Patrick Bader

Instruction in the science of reading tenets makes a difference! Happy to see impact in IA because of state investment in professional learning through LETRS! https://lnkd.in/gASZ73xh

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Northstar Digital Literacy, a program of Literacy Minnesota, is fortunate to be a subgrantee in an Institution of Education Sciences (IES) funded research project through Grant 305N210032 to the University of Minnesota. As part of this grant, Northstar developed 6 mini-assessments and educational course content to teach digital skills that would then be used in teaching Civics and US History to Intermediate and Advance English Language Learners. Now in year 3 of this five-year project, a small study was recently done on the effectiveness of the digital literacy curriculum Northstar developed. We are excited to see that “explicit instruction in digital literacy skills led to significant improvement across all participants. Teachers and learners found the digital literacy curriculum to be helpful and relevant.” I am often asked how to teach digital skills to people just starting out learning about computer. One pattern found in the study, which I have also found to be true, is that “increased class time for differentiation of instruction and allowing for more opportunities to practice the digital skills could benefit lower-level learners with beginning digital literacy skills.” Breaking down digital skills into small, manageable components, allowing for participant practice and repetition of that practice, teaching the vocabulary of the digital world, and instructor encouragement and patience allows all to learn this topic, regardless of literacy level, age, background knowledge, or previous education. As adult foundational skills (adult basic education) educators, let’s be sure we are including digital skills instruction as a critical component to all of our lessons! The full study, referenced above,  is published in “Frontiers in Education” https://lnkd.in/g5C8FJ6b #CREATEnetwork; #IES; #LiteracyMinnesota; #digitalskills; #AdultBasicEducation; #NorthstarDigitalLiteracy; #Northstar; #AdultFoundationalSkills; #DigitalEquity; #Digitalliteracy; #CILIA-T

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