Brief thoughts on ‘What is digital literacy?’

This sounds like a simple question doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. For a start the term ‘digital literacy’ is not universally used. But I use it as I find that this term best describes what digital literacy is, and I oftentimes use reading and writing literacy as a comparison. You did not learn to read peer reviewed academic journal articles straight away, you first learnt the basics and that is what you do with digital.

Domains of digital literacy

Again, this one is up for debate. But, essentially this denotes the themes of the digital capabilities and skills that you develop. For example technical proficiency, or data and personal security.
The domains are not completely stand alone. And there are areas of co-development and pre-requisites that I have found in my research.

Levels of digital literacy

The levels are organised differently in different frameworks. It really depends on the focus of the framework. But, most do follow a pattern of awareness, basic use, advanced use, teaching advanced use. My research shows that motivation to teach and develop others is not necessarily correlated to ability so you may find that you sit in higher levels for some domains, whilst not being able to agree with lower level skills. And that’s ok. It’s all about development.

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