“As some astute teachers pointed out, being able to log on to social media, as most of us can do, does not spell computer literacy nor competence in the use of digital technology”
Faith Marshall-Harris; Child Rights Activist
The dismantling of normal via COVID 19 has left many of us floundering and unstable with regards the intersection of unpredictability and our lives. In many respects our confidence has been shaken and we are not so sure that we can simply draw automatically on prior experiences to answer many of the seemingly unanswerable questions in an uncertain world. Now transfer this uncertainty to the education sector. We assumed that our children (Millenials and Gen Z’ers) who spend an abundance of time in virtual spaces would almost automatically know how to be students in online environments. We assumed that parents who use Social Media daily as both downtime and uptime activity would somehow “get it” (that is, embrace their new roles as parent/teacher supervisors); aren’t they after all familiar with “the technology”? We most definitely believed that teachers as life-long learners and educational specialists would be falling over themselves with enthusiasm to embrace their new roles as digital practitioners. Were we wrong and who exactly is this we I am referencing?
I am speaking about educational administrators, leaders, policy developers, planners, academics, technocrats and all of those not actively on the frontline of the day-to-day grind of teaching but who make many of the decisions which inform educational change. Did we develop our COVID 19 response mechanisms on a set of untried assumptions? The answer to this question is most likely to be yes since the emergency nature of our responses meant that there may not have been enough time to lay the required foundations for online learning or even blended learning to succeed. What should such a foundation look like and why is it even necessary for 21st Century education?
Digital literacy represents the idea of a new type of literacy or literacies which articulate the levels of skills or competencies needed to live and thrive in digital environments. To 21st Century civilization, Digital Literacy represents a slew of core competencies at a similar level of significance and necessity as was applied to traditional literacy in the 2oth Century. The three Rs; reading, writing and arithmetic in many respects still populate our understanding of what learning and school must expose our children to at a very basic level in terms of traditional literacy and numeracy skills. While these core requirements of formal education have not changed, our world has and this global shift, is demanding a response in education which can match the demands of an expanding digital agenda.
Digital Literacy is, therefore, described as the new literacy which represents “the interest, attitude and ability of individuals to use digital technology and communication tools appropriately to access, manage, integrate, analyze and evaluate information, construct new knowledge, and create and communicate with others.” (BC’s Digital Literacy Framework, n.d. p.1). Digital literacy constitutes a multi-leveled set of competencies which are not only defined by technical skills like word processing and Internet browsing but which involve the ability to make sense of a digital world. At the base level digital literacy speaks to technology access and the development of what traditionally has been viewed as “computer skills”, which may span from the very basic to the more advanced. The following capabilities, however, as represented in the literature (Eshet-Alkalai 2004, ALA Digital Literacy Taskforce 2011, Lemos and Nascembini 2016) constitute an expanded understanding of what it means to be digitally literate in the 21st Century:
- the application of cognitive skills in gathering, assessing and judging the relevance of digital content,
- the utilization of socio-emotional competencies to manage relationships in digital spaces by employing good netiquette,
- the application of ethics and integrity to guide digital use,
- understanding the notion of a digital footprint and the importance of managing one’s digital identity,
- the promotion of digital well-being and wisdom through bringing appropriate balance to digital use
- the knowledge to use a range of digital tools for communication, collaboration and ultimately to function not only as a digital consumer but as a creator and innovator.
This slew of capabilities involved in the understanding of digital literacy is quite a tall order to bring to any educational paradigm which caters to students at different ages and ability levels especially when there are variances in terms of access. The challenge for educational leaders and technocrats will be to emerge a general framework or a range of frameworks with adjusted benchmarks of competency across nursery, primary, secondary and tertiary education which can guide the emergence of digital literacy as the new core competency of 21st Century education.
This framework or group of frameworks should be guided by the following interrogatives: What will we want our students across these various levels to know and what do we expect of them in digital environments? How will we guide their interfacing with technology? How will we distinguish between what they know and what they practice? What national goals will these skills and competencies be linked to? Any framework utilized for education that is worth its salt should not exist in a vacuum simply because everyone else is doing it. It must be linked strategically to national development goals as these are then articulated through a national curriculum that is connected to the current development of a global digital economy. What we want our students to know as 21st Century digital citizens and how we expect them to function should, therefore, be critical within the context of relevance and applicability. This is particularly true in Caribbean societies where our digital needs will be influenced by and linked to our wider development needs and benchmarks.
Bennett’s (2014) framework as influenced by Sharpe and Beetham’s (2010) model, maps digital development in a linear way through the four critical areas of access, skills, practice and state of being and leads to four basic questions as developed by Charles (2019):
- What technological devices, tools or systems should we have access to?
- What digital skills should we have?
- What digital practices should we engage in as a result of those skills?
- What attributes should we possess or what behaviours should we demonstrate as digital citizens/how do we self-care in digital environments?
This understanding of digital literacy as a necessary 21st Century core competency and as hinged on the answers to these core questions, can also be applied to teachers/facilitators in terms of what institutional leaders will expect of them since their competencies will obviously be linked to what they are required to facilitate in their own classrooms.
A more detailed approach to framework building is seen in the JISC (2015) Six Elements Model, which departs from the notion of a hierarchy of competencies as espoused by Bennett (2014) and shows how various elements must intersect to emerge a digitally literate individual whether student, faculty member or leader. These six elements include ICT proficiency (the core), Digital learning and development, Information, data and media literacy, Digital creation problem solving and innovation, Digital communication, collaboration and participation and Digital Identity and well-being. Most significantly, the latter element of identity and well-being. is overarching and embraces all others. This rightfully places the individual needs and state of mind of the digital practitioner, over the use of digital tools and skills and suggests that identity and well-being will influence practice. (See JISC 2015 Model Below)
While these models can influence or guide the building out of a national policy for digital literacy development in education, such policies must also be far reaching in terms of addressing teacher training and professional development needs inclusive of leadership training, In addition, they should outline the roles which various stakeholders like parents or the corporate sector, should play in facilitating digital development.
Digital frameworks are critical because they leverage strategy which advance purposive approaches to digital development. Frameworks can pose the right questions which should lead to answers and the required action. Such strategic approaches must also include catering to the needs of those who are most vulnerable or marginalized in our school communities, particularly as this relates to the existence of a digital divide. Local educational authorities or Ministries of Education should, therefore, empower school leaders through advanced training, so that they are better able to tweak any national framework to more adequately meet their individual institutional needs.
The need to build a resilient and responsive education system is undeniably one valuable derivative of the current COVID 19 crisis. We have seen the need to build out a system which is dynamic and capable of including online and blended approaches for the facilitation of learning in a time where education may require an extended or even permanent re-configuration. Allowing our approaches to be guided by a detailed digital framework which is linked to both a national and an institutional agenda particularly within the context of a Caribbean reality, is an excellent place to start.
References
ALA Digital Literacy Taskforce, (2011). What is digital literacy? Retrieved from http://www.dla101.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/what-is-digilit-2.pdf
BC’s Digital Literacy framework., (n. d.). Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade12/teach/teaching-tools/digital-literacy-framework.pdf
Bennett, L. (2014). Learning from the early adopters: Developing the digital practitioner. Research in Learning Technology, 22:21453. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v22.2145
Charles, D. J. (2019). Exploring the digital literacy practices and perspectives of higher education leaders and the implications for digital leadership: A phenomenological study. Doctoral thesis.
Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: A conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13 (1), 93-106
JISC, (2015c). Digital capabilities. The 6 elements defined. Retrieved from https://digitalcapability.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2015/06/
Lemos, G. & Nascembini, F. (Eds.). (2016). ELINET Position paper on digital literacy. Retrieved from http://www.elinet.eu/fileadmin/ELINET/Redaktion/Amsterdam_conference/ELINET_Position_Paper_on_Digital_Literacy.pdf
Sharpe, R. & Beetham, H. (2010). Understanding students’ uses of technology for learning: Towards creative appropriation. In: Rethinking learning for a digital age: How learners are shaping their own experiences, Routledge. pp. 85-99. Retrieved from: https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/items/4887c90b-adc6-db4f-397f- ea61e53739e0/1/
FUTURE LEARN 2.0 