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!

[Terry Freedman]

Seong, definitely: respect for others is vital, and a crucial part of being digitally literate in my opinion, because it's about being culturally literate too.

[Jin Ho Lee]

Yes, I think what you have said make sense. A lot of students can make their own videos and power point to show other people, and most of them are not appropriate. Also they are not capable with what they have done. Students are using technology more often than adults. So some teachers have a limit to teach some students. Therefore, I think to solve this problem teachers should have more skills on technology more than student. Also parent have to care their child more than usual to solve this problem. Therefore I think digital literacy is well made for students and will make them follow the digital literacy.

[Terry Freedman]

Jin, it sounds like you're saying that teachers should be digitally literate too! If so, I agree. But I don't think they necessarily have to be as digitally literate as their students to do a good job of teaching them.

[Yu Rim Choi]

I agree with your opinion. Most of the teens learn technology of digital literacy by themselves. As you mentioned teens use digital literacy in many ways. They make presentations, videos or other things. But sometimes they have difficulties cause they don't know how to use or what to do to do them. And also not only learning new skills they also can learn the proper way to use digital literacy from the teachers.

[Terry Freedman]

Yes, Yu. "they also can learn the proper way to use digital literacy from the teachers." Exactly. Digital literacy is more than just having technical skills IMO.

[keon Huh]

Digital literacy is basic concept of everyone who use oline. Online is the public space, so people respect each other. Therfore, if oline user upload their files or pictures. They should think about this files or pictures are not harmful to people. I think, learning Digital literacy is important thing who use oline. It might be making level of everyone's etiquette higher.

[Terry Freedman]

I agree, Keon. You appear to be referring to cyber-0bullying. I think also people should make sure that the pics they upload are not harmful to themselves either.

[Pat G]

I disagree with the sentence about how students should not leave school until they are technologically smart. The reason that i think this is because you do not need the internet to know how to use it. All of the things that you hear about people getting arrested for the things that they do on the internet should basically teach others what they can and can not do. I also agree with most of your topics. Some topics that I agree with are that students need to learn how to make presentations in case they ever go online to chat with someone.

[Terry Freedman]

The trouble is, Pat, people rarely learn from seeing what happens to other people, because they always think it can't happen to them. I think a school has a duty to teach its students to be as safe and as creative with technology as possible.

[Alec S]

I agree with you on this topic. The reason that I agree is because most teenagers are smart enough to understand if someone is a sexual predator. The thing that kids need to know is to protect from financial, and racist predators. The world is becoming more advanced and I think that kids need to be able to use the internet in a safe way.

[Terry Freedman]

The thing is, Alec, although teenagers may be smart enough to recognise a sexual predator, but only if it's pretty obvious. Some give out all sorts of details about themselves without realising how potentially risky that could be. But I agree that not enough attention is paid to other types of predator.

[Jordan B]

i think he's right how we should introduce the technology more. we should increase time spent on the computer instead of minimizing it. this would be good so we can invent new things or make things better like how he said in the paragraph after digital literacy. so, i agree with him 100%