Digital Literacy

1.   What is digital Literacy?

Digital literacy can be defined as: “The ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and create information using digital technology.” Digitally literate people can communicate and work more efficiently, especially with those who possess the same knowledge and skills.

Digital literacy is the ability to understand and use digital technologies effectively for everyday tasks

2.  Why is digital literacy important?

Digital literacy is as important a right for children today as reading and writing skills were at the inception of the Education Act in 1850.

·       writing and reading have been the cornerstones of literacy since modern education began, increasingly, digital technologies are superseding the manual process of writing, and reading is increasingly an activity carried out using digital facilities rather than paper resources.

·       Digital literacy is key to teaching in order to provide the skills, knowledge and understanding for young people to enter the workplace, further education and higher education.

·       digital literacy is becoming the primary form of information transfer and communication, taking over from letters, phone calls and even face-to-face interaction

·       Creative, collaborative and recordable communications techniques are essential for the next generation to interact in social, cultural, economic and intellectual careers and life.

·       Digital literacy involves using emerging technologies to communicate meaningfully across technology, language, social, cultural and intellectual barriers.

·       A variety of devices, platforms and web standards need to be incorporated into the educational experience to ensure pupils are fully literate in digital technology (not simply familiar or proficient.)

3.Situations where students would use digital literacy skill, at school and at home

Teaching pupils to use Photoshop is a worthwhile industry-standard skill which is not only useful for cross-curricular IT skills, but also for job and career prospects. In school, they may use digital literacy skills to make a presentation, etc. At home, they may use these digital literacy skills to enhance their own photos, websites, and social media profile pictures.

4.  Why is digital literacy important to teachers?

Ø Expanding Conceptions of the Digital World

While students may be adept at using digital tools, their understanding of what these tools can do is often limited.

For example, students use Instagram to post photos but don’t think to use the platform for art or history projects. They record themselves with a voice memo app but do not realize those apps could also be used for journalism projects or a historical narrative piece. Digitally literate teachers know how to inspire students to use today's technology as a powerful toolset to expand their learning opportunities. 

Ø Enabling Differentiation

Differentiation in the classroom is essential to meeting the needs of all learners, but it is time-consuming, especially for new teachers. Technology, when used creatively and correctly, can be used to mitigate those differences, such as in one-to-one classrooms. Teachers can lead the class through a lecture, while visual learners follow along with illustrations on their tablets and audio learners record the lecture for later review. Technology like this enables teachers to give their students choice in the kind of work they create for projects, such as a video, podcast or written story. Digital literacy is required in order to set the standards and boundaries for this kind of differentiation.

Digitally literate teachers also understand that it is less about the technology itself than it is about the tailored experience the technology can provide to each student. This is what drives differentiation and can make it powerful and highly targeted to students' individual needs.