Who Is a Digital Literate?

Wikipedia defines digital literacy as "the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and create information using digital technology." While Gillen & Barton decide that 'digital literacies' are the constantly changing practices through which people make traceable meanings using digital technologies.

As you can see, with this category occurs exactly the same as to the definition of Web 2.0 or 3.0. Everyone with a sufficient background thinks he has the authority to define these concepts, but at the end, there is yet a common ground.

Terry Freedman, asks a question you might have been asking yourself, What is digital literacy? And while our conception falls in between, it is important to point his definition en terms of curriculum and behavior. Freedman writes that digital literacy should not be seen defensively:

A digitally-literate person will be able to express herself by creating a presentation, a podcast or a video. She will be able to validate data before putting it into a model, and then verify the results of the modeling process in terms of the accuracy and plausibility of the data.

A digitally-literate person will be able to use software applications in elegant and efficient ways, and even perhaps in ways that could not have been foreseen by the program's creators.

Terry seems to panegyric what Microsoft recognizes as digital literacy: "Teach and assess basic computer concepts and skills so that people can use computer technology in everyday life to develop new social and economic opportunities for themselves, their families, and their communities."

What I do agree with the England native is that no student should graduate from school "without being knowledgeable enough to be safe online." Assuming all teens behave in the very same way, because Madrid (Spain) digital natives seem to have grown up taking care of their own privacy. Americans are relentless to privacy, even when teachers tear apart their shirts to make sure students understand the value of privacy online.

Finally, I want you to read what is happening when England's government oversees the digital literates in this country (bolded is ours):

Teachers tend to teach technology up to the limit of their own knowledge, and that this effectively holds children back. In my experience, where technology is taught by non-specialists, this kind of "dumbing down" goes on as a matter of course. It's not deliberate: teachers don't know what they don't know. It's therefore not a criticism as such. If I taught English, it would almost certainly be superficial, because I'm not an English specialist, even though I've been speaking the language for over half a century. Why should we assume that if we send someone on an interactive whiteboard training course and give them a laptop for producing their worksheets, and they book their vacations online, that they're qualified to teach technology?

Since I am not an expert on digital literacies, I should not been writing about this topic.

What do you think?

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