Heuristic framework design in the field of digital literacy: A case study based on the Mozilla Web Literacy Map.

The use of skill frameworks has become commonplace in the field of digital literacy. These frameworks are based preferentially on conceptual approaches, which leads to biases when applied in practice. Here, we present a study with an alternate focus: the skills proposed in the frameworks are connected with user behavior and heuristics are employed to group these skills. The objectives of the study were to: (1) achieve a greater coherence between the skills incorporated in these frameworks and user behavior, and (2) identify and reliably organize the clusters of skills that form frameworks. The study consisted of collecting data from a group of students about their practices within the skills of the Mozilla Web Literacy Map. The data was then grouped via factor analysis. The results were then contrasted with the initial organization of the Mozilla framework. The gap between the theoretical definition of a skill and individual behaviors was found to be more pronounced in the case of those skills whose definitions included a wider range of concepts and practices. This study opens a discussion into the scope and suitability of the method used here to generate heuristic dimensions by managing information from social behaviors.

Web literacy practices of teacher education students and in-service teachers in Greece : a descriptive study

: In the expanding context of new literacies and multiliteracies, the abilities to know how to locate, to evaluate and to exploit Web information resources in order to construct knowledge, are acknowledged as extremely important worldwide. Current literacy curricula should encourage the development of such abilities, and their successful implementation requires teachers themselves to be properly prepared. The present study reports the web searching and evaluating practices for educational purposes employed by both pre-service and in-service teachers. Data was collected via an anonymous online questionnaire. The comparative study exhibis teachers' web practices with the purpose of identifying aspects of web literacy that require attention when designing and implementing relevant educational initiatives. According to the research findings, both pre-service and in-service teachers are based almost exclusively on popular search engines to locate web information resources, and they choose such resources without examining their wider context. In order to evaluate web information resources, they consider mainly morphological and design elements, rather than content features such as their origin and credibility. The findings raise the potential of applying critical literacy principles on the Web so that teachers can approach it critiquely.[1] when using its resources in educational settings. [1] learn to think “critiquely” (a word coined by James Paul Gee), that is, not merely consume information but also “understand and critique systems of power and injustice in a world that [people] will see as simply economically inevitable" (Gee, 2000: 62).