Lesson 6

Developing Basic Digital Skills

As teachers adjust their teachings 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.

Three basic literacies:

• Reading
• Writing
• Arithmetic o 'Rithmetic

Six essentials to Equip Students for success

1. Solution Fluency - this refers to the capacity and creativity in problem solving.

2. Information Fluency - this involves 3 subsets of skills, namely:

• An ability to access information
• An ability to retrieve information
• An ability to reflect on

3. Collaborative fluency - this refers to teamwork with virtual or real partners in the online environment.

4. Media Fluency - Media refer to channels of mass communication (radio, television, magazine, advertising graphic arts) or digital sources.

5. Creativity Fluency - Artistic proficiency adds meaning by way of design, art and story-telling to package a message.

• Font
• Color
• Patterns
• Layout

6. Digital Ethics - The digital citizen is guided by principles of leadership, global responsibility, environmental, awareness, global citizenship, and personal accountability.

Higher Thinking Skills

• Entering the new world of information and communication technology opens the way for complex and higher cognitive skills.

• While Bloom's Taxonomy of Thinking Skills can serve as a general framework of skills, a new era of creativity in the digital world has led to introducing a kind of framework that requirs information processing, idea creation and real-world problem-solving skills.

Bloom's Taxonomy

The structured problem solving - process known as 4D's also exemplifies the instructional shift in digital learning.

• Define the problem
• Design the solution
• Do the work
• Debrief the outcome