Lesson 6: Developing Basic Digital Skills

As teachers adjust their teaching to effectively match the new digital world of information and communication technology (ICT), they must be clear on what basic knowledge, skills and values (or literacies) need to be developed by digital learners. These basic literacies will not replace the 3 R’s (reading, writing, and ‘arithmetic). But they will be complemented by six essential skills to equip students for success in the millennial world (Lucido, 2012).

  

These are:

•    Solution fluency- refers to the capacity and creativity in problem-solving.

•   Information fluency- an ability to access information, retrieve information and reflect on, assess and rewrite for instructive information packages.

•  Collaboration fluency- teamwork with virtual or real partners in the online environment.

•  Media fluency- channels of mass communication or digital sources.

•  Creativity fluency- artistic proficiency adds meaning by way of design, art and storytelling to package a message.

•  Digital ethics- guided by principles of leadership, global responsibility, environmental awareness, global citizenship and personal accountability.

In our day to day life, we are not aware that we are practicing or somewhat using the basic digital skills mentioned above and when we are using our brain to answer such complicated question the teacher told us to answer, we are already harnessing the solution fluency skill which refers to the capacity of every individual in answering or finding solution to the problem. And while using the internet we are using the rest of the fluency skills.

Moreover, because nowadays, getting information is readily accessible through internet and people are somewhat dependent on technology, harnessing the basic digital skills quite comes in handy because it is already part of our day to day living.

Also, when it comes to the learning of the students, mastering the basic digital skills will surely help the learners in learning because their creativity and capacity in dealing with every situations they may encounter will be taken into consideration in real life applications.

Reference:

Lucido, P. I. (2012). Educational Technology 2. LORIMAR PUBLISHING INC.