Each desk had everything required for illuminating and copying: inkhorns, fine quills, which some monks were sharpening with a thin knife, pumice stone for smoothing the parchment, rulers for drawing the lines that the writing would follow.
– After Nones, The Name of the Rose
Acknowledgement of these capabilities reflects the importance of framing digital skills in terms of ‘creation’ skills as well as ‘consumer’ skills (European Commission, 2016).
– Digital Skills for Life and Work, Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development
The term literacy, according to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics refers to, the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. There are other UNESCO definitions which take the digital space into account. One dictionary says it is a person’s knowledge of a particular subject or field.
We are now in the fourth industrial revolution and each revolution changes the employment, lifestyle and therefore education landscape in ways which require new literacies.
The fourth industrial revolution, according to Xu and others (2018), “is characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres”.
Xu and others (2018) say the features of the fourth industrial revolution which would alter significantly the way, we live, work and play are 3D printing, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, other innovative technologies, and the Internet of Things.
Living life to the fullest would require a deep familiarity with all things digital.
Students would have to start acquiring and honing digital literacy. What are the practical benefits of being digitally literate and what does digital literacy mean in different contexts?
This year, a group of researchers (Tinmaz et al., 2022) published their paper to answer exactly what digital literacy means, in the journal Smart Learning Environments. Their paper was in essence a compilation of the work of other digital literacy researchers. It contains the various aspects of digital literacies which may be required in different situations.
According to them, digital literacy can be applied in the following 9 areas: Industry 4.0, Networking with others, consuming news and other media, producing content for entertainment, producing cultural artefacts, doing research for academic purposes, participating in civic discussions of the day in a responsible manner, learning, the world of work and at a personal level when a person would have to analyse and critically evaluate what is found online.
Some examples of these 9 areas and the required digital literacy skills are as follows.
Due to push factors such as space constraints and pull factors such as an expanded customer base, more sellers and service providers make online their primary mode. On the buyer side, there is plenty of choice and sometimes many versions of the same. Log on to any shopping platform and you might notice many pop ups and other animation and there may be no clear direction for the eye to follow (unlike when reading conventional print) in order to fulfil some objective. Being digitally literate would enable users to optimize their experience in such a complex environment.
To be able to do so, users would need to be able to understand and use visual information (including pop-ups and what they mean), evaluate and combine information from multiple platforms, be able to process various stimuli at the same time, know how to move and get things done in a non-linear, hyperlinked environment and apply cyberspace rules (Eshet-Alkalai, 2012 as cited in Tinmaz et al., 2022).
Information is now prolific and in multiple formats from hyperlinked webpages, to videos, sound clips and traditional text in digital form. This is both good and not so good because now, users have to also be curators. Knowing what sources to trust, where to find sources and how to recognise subtle biases in content or otherwise think critically about content becomes important.
Users of information would need to know how to feel the need for information, find relevant information, evaluate information, and use information in an ethical manner (Tinmaz et al., 2022).
They would need to think digitally which means being able to identify fake news, misinformation, and echo chambers (Sulzer, 2018, as cited in Tinmaz et al., 2022).
There are various publishing (in any existing format) enablers on the internet and there must be some awareness of not only how to use creation software but also to do so responsibly and ethically.
Being digitally literate means realising that there is now in fact a world of options for procurement of services and other goods which transcend geographic boundaries. It means multinational teams can be assembled even on a one-off basis. This would require the ability to not only evaluate these various sources but also to understand the different cultures involved. This requires what some researchers have termed “transcultural digital literacy” and “participatory literacy” – “the ability to join an online team working on online content production” (Tinmaz et al., 2022).
There are two other aspects of digital literacy which are important. These are digital safety and digital emotional-social skills (Tinmaz el.al). This would include for example learning how to manage one’s online identity.
Accordingly, digital literacy is not merely the ability to understand how a mobile application works or the awareness of different online platforms and how to use such platforms. As Xu and others (2018) suggest, it is knowing how to conduct life online, how to effect positive outcomes in the physical world through actions online and being able to organise life around a mix of digital and physical affordances.
So, what can primary school students do to begin to acquaint themselves well with a digital environment? First, they would need to understand clearly that with the freedom that digital devices and the internet offer, there are many distractions. They would need to determine not to be distracted or at least how long they would allow themselves to be distracted.
They should be aware that for any conceivable question they have in relation to studies, there are many free sources of information. This brings into question the need for notes and guide books. They need to understand the value of composing their own curated notes based on their needs.
They can begin to practise the following: typing regularly on word processors, crafting emails in a socially appropriate way, looking for information online and creating content online in the form of blog articles or YouTube Videos.
They must keep their parents informed of their online activities for their own safety and so they can receive guidance on information or content they find disturbing or confusing.
The grass is always whatever you want it to be on the other side.
The Brain Dojo
