Celebrate Digital Learning Day today.

Sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education, Digital Learning Day has since 2012 encouraged teachers to share and celebrate effective teaching and learning that showcases innovation in the use of digital instructional technology.  Though Digital Learning Day does promote the effective use of contemporary tools and technologies, it is truly a day to reflect on the enhanced or transformed learning those tools support.

Ask students to reflect on something they recently learned how to do.  After a few minutes to write or talk with a partner, have students share what they learned as you record their topics for everyone to see.  Then lead a discussion around the role digital tools played in the different learning students shared.

• How many of the examples were about learning to use a new digital tool?

• How many examples featured students using a digital technology to facilitate or support their learning?

• Which examples can students imagine doing differently with the support of a digital tool?

Then have students reflect on the varied ways digital learning plays a part in their everyday lives.

Be sure to browse the web resources below and share your celebration on the Digital Learning Day website.

• Highlights from Digital Learning Day
  

  This page houses a collection of social media celebrations of last year’s Digital Learning Day.

• Interactive Lesson Plans
  

  Find inspiration from a lesson plan from the Alliance for Excellent Education, arranged into themes such as language arts, STEM, and digital citizenship.

• Digital Literacies Lesson Plans and Strategy Guides
  

  This collection of ReadWriteThink resources offer additional inspiration for considering the role digital technology can play in student learning.

• NCTE Position Statements and Guidelines on 21st Century Literacies
  

  Need help defining 21st Century literacies or the implications for classroom practice?  This collection of NCTE documents can help.