What is digital literacy?

[Terry Freedman]

Here are my views about digital literacy. Challenge me.

Digital literacy should be one of the key parts of any curriculum.

What is digital literacy? Let's express this in behavioural terms.

I believe that it should not be possible for young people to leave school without being knowledgeable enough to be safe online (not just from sexual predators but from financial, racist, and other types of predator too).

It should not be possible for anyone to leave school and then leave laptops in the back of cars, usb sticks containing sensitive data in pub car parks, or sell hard disks containing data on eBay. All of these kinds of actions are undertaken by digitally illiterate people in my opinion.

Digital literacy should not be seen only in defensive terms:

A digitally-literate person will be able to express herself by creating a presentation, a podcast or a video. She will be able to validate data before putting it into a model, and then verify the results of the modelling process in terms of the accuracy and plausibility of the data.

A digitally-literate person will be able to use software applications in elegant and efficient ways, and even perhaps in ways that could not have been foreseen by the program's creators.

There are, or should be, lots of opportunities for pupils to apply and practise their digital literacy skills, right across the curriculum. However, in order to do so, they need a deep, not a superficial, understanding of the processes involved. These are not trivial. Take, for example, the concept of data validation. It's quite sophisticated, and quite necessary. It's summed up in the adage, "garbage in, garbage out", meaning that if you put rotten data into a computer you'll get rotten results. Someone has to be able to ensure that the data going into the computer is not full of errors, or of the wrong type.

It's been found recently , by the government inspection body in England, that teachers tend to teach technology up to the limit of their own knowledge, and that this effectively holds children back. In my experience, where technology is taught by non-specialists, this kind of "dumbing down" goes on as a matter of course. It's not deliberate: teachers don't know what they don't know. It's therefore not a criticism as such. If I taught English, it would almost certainly be superficial, because I'm not an English specialist, even though I've been speaking the language for over half a century. Why should we assume that if we send someone on an interactive whiteboard training course and give them a laptop for producing their worksheets, and they book their vacations online, that they're qualified to teach technology?

In fact, if we are really serious about embedding technology in the curriculum, the answer is not to get rid of it as a subject and farm it out across the curriculum, but to do the precise opposite and increase the amount of time spent teaching it. That would give pupils a much firmer skills base to employ in other subjects. It would also give non-tech teachers more confidence in using technology in their classrooms because of the knowledge that the youngsters pretty much know what they are doing.

Thoughts? Comments? Let me know!

[Emilie Bronée Petersen]

Mostly i understand where this is going. I believe that the idea of teachers limiting children are right, you see many students know much more about degital literacy then what the teachers do, and the some of the things we learn are much more self taught then exsplained. We may however not as teens be able to use the internet safely, sometimes we dont know what the outcome of our doings can be, we may not have the common knowladge and awareness. However i think that most of the people i sit in this room with understands, but if they dont there is much more to learn then just knowing how to work a computer.

[Terry Freedman]

That's a very honest evaluation, Emilie. One thing that older people have is more experience of the world in general, even if not about the internet in particular. There is also evidence that people's brains don't stop developing fully until their early to mid-20s, and that the under-developed bit is the part responsible for assessing risk.

[Seung Lee Choi]

I believe Digital Literacy is the ability to understand, utilize, and apply technology in daily life. To be digitally literate, you should be respectful and considerable in terms of being one of the hundreds of millions of digital citizens online and being interactive with them as well as be capable of using technology properly and smartly. You should also be able to present and express yourself with the use of technology. Most importantly, you must always make wise decisions when you are learning something new through technology because not everything available online is beneficial or useful.

[Terry Freedman]

Well said, Seung, especially the very last sentence!

[Jucastaing]

I have the same notice as you and the other who has commented this text . I think all the young of my generation know use the technology because we born with that, so we have more experience than our parents or teachers.

[Terry Freedman]

Yes, Jucastaing, but surely there is a difference between being able to use technology, and being able to use it wisely? Just to take a really simple example, I use Twitter a lot, and when I receive a direct message telling me that a particular website has some great bargains, I am digitally literate enough to know that it's almost certainly a scam, so I delete the message. If it really was genuine, my friend will simply send it again. The first time I used FB I received a message supposedly from the founder of FB telling me that I should pass along the message to all my friends. I guessed (correctly as it turned out) that it was fake. What I'm saying is that I didn't need to understand the technology comletely in order to be safe when using it, so people like myself and your teachers still have something to pass on to digitally literate teens such as yourself ;-)

[Si Jin Seol]

I personally think that Digital Literacy is a thing that all people should be reminded of when using online. Online is a public place where many people work, communicate and present things, so all the people online should show respects and should be considerate when using any kind of programs or websites. In order to be a Literate person, he/she should know the importance of Digital Literacy and they should be capable of using any programs when presenting things. When all the people in the world know Digital Literacy and how to become a Literate online, then the community online would become much better than how it is these days. Therefore, Digital Literacy is something that should exist and be followed.

[Terry Freedman]

Hi, Si Jin. I wish everyone would realise that online is a public place. If they did, they wouldn't be so ready to behave in certain ways, or to upload information and pics without thinking about it fully first.

[yuan ke]

As the article has indicated, technology shouldn't be banned from the modern world, because it’s many positive effects on us, but also is it still possible to do so!? Or is it just too late!?
I agree with the idea of increase in the teaching on it, instead to let the students off on their own and mislead themselves as they are exploring. And I also agree with the suggestion that teacher should only teach the student what they are capable of doing, that way, it ensures that the skills and techniques transferred to the students are appropriate and am within abilities of the teachers so that they are aware of the range of the student’s actions online. Even so, the digital world is that wide opened to everyone, there are no ways of not taking certain risks once entered. Therefore I think educations on the possible danger and risks taken in the digital world should also be reviewed with youths growing up online, and also it effects and ways of preventing.

[Terry Freedman]

Yuan, I don't think it's a question of getting rid of risk completely, because as you say, that's not possible. All we can do is be aware of the sorts of risks 'out there' and do what we can to avoid them. I like your idea of reviewing the risks with young people. Too often it seems like we're doing stuff to our students instead of with them.

[Da Jung Park]

Digital is the things like laptop, cell phone or others like these things. Those making person effects to doing games, listening music or downloading not very important things. Also some peoples are trash away if it's old or tedious on what they are playing games. Some times person doesn't know what is TECHNOLOGY... and they just play and chetting on online. It's not very property what teenagers are doing in internet chet and looking video. Parents just leave them and don't care what their childs are doing by computer internet. When they are doing game, parents doen't touch and leave them to play. Later, they will have skills to play games and using internet to put video or picture.

I didn't undestand this article so It's not sure in 100%

[Terry Freedman]

Da Jung, you have identified an important issue: most parents don't know what their kids are doing online. That's a large part of the problem.