When I started building my digital garden, I didn’t just want a place to collect notes. I wanted a space where ideas could grow, connect, and evolve, and where others could learn alongside me.
That vision is rooted in something much deeper: my mission as an educator to help people feel safe , organized , and empowered in digital spaces. For me, that’s what digital literacy is all about.
What Do We Mean by Digital Literacy?
Digital literacy isn’t just knowing how to use technology; it’s about navigating, evaluating, and contributing in digital environments. It’s about:
- Moving through digital spaces safely and critically
- Organizing and managing information meaningfully
- Evaluating sources and claims with care
- Expressing identity and ideas clearly across media
- Participating in knowledge-building communities
In earlier research, we proposed that true digital literacy must include ownership and agency. That’s why we advocated for a model where students develop a domain of their own, a personal space online to create, share, and reflect on their learning over time.
“If we really want students to be digitally literate, they need to have a personalized learning space online that provides more than just a snapshot of their participation in one class or one school year.”
— O’Byrne & Pytash, 2017
That idea has shaped how I approach my digital garden. It’s not just a notebook. It’s not just a website. It’s a living, evolving learning environment , and a public example of what a digitally literate space can look like.
Learning Out Loud: Process Over Perfection
Much of the internet shows the finished product: the blog post, the published paper, the final draft. But digital literacy is just as much about the process.
In my digital garden, you’ll see:
- Notes at different stages (Seed → Plant → Evergreen)
- Interconnected ideas through backlinks
- Ongoing revisions as I return to topics over time
For example, my AI Index began as a personal glossary for machine learning terms. Over time, it grew to include:
- Highlights from podcasts and Coursera courses
- Questions I still don’t have answers to
- Workshop prep materials and teaching slides
By sharing this process openly, I model what it means to learn in public , to let your understanding evolve in the open.
Organization that Supports Curiosity
A big part of digital literacy is knowing how to find , filter , and connect information. I’ve built my digital garden to help readers do just that.
Instead of a single search bar or a linear feed, the garden offers:
- Tag-based clusters for key topics like AI, education, and digital ethics
- Dataview dashboards that surface recent updates and curated entries
- Backlinks that let you follow ideas laterally, not just top-down
So whether you’re a student curious about digital equity or a teacher planning a media literacy unit, you can explore ideas that are linked and layered, not locked away in folders or behind LMS walls.
From LMS Silos to Personal Spaces
In traditional learning management systems (LMSs), student work often disappears after the class ends. It lives behind walls, accessible only to a few, for a short time. This sends the wrong message: that learning is temporary and not worth saving.
In contrast, my digital garden is portable , open , and student-owned, the same values we championed in A Domain of One’s Own. Whether you’re in K–12, higher ed, or beyond, learners need spaces that:
- Archive learning across time
- Showcase growth and reflection
- Empower identity development
This is about more than convenience. It’s about giving learners control over how their learning is documented, shared, and remembered.
How You Can Use the Garden
Here’s how my digital garden supports digital literacy, for you, your students, or your own personal knowledge practices:
| Use Case | How It Builds Digital Literacy |
|---|---|
| 🧠 Reflect on Learning | See how ideas evolve over time with visible versioning (Seeds → Evergreens) |
| 🌍 Build Digital Identity | Model how learners can represent themselves online, responsibly |
| 🧰 Curate and Share | Use the structure to collect, revise, and publish knowledge over time |
| 🔄 Connect Ideas | Explore how concepts link through backlinks and thematic clusters |
| 🎓 Support Lifelong Learning | Notes persist and grow, bridging learning across formal and informal spaces |
This isn’t just about reading notes. It’s about engaging with knowledge in a way that’s exploratory, relational, and ongoing.
A Living Example of Digital Literacy
My digital garden isn’t just a place for publishing thoughts—it’s a working model of what digitally literate practice can look like:
- Organized , but open-ended
- Transparent , but intentional
- Personal , but connected to the community
It reflects my belief that digital literacy isn’t just taught, it’s lived. When we design tools, lessons, or online spaces, we have an opportunity to model the values we want learners to adopt: ownership, inquiry, connectedness, and care.
Let’s Grow Together
If you’re exploring how to teach or practice digital literacy in your own context, I invite you to wander through the garden. You’ll find glossary entries, research notes, teaching resources, and much more.
Coming up in my next post, I’ll reflect on what I’ve learned from building this garden. The surprises, the roadblocks, and the shifts in how I think about knowledge work in public.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. How are you building your own digital learning spaces? How do you support ownership, curiosity, and connection?
Let’s keep learning—and growing—together. 🌱
Originally inspired by:
O’Byrne, W. I.,& Pytash, K. E. (2017). Becoming Literate Digitally in a Digitally Literate Environment of Their Own. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(5), 499–504. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.595