>Digital Literacy or Digital Fluency?

I have never specifically thought about the difference between Digital Literacy or Digital Fluency until now as I have just inherently practiced both in a seamless way.

As a matter of clarity, I thought I would provide a definition of both terms here.

Digital Literacy

Digital literacy is about the ability to find, evaluate, use and create digital content in meaningful ways that require critical and creative thinking skills.

The ability to understand and use language and symbols across a range of texts is vital in the information-rich digital environment.

As students learn and interact in digital contexts it's important that they have the abilities to manage themselves.

National Library of New Zealand

Digital Fluency

Digital fluency is about supporting teachers, kaiako, ākonga and students to confidently and effectively use digital technologies to enhance teaching and learning outcomes.

Digital fluency includes being an adept producer of digital content and understanding the social costs and benefits associated with digital technologies, including issues of access and equity.

Digital fluency is about helping ākonga to develop skills in critical literacy in digital contexts, and to recognise how language, symbol and text affect understanding and communications.

Ministry of Education

Discussing Digital Fluency

I was recently asked my opinion on Digital Fluency by Karl Summerfield of CORE Education, who I have known for a while now. Along with his colleagues, he was trying to find ways they can hook teachers into caring about Digital Fluency because in their words, ‘it's stopped being trendy.’

We were talking at a conference we met at, about the transition of some of the students at my intermediate school to the high school. I mentioned that one of my fears is that I have taken my students so far in their Digital Tech journey, only to send them on to high school where they may not have the opportunity to complete challenging projects that use the skills and knowledge that they have learnt at intermediate.

Karl wanted to capture my thoughts for a webinar which was aimed at an audience of teachers, principals and facilitators. Here is an excerpt of that webinar.

On behalf of the Ministry of Education, CORE Education delivered the webinar as part of a series in August - September 2021 which was intended to build a stronger understanding of the professional learning priorities and their importance in improving outcomes for learners. The full webinar is here for you to view:

https://core-ed.org/professional-learning-solutions/regionally-allocated-pld/digital-fluency/