Category: Digital Literacy (Page 1 of 2)

This week, we moved beyond simply “using technology” and started asking ourselves:

Who is included? Who is excluded? And how can we be more critically and empathetically thinking in digital spaces?

From deep musings on digital equity by Maha Bali, to examining our own physical well-being while working online, this week enabled me tothink about the human impacts of technology—on our minds, bodies, and selves.

🧠 Critical Thinking: Thinking About Thinking

Although Thomas Land’s talk on critical thinking was private, it prompted me to reflect on how I process information—especially online. Critical thinking isn’t just about spotting logical fallacies. It’s about:

✔ Questioning sources

✔ Understanding context

✔ Recognizing our own biases

✔ Staying open to other perspectives

💡 Reflection:

In a time when misinformation and AI-generated content are everywhere, critical thinking is arguably the most important digital skill we can have. I’ve started paying more attention to how I evaluate content I come across—especially when something confirms my existing opinions a bit too perfectly.

🌍 Equity in Digital Spaces with Maha Bali

Maha Bali’s talk was a game-changer for me. Her explanation of Nancy Fraser’s framework—economic, cultural, and political justice—gave me the language to think about inequality in tech more clearly.

🔑 Highlights That Stood Out:

• Economic injustice isn’t just about internet or devices—it’s also about time, labor, and basic needs like food and safety
  
• Cultural injustice occurs when marginalized voices are missing or misrepresented (e.g., AI systems repeating colonial or stereotypical forms of narrative)
  
• Political injustice occurs when people are not being included in creating systems—like being “invited to a table that’s already been set

💬 One quote from Maha that stuck with me:

“Technology is not neutral. It reflects and amplifies the biases of those who create and control it.”

She also suggested frameworks like the 4 I’s of Oppression (ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized) and her clever “Rumi cheese” metaphor—a spicier variation on the Swiss cheese model that shows we need layered protections from different forms of injustice in online life.

I now get it that digital inclusion is not a checklist. It’s listening, redesigning systems, and making space for difference. It also reminded me to ask myself the questions of who created the tools I am using—Who benefits? Who is harmed?

💺 Ergonomics: Caring for the Body That’s Always Online

As someone who spends hours at my laptop, I rarely think about the toll on my body until I start feeling neck or wrist pain. This week’s ergonomics resources were a great wake-up call.

✅ What I Did:

• Reviewed UVic’s Ergonomics Checklist (PDF)
• Watched several modules on workstation posture, lighting, and computer input devices
• Took stretch breaks during study sessions and adjusted my chair height

📌 One key lesson: Micro-adjustments = big difference.

Just changing my screen angle and adding a small pillow behind my lower back relieved a lot of tension.

💡 Reflection:

Wellness is part of digital literacy. A successful digital existence also has to be a healthy and sustainable one. And I now understand that ergonomics is not just for “office workers”—it’s for all of us who live online.

🌐 Connecting the Dots

These three topics—critical thinking, digital equity, and ergonomics—might, at first sight, have very little to do with each other. But taken together, they made me notice something important:

Digital spaces reflect real power relations and personal habits. If we want better results, we must approach them warily, in awe, and with a questioning mind.

This week in EDCI 136, conversations went richly human and justice-focused. We delved into digital surveillance, accessibility rights, and Indigenous perspectives on digital literacies. These weren’t dry technical topics—these challenged me to think through the values, systems, and assumptions baked into the digital places we live everyday.

👁️ Academic Surveillance: Who’s Watching, and Why?

Whereas the presentations of Ian Linkletter and Chris Gilliard were not for public consumption, they left a lasting impression. Their keytakeaway: surveillance in learning is not just about preventing cheating—it’s about power, control, and equity.

⚠️ Core Issues Raised:

• Proctoring software treats students as susppects, not learners

• AI systems often misinterpret neurodivergent and disabled behavior

• Surveillance negatively impacts marginalized students, especially Black, Indigenous, and disabled learners

• “Luxury surveillance” normalizes invasiveness in everyday life

💡Reflection

As a student, I’ve experienced how intrusive surveillance technologiesfeel. Being tracked by my eye movements or surroundings makes it hard to focus, let alone learn. I now see how these technologiesfuel institutional distrust and compound existing inequities.

♿ Understanding Accessibility Beyond Accommodations

Our second guest session—featuring Charlie, Sydney, and Szymon from UVic’s CAL team—was one of the most informative to date. It openedmy eyes to what academic accessibility entails.

🔍What I Learned:

• 1 in 5 UVic students has a registered disability

• Most disabilities are invisible (anxiety, chronic pain, learning disabilities)

• Accommodations such as extra time, flexible attendance, or alternate formats are human rights, not academic favors

• Instructors have more flexibility than most realize

• Academic concessions are available to all students, even without formal documentation

📌 Key Insight:

Accessibility is not “leveling the playing field”—it’s about eliminatingobstacles so that each person has a chance to show what they know. And flexibility isn’t a weakness; it’s a pillar of sound teaching.

🧠 Indigenous Digital Literacies with Nodin Cutfeet

Listening to Nodin Cutfeet, Waniskaw Foundation founder, was a highlight. He spoke about how youth in Indigenous northern communities get left behind by digital learning—a deficiency not due toan aspiration for riches but due to tools designed without them.

🌱Key Themes:

• Community-led learning is worthwhile over “career-oriented” technicalprograms

• Motivation is based on expression, creativity, and sense of belonging among their peers, not in the possession of money

• Data self-determination is important—Indigenous peoples must havecontrol over the use of their knowledge

• Mainstream AI has the tendency to bend Indigenous cultures, blending distinct traditions into a homogenized “pan-Indigenous”narrative

• Digital tools must be low-bandwidth, hardware-light, and locally adaptable

💡 Reflection:

This presentation made me question the default narratives of digital literacy. “One-size-fits-all” solutions prescribe cultural sameness and flatten diverse learning identities. It reminded me that accessibility and inclusion must be relational, not just technical.

🔗Connecting the Dots: Surveillance, Equity & Inclusion

Throughout these discussions, one message was threaded throughout: technology is never neutral.

• Surveillance software claims to offer equality but often strips it away

• Accessibility in education isn’t just about compliance—it’s about dignity and belonging

• Indigenous communities are creating alternative models of tech education that center on culture, respect, and agency


📝Final Thoughts

This week left me thinking hard about the type of digital world that I would like to help bring into being. It’s not enough to be “digitally literate”—I want to be digitally just. That means opposing systems that exclude, surveil, or erase—and building up alternatives that center care, culture, and connection.

This week in EDCI 136, I learned the skill of curation and annotation. Through practical work with Zotero and Hypothes.is, and two excellent guest lectures by Dr. Remi Kalir and Jessica Mussell, I’ve come to understand that curation isn’t just amassing stuff, it’s about responding meaningfully to ideas, voices, and knowledge.

Here’s what resonated most, and how I began to shift my conception of digital literacy and scholarly collaboration.

✍️ Social Annotation with Hypothes.is: Notes That Talk Back

Before this week, “annotation” meant highlighting a textbook or writing notes in the margin something private, rough, and just for me. But after listening to Dr. Remi Kalir, I learned that annotation can also be:

• 💬 Dialogic: sparking real conversations around ideas

• 🔄 Intertextual: connecting and layering meanings across sources

• 🧩 Collaborative: a form of social learning, not just solo studying

One powerful quote from his talk really stuck with me:

“Annotation is not neutral. It can interrupt, question, challenge, and transform the meaning of a text.”

Dr. Kalir’s examples—like graffiti on the Berlin Wall or projections on protest monuments—blew my mind. I’d never considered those forms of public writing as annotation, but they truly are. They’re social, layered, and rooted in the real world.

📚 Zotero: Your Personal Research DJ 🎧

Our second guest, Jessica Mussell, introduced us to Zotero, a fantastic tool for researching, citing, and organizing. I used to despise creating bibliographies (especially when switching citation styles)—but Zotero is a game-changer.

🎯 Key Features I Explored:

• Automatically capture article metadata and PDFs

• Create folders to curate resources by topic

• Generate citations and bibliographies in seconds

• Use plugins to cite inside Word and Google Docs

• Add highlights and annotations inside PDFs

Zotero isn’t just a citation tool—it’s like Spotify for sources. You create research playlists, organize ideas, and collaborate when needed. I especially liked Jessica’s metaphor about research curation being like making music playlists for your brain!

Why Curation & Annotation Matter

This week helped me connect some dots:

• Annotation helps me engage with ideas more deeply—especially when it’s social

• Curation helps me organize my digital brain and build research habits I can take beyond university

• These tools teach me to read, write, and think more critically, not just collect information

I used to treat research like a one-way street: find a source → quote it → cite it. But now I realize it’s more like a conversation. With Hypothes.is and Zotero, I’m learning how to take part in that dialogue more meaningfully.

This week in EDCI 136, we explored some big topics—data ownership, cybersecurity, datafication, and an introduction to accessibility. The one most memorable discussion with Dr. Bonnie Stewart was enlightening in terms of the dangers accompanying datafication and the hidden price of living in a digital world.

Technology may easily be seen as a convenience but is also a control system. Every click, every touch, every “I agree” we press becomes part of a multi-layered data economy, one that will at times not work in our favour.

🔍 What is Datafication, and what does it mean to us?

Dr. Stewart characterized datafication as the transformation of human actions into data-everything from Google searches to eye movements on a webpage that can be captured and translated into a profitable business.

Here are the key facts about datafication:

💻 Every digital interaction produces a traceable data footprint

💻 AI algorithms use these patterns to predict and mold our decision-making process

💻 Through data, the governments and the corporations allow the ad use to be controlled.

💡 Personal Insight: I used to think, “I have nothing to hide, so why should I care?” The deeper issue, however, is not privacy-but power. The data we produce belongs to companies, and they use it against us-targeting ads, biased hiring decisions, or even determining who gets financial aid.

Take-home point: Our data is a resource-every bit as precious as oil-and we’re giving it up for nothing.

🔓 Cybersecurity: The Deception of Security

Also this week, we heard from Wency Lum, Associate VP of UVic, regarding cybersecurity. The biggest highlight was that the biggest threat to security is not technology but people.

🛡️ Very Common Cybersecurity Mistakes:
❌ Use identical passwords for a number of accounts
❌ Open phishing mails
❌ Assume that public Wi-Fi is safe
❌ Use social media login (e.g., “Log in with Facebook”)

I have done that before and I suddenly realized after attending this talk that it is really dangerous. If one site’s hacked, all my accounts are vulnerable, which is really bad.

📌What I’m Doing Now:

✅Using a password manager

✅Enabling 2FA on all accounts

✅Being more careful with what I share online

♿ Accessibility & Data: Who’s Being Left Behind?

Another crucial discussion this week was about digital accessibility. The talk with Charlie Watson from the UVic Centre for Accessible Learning highlighted how many digital tools exclude people with disabilities.

🔹 Key Challenges in Digital Accessibility:

🔸 Websites that don’t work with screen readers

🔸 PDFs that are not accessible for visually impaired users

🔸 AI tools that reinforce biases against disabled people

🔹 Personal Insight: I never thought about how frustrating it must be for someone with a disability to navigate the web. Something as simple as poor color contrast or missing alt-text on images can make content completely unusable for someone who is visually impaired.

📌 What I Plan to Do:

✅ Use WAVE Web Accessibility Checker to test websites

✅ Make sure my documents are screen-reader friendly

✅ Be mindful of colour contrast & font choices in my work

EDCI 136’s theme for this week revolved around Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity. And I admit that it got me thinking about how rapidly AI transforms the way we learn, work, and even talk to one another. Interesting ideas were thrown around in the lectures between Lucas Wright & Valerie Irvine, such as how this technology could be harnessed toward productivity but also cautioned about the risk of cognitive offloading as well as distant ethical concerns when using AI in education.

🚀 AI as a Productivity Booster (But at What Cost?)

One of the major highlights of the lecture included Lucas Wright’s demonstration on the AI techniques he uses in his personal daily workflow. Some key examples:

✅ AI-Powered Email Responder – Saves time with summarizing and drafting email responses

✅Initiative AI for Research – Uses Google LM to organize articles into a knowledge repository

✅Custom AI Bots – Allows the creation of GPTs for writing workshop descriptions, Slack messages, and research notes.

At the outset, I was like, “Wow, I need this in my life!” 😲 Then, it struck me-if we are automating everything, are we left with noble thinking skills?

🔹 Personal Insight- I am someone who struggles a lot with managing emails and research, so I can see easily the draw of AI tools. But then, I worry that if I think too much is outsourced to AI, I will not be as engaged with learning and thinking critically. I do not want to just consume AI-generated content; I want to think up ideas actively and create them myself.Also what i personally felt is if you get too used to AI then you start depending on that only rather than doing critical thinking by yourself.

🧐 Food for Thought: Is AI making us smarter-or just making things easier?

🎭 The Ethical Dilemma of AI in Education

Another hot-button issue was AI and integrity in academics: with AI being able to write essays, summarize texts, and cite sources, where does one draw the line?

Key ethical concerns raised include:

⚠️ Originality vs. AI Assistance. If AI helped me draw up a paper outline, is that cheating or just smart use of technology?

⚠️ AI-Generated Generic Content. Valerie Irvine pointed out that AI writing can feel and sometimes lack personal voice.

⚠️ Who Controls AI? Most AIs are developed by the big tech companies; does this lead to biased outputs and, as a consequence, other viewpoints not being represented?

Personal insight: I once used AI to rewrite some part of an essay, and the result was as follows: it was grammatically perfect but lacked personality in its content. This made me realize AI should only be considered a supportive helper, not a full replacement for one’s own thoughts.

✅My AI Rule: Use AI for brainstorming, structuring ideas, and refining drafts—but ensure my own voice remains deeply entrenched in my writing.

Introduction

This week in EDCI 136, we explored the ideas of digital citizenship and digital literacy frameworks—two topics that are becoming more relevant as we rely more on technology in our daily lives. The discussions, along with the videos we watched, made me think more deeply about my own digital identity and how much trust I place in the online world.

Before this, I hadn’t given much thought to what it really means to be a responsible digital citizen beyond just avoiding bad behavior online. But as I learned more, I realized that digital citizenship is about more than just how we act it’s about the way we interact with information, protect our personal data, and think critically about the digital world around us.

Key Takeaways

The Value of Digital Identity

One of the videos we watched, “The Value of Digital Identity”, highlighted how digital identities are becoming a big part of how we interact with businesses, governments, and even each other. A few things stood out to me:

• Access & Inclusion: Digital identities can help people—especially those in underserved communities—gain access to essential services like banking and healthcare. This made me realize how much I take my digital access for granted.

• Privacy & Security Risks: The more our identities exist online, the more we need to think about protecting them. I don’t always read privacy policies or think about how my data is being used, but this made me want to be more aware.

• Collaboration is Key: Digital identity isn’t just a personal thing—it’s a global issue. Governments, businesses, and users all play a role in shaping how digital identity works, and it’s important that it’s done ethically.

Personal Reflection

I never really thought about digital identity beyond logging into websites or using my social media accounts. But this week made me realize that it’s a much bigger deal. My digital footprint affects everything from how I’m perceived online to how much control I have over my personal information.

One thing that really made me think was how much I trust online platforms without question. I usually just accept cookies on websites without reading what they do, and I’ve signed up for services without really knowing where my data is going. After this week, I want to be more intentional about my online presence.

Another thing that stood out was how important digital literacy is in today’s world. It’s not just about knowing how to use technology—it’s about knowing how to navigate it safely, responsibly, and critically.

How I Plan to Apply This Knowledge

After this week’s discussions and videos, I want to make a few changes:

✅ Be more mindful of privacy settings – I’ll take time to actually review privacy options on the platforms I use and limit how much data I share.

✅ Think critically about the sources I trust – Just because something looks professional doesn’t mean it’s credible. I’ll be more cautious about misinformation.

✅ Learn more about digital ethics – Technology is growing fast, and I want to stay informed about the ethical discussions around AI, digital rights, and data privacy.

Final Thoughts

This week’s topic made me think more deeply about my digital footprint and the responsibility that comes with being online. Being a good digital citizen isn’t just about avoiding cyberbullying or being polite—it’s also about protecting your data, thinking critically, and making informed choices about the technology we use every day.