From filing your tax return and applying online to maintaining contacts via social media, you need digital literacy to participate in society. If you understand how digital technologies work, you will be better prepared for the future.
What is digital literacy?
Digital literacy includes all the skills you need to survive and develop yourself in the digital society. From information skills to being able to move safely on the internet, from computational thinking and programming to media literacy and basic ICT skills.
You are digitally literate if you have the following four skills:
Media Literacy
Media literacy is part of digital literacy. Media literacy is the conscious, critical and active use of all available media – digital and analog – to increase the quality of your life and to ensure that you can participate optimally in the world around you.Media literacy is not (only) about technical skills, but mainly about competences such as information processing, understanding, self-insight (reflection) and the ability to solve problems with media or to develop new creative applications.
Computational Thinking
Using computers requires a different way of thinking, also known as computational thinking :
- Being able to control computers and computer-controlled devices themselves, so that a computer can help find solutions
- Analyzing and logically organizing data
- (Re) formulating problems and search questions
Information skills
Basic ICT skills
You need basic ICT skills to use your computer, tablet or smartphone and programs on it. Many libraries offer courses to master these skills, such as Click and Tap.
Tips: Get started with digital literacy at school
Primary schools feel the need to increase the digital literacy of students, according to the Digital Literacy Monitor 2019 . 72% of teachers indicate that they pay attention to digital literacy in one or more subjects, and teachers rate their students’ digital literacy at an average of 4.9 (on a scale of 0 to 10).
Especially for primary education, organizations has made guides with tips for getting started with digital literacy. In the guides, teachers can find recommendations for vision and policy, information and inspiration, useful products, teaching materials, and tips for monitoring and professionalization.
Digital literacy is also becoming a compulsory part of the secondary education curriculum. That reason alone is why companies like Unruly Splats have dedicated an entire learning program to teach kids STEM learning, which includes digital literacy. Check out these frequently asked questions about digital literacy.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do we make children digitally?
It is often thought that children who are growing up now are of course digi and media wise. Some children are indeed smart and fast with computers, but in practice these are exceptions. Most children lack the insight and prudence to use ICT and computers wisely.
By letting children get to work themselves – with coding, for example – they experience how algorithms work and how they can be used in computer programs.
What are 21st-century skills?
Those are the skills we need in the 21st century. We see that companies, universities and training institutes attach less and less importance to knowledge and more and more important to skills such as:
- Collaborate
- Creativity
- ICT literacy
- To communicate
- Problem-solving ability
- Critical thinking
- Social and cultural skills
The 21st century skills are also called 21st century skills. Also programmed is a 21st century skill.
