Byte-Sized: What Kids Should Be Able to Do -- Collaboration Tools

Todays' blog post is the FINAL post in a series of posts sharing the TL;DR information available in the Illinois Computer Literacy Knowledge and Skill Development Continuum adopted May 2022. In this  series, it is hoped that you will have a better understanding of what technology skills our students are expected to have at different grade levels. Of course, each student is different -- some will acquire these skills sooner than their peers; some will acquire them later. These are meant to be a guide for teachers. 

Computer literacy isn't just something that is taught in "computer class" by a "computer teacher." Because the use of computing devices impacts our students at school and at home, for school work, for socializing, and for fun or entertainment, computer literacy is something every educator needs to assist students with. It is my hope that by summarizing these skills for you, it will be easier for you to find ways to help students develop, refine, and retain the computer literacy skills they will need and use for the rest of their lives.

You can find the actual continuum here. What you will see in these posts and the linked spreadsheet are my interpretations and summaries.

The fact that we use Google Workspace for Education and that we've lived through remote learning really helps us with kids being able to use collaboration tools! If you look at the Collaboration Tools tab on the summary spreadsheet, you'll see things that kids already have some experience with, like using email to communicate in writing, collaborating on files, using video conferencing (like Google Meet), and maintaining a portfolio of their work. Things like email and collaborative work don't really need to be introduced until the kids hit 2nd grade, but they should be secured skills once they're in 6th grade. Interestingly enough, maintaining a portfolio should be introduced in kindergarten, but is not considered to be a secured skill until high school, so that means we as teachers should be helping kids with organizing their files in Drive so they can keep track of their work over the years they are in our district.

Please share in the comments on this post any ways you encourage kids to collaborate and communicate online. Sometimes it can be a real challenge to figure out how to give kids the opportunity to do this, but it's one of those soft skills that they will need for school, job, and beyond, so the more chances they have to practice under our guidance, the more we are actually helping them!