“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.”
– John Dewey
Digital Learning Day is an annual event celebrating technology’s innovative use in education. Championed since its inception by All4Ed and usually held near the end of February, Digital Learning Day’s goal is to raise awareness about the benefit of meaningfully integrating technology in the classroom. This year, however, All4Ed will hold it on March 15, 2023. In addition, Digital Learning Day is also an opportunity to amplify educators’ innovative work in their classrooms to inspire others to do the same. So, I’ve got some ideas and resources to share if you’re starting to dabble in classroom tech integration or consider yourself a digital learning veteran.
Learn About New Digital Tools and Resources
Digital Learning Day is a chance for educators to learn about new digital tools and resources to help them elevate their instruction. One way to get a broad scope of what other digital learning educators are doing in their classrooms is to jump on social media platforms such as Twitter (reviewed here). The hashtags #digitallearningday and #DLDay are used by educators to share their experiences, successes, and challenges with using technology in the classroom. They also provide examples of how you can celebrate Digital Learning Day in your classroom! If social media isn’t your jam, then I invite you to register for our free OK2Ask virtual workshops! Choose from a wide range of topics and learn alongside educators worldwide.
Focus on Digital Citizenship
Whether you’ve been incorporating technology into your lessons for years or want to use this day to get started, here are a few activities you can try. First off, what better way to celebrate Digital Learning Day than by focusing on digital citizenship? Digital citizenship is the responsible use of technology and the internet. It is an essential component of digital learning and requires teachers to have ongoing conversations about it. This collection of digital citizenship resources shares various tools to teach digital citizenship to students in grades K-12. Furthermore, web-based platforms like Nearpod (reviewed here) and Edpuzzle (reviewed here) have digital citizenship lessons and content that are free to use!
Increase Engagement with Collaboration and Gamification
Lastly, use this day to provide students with simple, interactive, engaging digital experiences. For example, you can choose a digital collaboration tool such as Jamboard (reviewed here) or Padlet (reviewed here). Or try out some gamification tools to add student engagement to a lesson or topic! This collection of reviewed resources from TeachersFirst has some great options for you to choose from.
If you want to explore even more ideas outside of what I’ve shared, check out some of the resources below!
- Digital Learning Sharing Library from the Alliance for Excellent Education
- Digital Literacies Lesson Plans and Strategy Guides from ReadWriteThink (reviewed here)
- Explore previous TeachersFirst blog posts about Digital Learning Day
Whether you celebrate Digital Learning Day on February 23 or March 15 this year, we would love to hear your ideas in the comments below!