Things Every Student Should Know in the Digital World

It could be claimed — and probably successfully argued — that what a student needs to know essentially today isn’t all that different from what Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe or Shakespeare needed to know.

 

The degree to which this is true depends on how macro you want to go. If we want to talk about our requirements as humans in broad terms, we can talk about food, water, housing, connectivity, safety, and some level of self-esteem.

 

However, in an increasingly linked and digital world, what a student needs to know is evolving—fundamental human requirements are often severely redressed for an alien modern environment. Technology is changing the kinds of ‘stuff’ a student needs to know, just as salt allowed for the preservation of meats, antibiotics made deadly viruses and diseases simply inconvenient, and electricity completely altered when and where we slept, worked, and played.

 

The Changing Things They Need To Know: 13 Categories

Information sources

1. Ways to find information of different types.
2. How to store data so that it can be quickly taken from an archive when necessary?
3. Criteria help to check the credibility of facts, distinguish between objective and subjective information.
4. The ability to perceive arguments dispassionately and critically.

Learning pathways

1. How to compile individualized learning strategies?
2. How to make learning mobile?
3. How to find knowledge gaps and eliminate them?
4. How to create useful academic habits?

Human spaces

1. The interconnectedness between the real and virtual worlds.
2. Advantages and disadvantages of learning in the digital space.
3. What is necessary to implement mobile technology and what advantages students can get?
4. The difference between online communication (following in social networks, the rules of business correspondence) and face-to-face interaction (body language, eye contact).

Socializing ideas

1. What consequences idea-sharing may entail: successful implementing, attracting new parties to a project, plagiarism, etc?
2. The best moment to share an idea when working on a task.
3. How to popularize ideas in the digital space?

Digital participation

1. Netiquette and the rules of digital citizenship.
2. How to use media materials created by other people without violating copyright?
3. The differences between private and social information and operations may be done with each type.
4. What expertise a student can offer to the digital community?
5. How to take only needed data and not drown in the sea of information?

Publishing

1. The types of information that people strive to find on the Internet.
2. Which content may be shared with individual online users, groups, or the whole planet? The difference in scale and format between e-mails, posts in social media, forum chats, etc.
3. Advantages of the fact that digital texts may be updated and changed an infinite number of times.

Applying technology 

1. The differences between smartphones, laptops, desktops, tablets, the ways how they may be used individually and together, with a wire and wirelessly.
2. How to store and share information in a cloud?
3. Original ways to use gadgets go beyond their initial purpose. For example, a smartphone may be used for note-taking, improving literacy, time management, etc.

Audience

1. Peculiarities of content depend on readers’ demographic data, needs, lifestyle, and preferences.
2. The difference between those who care and do not care, are ready to respond or prefer to avoid the topic.
3. How to perceive other people’s messages with curiosity when there are many distractions?
4. The fact that popular things are not always high-quality. Students should learn to rely on their own minds rather than fashion.

Social rules

1. When it is appropriate to take a phone in your hands? For example, it is not worth updating statuses, checking messages and likes in social networks while sitting in a classroom in front of a lecturer or at a dining table with relatives. Such behavior may be perceived as culture-free.
2. Time suitable for sending messages, depending on a communication platform. E-mail quite may be sent at night because most people check posts at work and keep it closed at home. But it would be tactless to disturb a boss in instant messengers if a notification may wake up a recipient.
3. The importance of patience, for example, if the software fails or an interlocutor does not respond.

Diction

1. It is worth tracking the tone of communication and choosing each word carefully.
2. Jargon should be avoided when writing to professors, bosses, older relatives, and everyone else who may not like frivolous expressions. At the same time, there are situations when jargon helps to convey original ideas and find a common language with people.
3. Information may be presented in the form of an essay, a paragraph, a sentence, an article, an image, depending on content and a platform where a message is published.
4. The pros of knowing several languages. The Internet contributes to globalization, international communication, and multicultural exchange, so the informatization era provides boundless opportunities for polyglots.

Connecting with experts

1. How to find experts?
2. How to understand that a person is a professional in one’s field?
3. The difference between experienced, erudite, and adept people.
4. When a certain task may be solved with the help of friends, moderately-informed amateurs, or proficient specialists?

Software

1. Peculiarities of different operating systems: Windows, iOS, Android, etc.
2. Advantages and disadvantages of accessing social networks via mobile apps.
3. How to evaluate the privacy of an app?
4. Some apps may close and take all your files.
5. Nothing is free because software companies are businesses striving to earn money.

 

Hope this has opened up your mind to things you should also inculcate into your education.