When I was in the ninth grade, I took a typing class. It was expected that most students in my school did. We did have electric typewriters back then, not manual, but they were definitely typewriters and not keyboards. My classmates and I learned about the home keys, and over the course of a year we learned the others and different conventions of typing. Typing was an expected skill for most students, so could be considered a basic literacy.

Twenty years later, I was working on digital literacy training for school leaders. No more typewriters! It was all PCs now. I had just entered an elementary school in Georgia to visit with and interview an exemplary principal when we ran across a young man pushing a large cart of older laptops down one of the school hallways. The principal looked at me and said, “I’m having the old laptops sent to the Kindergarten classes so they can learn keyboarding now and really apply those skills next year.” Next year, as in the first grade! So much for the keyboarding expectations for high school students.

Travel forward another 20 years to a fourth-grade classroom I visited in Kentucky last week. Every child had a laptop on their desk and they were working away on several tasks comparing and contrasting Greek and Roman gods to prepare for reading one of the Percy Jackson novels. The students were going back and forth between a spreadsheet, some notes from online research, and the Canva website where they were using their information to create an infographic. One young man in front of me furiously pounded away on his keyboard about as quickly as I can touch type, but…he was truly a hunt-and-peck aficionado. Most of the students were. My typing teacher wouldn’t have liked their style. She might have gotten out the masking tape to cover their keys, but their method didn’t slow them down. I can’t imagine what they could do with their thumbs on a handheld, touchscreen device. I’m sure they’re much better than I am.

This little storyline emphasizes that the idea of what a person should know and be able to do to be considered “literate” evolves over time. I’ve been working with schools on aspects of digital literacy for much of my career, but just like this story, the digital literacy projects I worked on 20 years ago are different from what they are now. I’m co-author of a textbook with two of my mentors, Kathy Cennamo from Virginia Tech and Peg Ertmer from Purdue. It focuses on the ISTE Standards for Students and for Educators, but those standards have changed over time. They’ve moved from being very tool-focused to focusing on what teachers and students do with digital resources. To reflect this, we had some foundational agreements about technology that thread their way through the multiple editions. One of those is that technology is constantly changing, which means “being literate” changes, and so we encouraged our readers to become lifelong learners who understand how to manage change and develop new literacies as they become important. Another is, “it’s more important how you use technology than if you use it.” (Cennamo, K. S., Ross, J. D., & Ertmer, P. A. (2019). Technology integration for meaningful use. A standards-based approach. Boston, MA: Cengage. P. 2.)

I’ve been working on the “what technology skills do our students need to know” question with numerous school districts across the country a lot lately. During the time of forced remote learning, so many school districts bought a lot of devices and digital resources for students but didn’t have the time or ability to thoroughly teach everyone how to use them—even teachers. Now that students are once again attending schools every day with those devices, we are seeing teachers and students with access to powerful devices and digital resources but perhaps not using them as effectively as they could be. But what to focus on? Many adults are calling for isolating technology and teaching those skills separately. For example, some think we should stop everything and focus on typing, because typing was once seen as an important skill (and still probably is for some) but is it that important for everyone? Phones are more ubiquitous than laptops with keyboards. What skills do you need to be considered literate if your digital device doesn’t have a keyboard or you don’t need to use one? Phones have teeny tiny keyboards that I can’t use my touch-typing skills with, and many people just talk to their phone (or TV remote, or smart speaker, or other device) to navigate the apps on it.

I go back to the how you’re using technology part of the equation as being the most important consideration for being literate. The ISTE Standards no longer focus on the technology you’re using. Instead, they encourage students and adults to become empowered learners who leverage technology to connect with content and with others to support their learning. They acknowledge how important it is for all of us to be savvy digital citizens that understand what it means to live in an information-rich society and to manage and protect our own information and data that is now generated in any number of media formats with the click of a button. They inspire us to communicate and collaborate locally and across the globe and to create innovative new products and propose solutions to challenging, real-world problems. What I see as the connecting thread behind those standards is that they happen everywhere, not in isolation. They happen in every class. They happen on the playground, and at home, and everywhere else, and so maybe the secret to digital literacy is to not consider it something separate or unique. It’s just literacy. And we use the tools that are necessary to be literate in whatever situation we’re in.

This entry is cross-posted with the Region 8 Comprehensive Center blog.

Ready or not, many teachers are now going to experience delivering instruction online. Prep time has been far from optimal, but there are a few steps teachers can take as they venture into the delivery of online learning to their students. Whether experienced pros or newbies to online delivery, it’s all about the learning, not the technology. Don’t get wrapped up in the technology. Don’t try to use every feature at the get go…or ever. Stay calm. Focus on the learning and continue to be the learning leader, regardless of what technologies your students use—even if you don’t use technology!

If you’re going to do this, here are some considerations when moving instruction online.

It’s about LEARNING, not just being online. Just because your class may have an online component now, that doesn’t mean it ALL has to be online. We learn in a variety of ways, and much of it is offline. Use online components to bring students together, check on their progress, and provide feedback. Then send them off to interact with content, read some things, watch some videos, complete projects, and create new products that they can then share with you.

Ask your students how THEY want to learn. This is a great opportunity to put personalization and differentiation into practice—true personalization, in which students are given the opportunity to determine what it is they want to learn, how they want to learn it, and how they’ll demonstrate what they’ve learned. If your learning goals don’t require writing an essay or answer a multiple-choice question, then don’t force students to do these things. Ask your students for their ideas. They might turn their mad Instagram, SnapChat, and TikTok skills into demonstrations of what they know and can do. And if they’re intrinsically motivated to use the tools at their disposal, you’re likely to get better learning out of the experience.

Focus on the learning, not the technology. At the end of the day, or your class, what is it you want your students to know and be able to do? Learning isn’t measured by time spent watching a video or the number of responses made on a discussion board. Very often, there are a variety of tools students can use to demonstrate their learning, not just one single tool. Give students one simple option—the lowest common denominator—for submitting their work, but encourage them to suggest and justify other tools. As students explore and use other tools successfully to capture their learning, share those exemplars with the rest of the class.

Every online activity is an opportunity to promote digital citizenship, but your students may need support being good digital citizens. Create practice opportunities to model how to use common online tools, like how to engage in an online discussion effectively. I like the simple “compliment-connect-question” format, which I learned from some teachers in Lee’s Summit, MO, but you can find lots of protocols online. Consider creating simple narrated slides or screencapture movies that reinforce appropriate procedures, like using online resources, citing intellectual property, or even how to use some features of your LMS. Share exemplars of past student-generated documents, videos, or other artifacts so students have expectations when creating and submitting their own.

Give your students responsibility for the online environment. Just as you would have helpers in your class, establish ways that students can contribute to the online learning environment. If you’re going to do some synchronous webconferencing, put students in charge of monitoring the chat room, creating a question queue, summarizing main ideas, and determining next steps. If you’re incorporating student groups, consider using students contracts with different roles and have students be responsible for monitoring and reporting on how well the group is meeting timelines and creating information. Most importantly, determine how students can contribute to the online learning activities that you incorporate. You do not have to be the leader of every activity. To do this you need to ask them.

It doesn’t always have to be online. Every day we communicate with others through a variety of means, even at a distance. Consider whether phone calls or texting can support your students as they learn from home. The Remind app sends text reminders to students and parents who have signed up for them. Service like Free Conference Call can let you set up group calls to check in with your students. And while email is technically online, it’s also a great way to interact with students, and automated emails and reminders can be generated through some LMS, calendar programs, and other tools.

Take a deep breath. We’re all going to get through this. Keep focused on what you do well—lead learning for your students—and let the learning continue!

John Ross has been developing and delivering online learning to students of all ages for more than two decades. His astronomy course developed with his friend and expert science teacher Anita Deck was honored as one of the Best High School Courses on iTunes U, and he has shared his experiences in his book “Online Professional Development. Design, Deliver, Succeed!” published by Corwin.