Digital Literacy
The lessons in this section are optional and supplementary.
Objectives
Overall Objective: This curriculum is meant to support our mentees in learning more about how to effectively use the internet, email and introduce the basics of digital security.
Secondary Objective: Mentees will become more comfortable researching and learning about topics in digital literacy on their own.
How to use this curriculum
Each section can be taught as a stand alone unit, or as a series, in a 1:1 mentorship setting or as self-paced lessons for independent study. If a mentee is already proficient in one or many areas, the mentee can focus on the areas where they most want to improve their digital literacy.
The lessons are divided into 5 unites: Computer Basics, The Internet, Search, Email and Digital Security. Some lessons, such as The Internet and Computer Basics, come with step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish each task; these documents are mostly for reference because most mentees entering this program will already know computer basics if they’ve applied to our program online. There are many How-To guides on the internet, so the lessons following Computer Basics/The Internet link to external blog posts or documentation that cover the topics in the lesson (all links are kept up to date, so none of the resources should be stale, but if a link is broken, please let us know). For Computer Basics and The Internet, you can walk through each section with your mentee as a pairing session, or your mentee can study the docs independently and bring any questions they have to the 1:1 session. For Search, Email, and Digital Security, we recommend that the mentor and mentee read through the resources listed in the readme before a session, and then discuss any questions or walk through any activities where the mentee has questions. Both the step-by-step lesson format and the externally linked resources can be used as a guide for the types of tasks to talk about and practice with your mentee.
If your mentee is more advanced and feels comfortable doing self-study, the lessons can be assigned as homework to review the documentation and practice the tasks themselves. If your mentee is an intermediate/beginner level and feels less comfortable with self-study, you can pair on some of the tasks and talk them through the process outlined in each topic. Additional resources and activities are listed at the end of each unit for more practice/discussion. Regardless of whether your mentee will be focused on self-study or pairing, we highly recommend helping them find videos on Digital Learn that correspond to the topics covered below.
Suggested Self-Paced Schedule
Beginner Level:
- 2 units/week for 4 weeks
- Computer Basics and The Internet should be covered first, but other units can be done in any order
Intermediate Level:
- Focus on pain points identified in pairing assessment during the first two weeks of the programming curriculum
- Time spent on digital literacy can be split with the HTML/CSS topics (recommend about 30 minutes out of the 2 hour session)
- Assign any topics not covered in a unit during the 2 hour session as homework for self-review and study
- Activities can optionally be recommended as homework
- Learning can be self-paced: if a mentee works through their pain points quickly, there’s no need to devote additional time during lessons to digital literacy; if some topics take longer, lesson time can continue to be devoted to digital literacy topics