21st Century Skills Training Course 3rd Week UPDATE

Hello everyone, welcome back.

    This week on 21st skills training, we've learned a lot of things. Since it was the midterm week I was a little tired but I still managed to attend and listen. We started with definitions of media literacy, digital literacy, ICT skills, and information literacy. Melda Teacher, our instructor, sent us a link from Wordwall. We did a matching activity. The reason I'm mentioning this is that this website saved my day this week. In the young learners' class, I didn't have any activities. In a 10 minute break, I was able to create a mini vocabulary matching activity that my students loved! 

    Activities on this website can be created in many other ways. I'll definitely discover it more. Later, we did group discussions on the terms I've previously mentioned. We defined information literacy skill as "to be able to search for the right resources, organize them, process the information, and store it well". Basically, it is a skill on how to find and use the information. We also talked about digital literacy skills which we, as teachers, must have. It's the ability to use your information and technologies to find, evaluate, and create new information. With these discussions, we moved on to the ethical side of the conversation. We discussed the importance of using copy-right free materials on the internet. Also, to organize our information Melda Teacher suggested some applications. Mendeley and Zotero were two apps that I remember right now. So basically these apps help you to bookmark your resources and sources on the internet and they create a digital library for you. Then, you can plug in both apps to word (by first downloading the desktop version) and use them to cite your work and create a bibliography in the end. I used Mendeley right away on one of my midterm assignments and let me tell you this: the first 30 minutes seems hard and complicated but when you learn how to operate it is the easiest and most useful application that I've used during my academic life. I'll post more on how to install, plug-in, and use later.

Overall, this session was quite knowledgeable. I took some important notes and wanted to share them with you too. I wish you found something for yourself. Take care.