There’s a certain familiarity when I hear the words “digital” and “literacy” together. It faintly reminds me of Wikipedia because of its prominent importance in the digital interconnected string of the world wide web. The site is credited by many people to be a reliable source of information, despite the criticism of nearly every educator who assigns written reports that are dependent on citations. The general argument against the use of Wikipedia is that “anyone” is able to edit and modify the contents of a given wiki page, but this is not as simple as it sounds. Like any natural structure of civilization, there are levels of trust within the wiki community. Within the hierarchy of Wikipedia are groups that form and contribute together on a specific topic of interest. Sometimes the groups are umbrellaing a general topic, with subgroups managing the specific branches – I like to think about it as United States formation of army. There is only a select few at the very top who have ultimate say on any topic within Wikipedia, and they supposedly hold a high reputation.
Check the different wiki roles of a registered account here
I don't mean to sound like a bot here, but digital literacy is important because it enables people to get jobs, which spirals back to getting better education, to become a feedback loop for improving quality of life for everyone. Being able to make use of the latest technology to achieve fulfillment and success in your career is a standard that I think elementary schools should teach to kids while they are developing. Humans should understand that our use of tools is what makes us a powerful species. We are squishy and fairly weak creatures but our strength lies in understanding and solving problems that come up in reality.
Of course there is an entire site dedicated to a malformed version of wikipedia called unwikipedia so if you do want true chaos you could just go to that.
