#digitalliteracy — Public Fediverse posts

True digital literacy isn't generated; it's understood. 💡

On this Literacy Day, step away from the opaque shortcuts of AI, dive into the clean NetBSD source code, and empower human curiosity from the bare metal up. Read the source, master the system, and keep human craftsmanship alive. 📖⚙️

RTFM (Read the Fantastic Manual)

#NetBSD #LiteracyDay #DigitalLiteracy #ReadTheSource #CodeLiteracy #HumanIntelligence #runBSD #Linux #Unix #RTFM #internationalliteracyday #noai #antiai #nollm #antillm

The Conversation: 41% of surveyed Australian teens now get their news from AI: new research. “Since 2017, we have been tracking young people’s media engagement, to understand how they get their news. This time, we found some young people are bypassing traditional outlets, reducing their use of social media sources and getting their news from artificial intelligence (AI) summaries using […]

NPR: We tested how AI chatbots would handle foreign propaganda. They did surprisingly well. “Since AI chatbots exploded in popularity and Google started offering AI-generated answers, people who research foreign influence campaigns have expressed concern that some governments may poison AI-generated answers with false narratives. But an experiment NPR conducted with NewsGuard, a company that […]

A neighbor of our founder's, in his 70s, kept falling for scam sites and "miracle" ads, so we built Credibility Meter, a free, open-source Chrome extension that flags urgency, fake authority, and sales tricks on any page.

Opt-in, 100% local, no accounts, GPLv3.
https://tinyurl.com/3dmb6zkm

Read the code here: https://tinyurl.com/2t39wyts

Firefox port coming.

Support our other products:
https://tinyurl.com/yzpzzt6j

#FOSS #Privacy #ScamAwareness #DigitalLiteracy

The Conversation: Meta‑backed research finds exposure to ‘untrustworthy’ social media is rare. The fine print is less reassuring. “A new study published today in Science Advances offers the most rigorous answers yet. It comes from a collaboration between Meta and academic researchers who studied the 2020 United States election. It was run from inside the machine – on the live feeds of […]

CS Monitor: Why Greeks are going to TikTok for news instead of newspapers or TV. “Greeks don’t turn to traditional media for news; they go to TikTok, Instagram, and the like. That puts them at the forefront of how news consumption is trending globally – and makes them a lens on how the future of news might look.”

The Conversation: Want to be a better reader? Here’s how to practise active reading. “A 2024 survey of 500 influencers across 45 countries found that 62 per cent do not carry out rigorous fact-checking before sharing information. Navigating today’s digital information landscape, then, requires strong critical evaluation skills.Reading plays a central role in this process by serving not only […]

Union of Concerned Scientists: Your Anti-Disinformation Safety Chain for Danger Season. “We’re now officially in Danger Season 2026—the period between May and October when North America experiences its worst climate impacts—and we should expect disinformation to ramp up on social media and other platforms. It’s the time when maintaining what I call the ‘safety chain’ matters most.”

If you are teaching your students critical thinking and digital literacy skills about AI, what resources are you using to teach with? We'd love to hear from K16 educators in classrooms and homeschooling how you're tackling this and what you recommend.

#Education #K12 #K16 #Homeschooling #HigherEd #DigitalLiteracy

On February 20, 2026, I presented a paper at the Future of Writing symposium 2026, whose main theme was “adaptability”. The symposium was organized by Mark Marino and Z.D. Dochterman and it was presented by The Dornsife Writing Program at the University of Southern California, the Institute on Ethics & Trust in Computing, the Viterbi Engineering in Society program, the Ahmanson Lab, the Electronic Literature Organization, and the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab.

I do not actually teach writing, but digital writing is the focus of my academic research and I teach digital literacy workshops (with the Socialini collective). These two experiences led me to present a phenomenological approach to teaching writing, a method that is in debt to C.I.R.C.E.‘s “hacker pedagogy” and their interface analysis, which I apply to writing interfaces. The title of the paper is The Daimon of the Interface: an (Alien) Phenomenological Approach to Writing Technology.

The overall goal of this approach is to help students develop a deep awareness of the interconnection and interdependence of writing and thinking, and of the influence that the tools we use have on our cognitive and writing processes.

Since my academic career is likely coming to its end soon, I thought it was better to publish it as a working paper on my Zenodo profile instead of going through the everlasting and exhausting process of developing it as it should be done, then submitting it to an academic journal and going through the full loop. I know this is a shortcut, but I also think that in the paper there could be some interesting ideas and the method I propose could be of some use to teachers. So in a spirit of openness and sharing, I prefer to put it out in the world. Of course, I’ll be more than happy to receive comments, critics and feedback: if you want, get in touch!

PsyPost: New research suggests truth has a natural competitive edge over misinformation. “Truthful messages are more persuasive and more likely to be shared than false ones, according to new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The findings, drawn from four large experiments, challenge the widespread belief that misinformation naturally spreads more […]

The Conversation: It’s not just gen Z – older adults need help spotting online misinformation too. “In 2024, nine in ten people in the UK reported seeing misinformation on social media. Yet only 3% of the population had taken a media literacy course. While there is working being done to ensure technology is accessible, users must have the skills and confidence to recognise if they are being […]

The educator panic over AI is real, and rational.
I've been there myself. The difference is I moved past denial to a more pragmatic question: since AI regulation seems unlikely (with both camps refusing to engage), how do we actually work with these systems?

The "AI will kill critical thinking" crowd has a point, but they're missing context.
Critical reasoning wasn't exactly thriving before AI arrived: just look around. The real question isn't whether AI threatens thinking skills, but whether we can leverage it the same way we leverage other cognitive tools.

We don't hunt our own food or walk everywhere anymore.
We use supermarkets and cars. Most of us Google instead of visiting libraries. Each tool trade-off changed how we think and what skills matter. AI is the next step in this progression, if we're smart about it.

The key is learning to think with AI rather than being replaced by it.
That means understanding both its capabilities and our irreplaceable human advantages.

1/3

#AI #Education #FutureOfEducation #AIinEducation #LLM #ChatGPT #Claude #EdAI #CriticalThinking #CognitiveScience #Metacognition #HigherOrderThinking #Reasoning #Vygotsky #Hutchins #Sweller #LearningScience #EducationalPsychology #SocialLearning #TechforGood #EticalAI #AILiteracy #PromptEngineering #AISkills #DigitalLiteracy #FutureSkills #LRM #AIResearch #AILimitations #SystemsThinking #AIEvaluation #MentalModels #LifelongLearning #AIEthics #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #ResponsibleAI #Philosophy

AI isn't going anywhere. Time to get strategic:
Instead of mourning lost critical thinking skills, let's build on them through cognitive delegation—using AI as a thinking partner, not a replacement.

This isn't some Silicon Valley fantasy:
Three decades of cognitive research already mapped out how this works:

Cognitive Load Theory:
Our brains can only juggle so much at once. Let AI handle the grunt work while you focus on making meaningful connections.

Distributed Cognition:
Naval crews don't navigate with individual genius—they spread thinking across people, instruments, and procedures. AI becomes another crew member in your cognitive system.

Zone of Proximal Development
We learn best with expert guidance bridging what we can't quite do alone. AI can serve as that "more knowledgeable other" (though it's still early days).
The table below shows what this looks like in practice:

2/3

#AI #Education #FutureOfEducation #AIinEducation #LLM #ChatGPT #Claude #EdAI #CriticalThinking #CognitiveScience #Metacognition #HigherOrderThinking #Reasoning #Vygotsky #Hutchins #Sweller #LearningScience #EducationalPsychology #SocialLearning #TechforGood #EticalAI #AILiteracy #PromptEngineering #AISkills #DigitalLiteracy #FutureSkills #LRM #AIResearch #AILimitations #SystemsThinking #AIEvaluation #MentalModels #LifelongLearning #AIEthics #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #ResponsibleAI #Philosophy

Critical reasoning vs Cognitive Delegation

Old School Focus:

Building internal cognitive capabilities and managing cognitive load independently.

Cognitive Delegation Focus:

Orchestrating distributed cognitive systems while maintaining quality control over AI-augmented processes.

We can still go for a jog or go hunt our own deer, but for reaching the stars we, the Apes do what Apes do best: Use tools to build on our cognitive abilities. AI is a tool.

3/3

#AI #Education #FutureOfEducation #AIinEducation #LLM #ChatGPT #Claude #EdAI #CriticalThinking #CognitiveScience #Metacognition #HigherOrderThinking #Reasoning #Vygotsky #Hutchins #Sweller #LearningScience #EducationalPsychology #SocialLearning #TechforGood #EticalAI #AILiteracy #PromptEngineering #AISkills #DigitalLiteracy #FutureSkills #LRM #AIResearch #AILimitations #SystemsThinking #AIEvaluation #MentalModels #LifelongLearning #AIEthics #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #ResponsibleAI #Philosophy

I am back!!!
And I brought Jacqueline Jayne with me. 🤘✨

Make some noise for an awesome episode 🎉

After taking a brief pause, I’m back at full speed with my shows: Redefining #Society & #Technology on ITSPmagazine Podcasts — ready to bring you bold conversations that challenge assumptions and question the role of technology in our lives.

This is the first episode published for the 2025 season, but trust me, many more are already recorded and coming your way soon.

And we’re kicking things off with a big one.

🚨 Australia recently banned social media for kids under 16.
A bold move? Sure. A solution? Well, that’s where the debate begins.

In this episode of Redefining Society & Technology, I sit down with my Australian friend Jacqueline Jayne to break it all down. JJ is a cybersecurity and human risk expert, and she’s got some strong thoughts about why prohibition never works.

Let’s face it—does banning something ever actually solve the problem?

We explore the unintended consequences:
⚠️ Will this really protect kids, or just push them to riskier online spaces?
⚠️ What about the communities that rely on #socialmedia for connection and support?
⚠️ Who’s actually responsible for educating kids (and adults) about online safety?

Technology moves fast, but knee-jerk policies don’t always keep up. Instead of banning, maybe it’s time we start educating.

📺 Start with the teaser video https://youtu.be/6wKbgTeNux8

📺 Then move on the full length video https://youtu.be/5ZehKjNsavc

🎙️ Or listen to the audio if it is your preferred media https://redefining-society-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/the-great-australian-social-media-ban-fixing-a-broken-system-or-just-breaking-it-more-guest-jacqueline-jayne-jj-a-redefining-society-and-technology-podcast-episode-hosted-by-marco-ciappelli

The importnat thing is that you listen now and join the conversation -- comment below!

Let’s rethink, redefine, and challenge the way we approach technology in society.

Subscribe to the podcast for many more stories about our relationship with technology and what it means in our digital-analog hybrid society.

✨ https://redefiningsocietyandtechnologypodcast.com/

Enjoy!

#Technology, #CyberSecurity, #DigitalSafety, #SocialMedia, #OnlinePrivacy, #InternetRegulation, #TechEthics, #DigitalLiteracy, #CyberAwareness, #FutureOfTech, #HumanRisk, #ParentalControls, #OnlineSafety, #HybridSociety, #TechPolicy, #BanningSocialMedia, #DigitalCitizenship, #DataProtection, #CyberEducation, #TechForGood

Oscar-winning documentary Navalny offers an inspiring model of what it looks like to stand up for what's right. Teach about Alexei Navalny's life & legacy with our free teaching guides for this riveting film. https://journeysinfilm.org/product/navalny/

#Navalny #Навальный #Russia #Putin #Democracy #Leadership #Education #K12 #K16 #CharacterEducation #SocialEmotionalLearning #CurrentEvents #WorldHistory #RussianHistory #PoliticalScience #Civics #SocialStudies #DigitalLiteracy @edutooters @film