Developing Digital Literacy with Our Immigrant Learners

Key Takeaways

So, we are a global faith-based humanitarian organization and we partner with local churches and community members to develop sustainable locally driven solutions. Um we work as a US state department contracted refugee resettlement agency in the United States but we are very um our mission is to um work toward uh the global displacement crisis um that's happening internationally. And so we have a here and a there approach. We're in Haiti um and we're working with Haitians in the US and we're in Sudan and Chad and we're working with those populations in the US. Um and that means because we have immigrant background, refugee background learners, we have adult education services. And I'll get into more of what those services are in a little bit, but we have about 4,000 more than 4,000 students across our US offices um every year. Some of these are um staffled classes and and um programs and some of these are volunteer-led. And that's important because we designed our curriculum uh to meet the needs of both of those leaders. So why did we develop this curriculum and who developed it? So we were finding that digital skills, digital literacy is just uh as important to integration in the United States as any other type of educational offering we had. Learning English uh that's one really important component of coming into the US and making a a home here. But you also have to navigate the digital landscape as well. And we were finding that there were many tools out there and our instructors were oftentimes taking those tools and taking that curriculum and using it and building, you know, lessons around it. But there wasn't necessarily anything we had found that was tailored to refugee um populations or those who maybe had very low like print literacy or like had very low reading and writing um development because they had interrupted education. they uh their education had been interrupted by war or um they had been in a camp for a while and hadn't gotten to attend school. And so we wanted to build something that met the needs of these learners and the you know broader immigrant community that also attends our classes. And so we developed this with our teachers across the network. Um this is a little bit about what's inside of our curriculum. Um 28 lessons um the lesson plan, the presentation, multiple activities, um designed and categorized in four different language levels with a skills checklist for every level. We piloted this across our US offices and um we worked to strengthen what we had built. We took feedback and we and we made changes all last year so it was as strong as possible. We're going to just take a little step into the curriculum, dip our toe in it real fast. I know that I can be talking theoretically about it, but I'd love for you to see it. We're not going to do a deep dive yet, but I'd love for you to see it. So, we built ours in something called Thinkic. That's a um an LMS that just allows us to have like a course in here. And we have in here like what this curriculum is, who it's for, how it's been designed, all about it. And then we also have a framework which I'll get into in a minute. We have some digital skills inventories. And as you can see, everything here is downloadable. We made uh many of our lessons and the digital skills inventory uh translated into seven of our u most commonly used languages by our multilingual students. Um and and then we have the emergent literacy. So those are the students who maybe have semi or se semiiterate pre-iterate. Um we've got nine lessons for them. beginning, low intermediate, and then higher intermediate and advanced. So, this is how it's organized. If I were to pop into one lesson like making strong passwords, and I'll explain what all of these mean in a minute, like civic collaborative, what does that mean? I'll explain in a second. But here on the screen, you can see the lesson objectives here. And then everything is downloadable. So there's a presentation you can download, a worksheet that is downloadable, and then all lesson plans look like this for an instructor. This is not something that we would encourage learners to go in and do without an instructor. This is um made to be done in a class setting or one-on-one maybe with a tutor or even with a caseworker can print out a presentation um that is you know in the client's language and go through step by step how to do something with that presentation. So I'm going to go back here. I just like I said dipping a toe in. Um, we're going to do a little bit more in a second, but yeah, what about this framework? Well, we wanted to work uh on defining digital literacy. We find that that's a term you will hear as an educator or as somebody who's working in any kind of class setting. Um, you hear financial literacy and health literacy and digital literacy. And we wanted to find um something that was evidence-based that defines digital literacy. and we landed on the Department of Labor in Maryland um created a framework that we found was really helpful as we built out lessons. They say, and there's a video embedded um in the in the thinkic course, but that a digital digitally literate adult learner is someone who has these, you know, seven skills so that when they get to an something new online or on a device, they can figure out they have a foundation to navigate something new. Um, and they can use technology in a variety for a variety of reasons. I love their video and I encourage you to go in and watch it. It's three minutes. Um, but we were thinking, well, that's really great and you know, having a framework is super important. Having that definition is very important, but we also want to ensure that a caseworker or an employment counselor um or even a teacher can go in and they don't have to teach all those skills within one level in order to help a client or help a student um know how to navigate one skill. And so we designed it to be like pick and choose topics most relevant to your students. We pulled our employment counselors, our ESL instructors, our case workers, um our mental health and psychoso social support case workers, and we said, "What are the things that you help your clients understand how to do most often on their devices?" And we built the lessons based off of that information. It and it it became very clear. It's like, "Oh, yeah. I teach clients all the time how to order Ubers or Lyft to job interviews. So, we built a lesson. I teach clients all the time how to navigate a health portal to communicate with their doctor or set up appointments. So, we created that. So, you'll see that these topics were designed specifically um with the feedback of the staff who are on the ground doing this work all the time with our our students and our clients. And then we really wanted to keep this philosophy ingrained throughout. We are doing this with students and clients, not for them. Um, our clients, our students are very capable. We wanted to make this so that it can be scaffolded so that it meets them where they're at. So, it's um designed to to teach them skills that are very relevant to their life uh and that they can pick up on and then move to another skill or move to a different um type of lesson. And I just want to as I'm saying students and clients, I wanted to flesh that out a little bit. So, our immigrant and refugee refugee background students, they're coming into our program and these are the types of services and programs that we offer in adult education and world relief. Well, we also have refugee clients and some of those refugee clients are also a part of our formal English language acquisition classes or um foundations of literacy classes. Well, some of them are being resettled and um they're getting case management for 90 days and then they've got to go get a job, but they are still keeping in touch with their caseworker. And so maybe they're not able to attend a formal class, but they are able to interact with their caseworker in a way where that caseworker could teach them some of these valuable skills via this curriculum. So, are you ready to dive into the curriculum? Now, now that you've seen it a little bit, I wanted to get into um if we were to look at, let's say, a presentation, we made it so that there's always like a conversation starter. So, that again, this was within um the beginning level. So, we're anticipating that this student and we have an introduction who says like who this student or this client is, but it's like this is a beginning level speaker of English um who has literacy in their first language. Emergent literacy means they most likely do not have um reading and writing in their first language or they're they have a lot of interrupted education where reading and writing is really difficult. So this this curric this these lesson plans are very heavily picturebased and video based whereas this one you know we expect okay these students will be able to follow along in and they have some um concept of print literacy um and we imagine so just imagine like a caseworker is sitting in their cubicle with a client they've printed out or they've pulled up this lesson um and they're going through it one by one. Or maybe it's a volunteer tutor who's meeting in the library with someone. Or maybe it's an ESL teacher and they are in their class online or in person. We designed it to be either or. They are going through these one by one. They're talking through um you know concepts like safety. Do you lock the door at home? Why? So, everybody in the class or that student's going to be talking. Um, and then we get into the actual digital part where it's like, well, do you have a password for email? And everybody says, "Yeah, and I forget it all the time." And you're like, "Yeah, me too." Right? And so, we um we have a lot of these warm-up conversations because we're teachers and that's how we design things. But if you're a case worker and you want to skip through and you know you want to teach the Spanish, you know, just in Spanish, you're Spanish caseworker, um you can go straight into this different concepts and go into the how to create a secure password and help your client set up a secure password because remember it's always with not for and that's something that is really easy to slip into from um a helper perspective, right? Like we okay, I'm going to just set this password up for you. I'll write it down. Here you go. Take this home. Try to remember it. Whereas, we wanted to develop this. So, we're inviting the client into their own learning journey where they can take this and walk away thinking now I maybe they can't after one lesson after one time do this for themselves but they're closer to it and maybe they can talk to their kids about that as well. Um and or another family member who could also help them. So we would go through all of these various um slides and then at the end um we would have um an activity. This is a word wall. I encourage everyone get out your phone right now. Um we can all practice some digital literacy. Everybody see the QR code. Scan that QR code and look at what one of our resources would be. There's also the option with the link. So if somebody's teaching this on an online Zoom class, they could just click the link. They could do it all together. Yes, I can zoom in. How's that? Can your phone get it now? and you'll find an activity with the same vocabulary that was in this presentation. Of course, if you're a caseworker, you might not want to do this activity. You might just want to teach this in a presentation style in the client's language. Um, but if you are a teacher having this for a client to take home, we also I will say we do have a how to scan uh a QR code. So if that even like that action we understand is um not intuitive but it is something that a lot of students need to learn how to do. We have a lesson how to scan a QR code. Um, and we've named them all just so that once you do develop that framework um, for reference, you'll you'll be able to recognize like, oh, this is the type of skill that we are teaching here. And hopefully after this technical skill is taught, my students will see a different type of technical action they have to take online and and they'll be able to um do something more independently. Okay. Oh, wow. We have some competition going on. This is fun. All right. Um, something else about the curriculum. I know I'm running out of time. Um, I just want to share that there is also this section um called even more tech ideas. We by far did not hit all the technical like all the digital skills your clients are going to need. So, we just put in some ideas. So, if you were to click on um and these are Let me zoom in. I hope that's a little bit better. But educators are encouraged to take this following the following list as a starting point and then build their own lessons off of it. But like here are just some ideas to explore your local library website together. Take a visit to the library. And then we have links in some of these um from worksheets that you could take and tailor to your own context. I'm in Chicago, so you will find that most of these materials are Chicago based, but you are welcome to make copies and tailor them to your um wherever you live. Um, and then I also wanted I'm gonna zoom out a little bit. Ask that if if you use this and you find it especially helpful, um, that you would be able to just do a quick survey for us at the end or if you find a link is broken or there's a, you know, a grammatical error like I would maybe die a little bit, but I want to know. Um, please let us know. And just so you know, this is you don't have to go into thinkic to access this. You can access this in skills blocks now. Thank to thanks to world education and Jeff