, this term can describe people born during or after the latter 1960s, as the Digital Age began at that time; but in most cases, the term focuses on people who grew up with the technology that became prevalent in the latter part of the 20th century and continues to evolve today.

• People Helping People®. The biggest web community for informal mutual support - P2P as in people-to-people.

• A viral video is a video that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email.
• The behaviors behind viral videos, where ideas and news spread between individuals through dialogue, have been present in society since prehistoric times and form part of the foundation of culture.
• Video websites such as YouTube often create Internet celebrities, individuals who have attracted significant publicity in their home countries from their videos
• YouTube has become a means of promoting bands and their music. Many independent musicians, as well as large companies such as Universal Music Group, use YouTube to promote videos

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• Academic integrity is the moral code or ethical policy of academia. This includes values such as avoidance of cheating or plagiarism; maintenance of academic standards; honesty and rigor in research and academic publishing.

• Today however, a student can type in any keyword into an online search engine and pull up hundreds of sources with different degrees of relativity and possibly no stated authorship.

   

  Thus, technology has changed the way information is viewed from an entity created by a single individual to more of a communal property. This in turn places pressures on the academic institution to acknowledge this “collective intelligence” and reassess how it is used in contemporary education. Therefore, academic integrity is now less an individual character assessment and more of a social phenomenon