Consume, Create, Connect: The Three C's of Digital Literacy

A wiki about digital literacy

As my Shakespeare students scramble to get up to speed on the use of blogs and in using self-directed learning toward our learning outcomes, they are going to discover that we are using a lot of technological tools. Those can be overwhelming, can change frequently, and have a steep learning curve.

I want to simplify things by presenting the "Three C's of Digital Literacy." Hopefully, they will see how the learning outcomes, and the blogging, tie into these fundamentals.

But let me briefly explain why we need bother with all of this. The short answer: literacy is fundamentally changing from its print paradigm. It is no longer adequate to have alphabetic literacy, or to be bound by bound books. We need new strategies for finding and processing information -- especially when we are overwhelmed with it from online sources. We need new ways of engaging information, especially with the multitude of multimedia tools at our disposal. We need to socialize our learning by integrating connecting with others into our reading, learning, and researching. And those, in short, make up the three C's of Digital Literacy:

1. Consume
2. Create
3. Connect

Read on to learn more about each of these.

I've created a Prezi presentation about digital literacy, outlining a series of questions associated with each of the three C's. I hope you will look through that now:

Digital Literacy on Prezi

If you click on the top image in this post, it will take you to a wiki that former students of mine have put together that are divided out into the three C's of digital literacy. It's a useful site that my current students will have the chance to add to.

I love the simplicity of consume-create-connect, because instead of thinking "I've got to learn how to use Google Reader, Blogger, Diigo, Prezi....." etc., you think

1. Consume
   "Okay, how am I doing with consuming information? What skills or tools do I need to perfect the way that I find, filter, and save information?"
2. Create
   "Alright, how am I doing in writing and posting/publishing my thoughts? Am I moving beyond simply typing text to integrating media intelligently? Am I linking well? Illustrating my points with appropriate images, videos, etc.?"
3. Connect
   "Is my learning social? Do I make use of available tools to engage others in what I am learning, to reciprocate and assist them with their thinking and learning?"

I'd love my students to answer these or any of the many questions posed within that Prezi presentation on the same subjects. How are you doing with consuming, creating, and connecting? How do you see those three aspects fitting into your personal learning plan and the learning outcomes for this course?