Digital Literacy Curriculum

LGL Digital Literacy Edge: Lessons for a rapidly changing world

Digital literacy: the passport  to digital citizenship

To live, work, and prosper in the 21st century, your students need proficiency in both language literacy and digital literacy. LGL DL Edge provides 60 lessons that prepare them with the technical knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the 21st century. Research demonstrates that student equity and inclusion depend on mastering internet literacy, digital communication skills, critical thinking, and problem solving. “Technology and social media are rapidly changing the way that citizens consume, create, and share information” (Office of Education Technology, US Department of Education).

Our digital lessons cover these key categories.

  • Internet overview
  • Tech devices
  • Information data
  • Content creation
  • Communication
  • Safety, security, & privacy
  • Digital citizenship
  • Technology
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Students Demonstrating Digital Literacy

Student success in school, college and career depends on their digital literacy skills.

LGL DL Edge: Digital Literacy Skills for the Future

The 60 highly interactive lessons use video, music, games, and rewards to help learners understand difficult digital content. Learners get experience with content creation, messaging, data, privacy, security, online environments, and digital citizenship. Each lesson provides direct instruction and practice for whole-class, small-group, or individual learning. Lessons are also aligned with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards.

Get on Board the Digital Literacy Bus
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LGL DL Edge teaches students to be proficient in their digital environments.

Whether at school, library, community center, or home, your students live their everyday lives in digital environments. They read online content and e-books, communicate across the globe with video, audio, and text, and they personalize their learning with apps and websites. They use keyboards not pencils and they venture into the virtual world from the traditional. They need basic skills and digital skills so they can communicate, collaborate, and create safely and effectively in their daily life and create a digital footprint they can be proud of.

LGL DL Edge models the power of social and emotional learning combined with digital literacy.

Crucial to academic and social growth is digital citizenship.  Danny Wagner, an ed tech and media expert, writes: “Character strengths are essential components to digital citizenship, and through social and emotional learning (SEL), we can give students the foundation to handle problems with clarity and heart” (Wagner, 2017).

We created our LGL DL Edge course with lessons that integrate SEL strengths with digital content, combining serious real-world technical skills with art, graphics and authentic situations that model:

  • Collaboration
  • Equity
  • Global citizenry
  • Self-expression
Ready to integrate into your SEL activities

LGL DL Edge: A deeper dive into technology

DL Edge Lesson Topic Number of Lessons
Internet overview 1
Tech devices 4
Information data 9
Content creation 13
Communication 11
Safety, security, & privacy 9
Digital citizenship 6
Technology 1
Digital Challenge 1
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Preview the first ten LGL DL Edge lessons

Take a quick look below and see the depth of the content!
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Lesson 1: Internet Basics

You know your students use the internet. In fact, a recent survey by Common Sense Media found that in 2021 students ages 8 to 12 used it for 5 hours and 33 minutes a day and students ages 13 to 18 used it for 8 hours and 39 minutes a day. Mastering this lesson ensures that they each know the internet’s essential skills.

  • Browser
  • Pages
  • URL
  • Read
  • Refresh
  • Load
  • Update
  • Search
Web browser explainer
DL Edge Browser Types

Lesson 2: Computer Basics

Working with computers requires a basic knowledge of technical terms and concepts, including multiple acronyms. Students will feel most comfortable in digital environments if they can understand technical language related to all the different computer environments they encounter.

Lesson 3: Mobile Phone Basics

Look around you. Does it seem like everyone is on a cellphone? According to Pew Research Center (2021), 97% of Americans now own a cellphone and a whopping 85% own a smartphone! In fact by the time your students are 18 years old, 96% of them will own a smartphone.  Because digital literacy and inclusion go hand-in-hand, ensure that each student knows how voice, images, apps, and data get to a mobile phone and the basics of smartphone connectivity.

DL Edge Mobile Phones Basics
DL Edge Network Basics

Lesson 4: Network Basics

The term network has so many multiple meanings that your students may need help recognizing the difference between people networks and technical networks! This lesson will explain concepts and terms such as:

  • Modem
  • Router
  • Ethernet
  • Cell towers
  • Data speed
  • WiFi

Lesson 5: App Store Programs

As Galileo might have said if he had lived in a digital environment such as ours: “There are as many apps as there are stars in the sky.”

Many of your students may have experience with apps and app stores as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic and their increased usage of virtual applications. This lesson will deepen their understanding of app functions and app stores for these operating systems: Mac, Windows, and Android.

DL Edge App Store Programs
DL Edge Search and Browse

Lesson 6: Search & Browse

Do your students ever tell you they “can’t find anything” when they search? Learning how to use search programs is significant to your students’ academic lives, social lives, and digital lives. Today the three are intertwined. This lesson has smart tips on how to search efficiently and effectively in online environments.

Lesson 7: Trust Validity

This lesson will help your students recognize the differences between credible sites and those that contain fake news and false information. It’s crucial that they deepen their critical thinking skills by building digital literacy bridges from their academic lives to their everyday lives. Lesson content includes the five steps necessary to identify credible information and data.

DL Edge Trust Validity
DL Edge Cloud vs Local

Lesson 8: Cloud vs. Local

After your students interact with this lesson’s digital content, they will be able to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of local versus cloud storage and astonish non-digital citizens.

Lesson 9: Content Types

This lesson will help your students understand file-naming conventions for different content types. This will make searching locally and in the cloud easier.

DL Edge Content Types
DL Edge Share vs Send

Lesson 10: Share vs. Send

Sending large files is a task that many struggle with. Your students will learn about the benefits of both sharing and sending and when to do which!

Ready to see how the entire Let’s Go Learn platform works? Let our CEO give you a quick video tour.

Common Questions

What is the complete list of all the lessons in this digital literacy course?

Here is the complete list!

Do children in elementary school really need digital literacy?

An UNICEF post suggests that a child's safety and ability to understand and control their environment depend on their digital literacy: "Children’s schooling, social welfare and future job opportunities may depend on how well they understand the digital world around them" (https://www.unicef.org/globalinsight/documents/digital-literacy-children-10-things-know). Further, ISTE's digital literacy standards for children include these benefits: active learning role; digital citizenship; creative, mathematical, and innovative thinker and communicator; excellence in problem solving; and global collaborator. Some of these abilities relate to traditional literacy skills, but they all occur in new digital contexts and environments -- and children need them to flourish now and in the future.

Has the digital divide improved at all?

Common Sense did a census in 2020 entitled: Media Usage by Kids Age 0-8 [https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/2020_zero_to_eight_census_final_web.pdf]. One of the most striking findings is: "Access to internet in the home has been stuck at the same level—with a quarter of lower-income families lacking it—since 2017. And more than a third (37%) of children in lower income households lack access to a home computer." This makes access to programs such as LGL's DL Edge even more critical.
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