Should we teach Digital Literacies? What are they?

Hi everyone!

This time I would like to write about a new term for me I must say, DIGITAL LITERACIES...

Honestly, I haven't heard those words "together" before... so I would like to quote a description of the term taken from a published article in British Council website.

"(...) digital literacies refer to our ability to effectively make use of the technologies at our disposal. We are not just talking about a checklist of technical skills, but also about the social practices that surround the use of new media. So not just knowing how to create a blog entry, but knowing how to use this to connect with a wider community of readers and writers, and what sort of online persona one projects though one's post."

Now, the purpose of this entry is to talk about the question: Should we or should we not teach Digital Literacies to our students?

In my opinion, Digital Literacies SHOULD and MUST be included in the teaching of English Language.
Nowadays, we teach students that form part of a new communicative world. Most of the communication is digital... We, teachers, and our students, must be ready to face it. One way is to teach and learn Digital literacies... I said "learn" because we are going to learn together with students.
The advantages are many... students can profit from this to get job opportunities, communicate with people from different parts of the world, and many more...
And we, teachers, can make our lessons more engaging, more interesting to them, be able to develop more project ideas, different teaching proposals, etc.
If you want, you can contribute with more advantages or disadvantages depending on your position.

I leave you with this picture I have found in google, it's really interesting, in a rather humorous way. I hope you can start comprehending, like I'm doing, what this term means and what these new tools can bring to students and teachers' lives.

See you soon!

Antonela