Sunday, August 16, 2015

LESSON 6 Developing Basic Digital Skills

In the traditional way of learning, the 3Rs are the given emphasis in the instruction. But do you think it is still applicable in today’s generation? Guess not. On this blog post we will know deeper about the basic digital skills that are looked-for in the new digital world of information and communication technology (ICT).

On my previous blog we give prominence on the differences and comparison between the old and new generation. But on this post, we will tackle on the new generation only for this is all about their fluency skills.

Going back to the 3Rs, which are reading, writing and arithmetic, these three are the foundation in the traditional system of instruction but in the new system where literacies need to be developed by the digital learners. These literacies were the following: basic knowledge in ICT, values in ICT, and skills in ICT. These basic literacies will not replace the 3Rs but they will be complemented with six essential skills to equip students for success in the millennial world. These literacy skills are better called as fluency skills conveying the ease and facility in acquiring and using them. These are the following fluency skills:

1.      Solution fluency
  • Refers to the capacity and creativity in problem solving
  • Requires whole brain thinking executed when students define a problem, design the appropriate solution, apply the solution, and assess the process and result.
2.      Information fluency
  • Involves 3 subsets of skills: an ability to access information, an ability to retrieve information, and the ability to reflect on, assess and rewrite for instructive information packages.
3.      Collaboration fluency
  • Refers to teamwork with virtual or real partners in the online environment.
4.      Media fluency
  •  Media refers to channels of mass communication or digital sources.
5.      Creativity fluency
  • Also called artistic proficiency. It adds meaning by the way of design, art, and story-telling to package a message.
6.      Digital ethics
  • Guided by the principles of leadership, global responsibility, environmental awareness, global citizenship and personal accountability.

Entering the new world of information and communication technology opens the way for complex and higher cognitive skills. 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 requires information processing, idea creation and real-world problem-solving skills.


The above taxonomy is patterned after new scientific knowledge on how the human brain works. By developing higher thinking skills, the schools today can inculcate the digital fluencies, while overcoming limitations inherent in digital technology, resulting in superficial and mediocre learning skills of new learners. 
       
This serves as a guide for teachers on how the learning process of their learners took place or how it happens. As a future teacher, it is very important that we are knowledgeable of the skills that our learners need to achieve. It is as if the same with our objectives in the instruction. Also, because we are more onto the digital era, teachers as well as the students need to enhance their digital skills thus saying that we should add to the three basic R skills. We will not eradicate the three basic Rs but rather add improvement in the betterment of our skills.

We can apply this one whenever we will use audio-visual materials/resources as the aid for our instruction. For example, we choose PPT presentation in discussing our designated lesson of the day. But before we come up with that presentation, we should be able to make a good PPT slides in order for us to deliver the lesson well and attractive to student. Another thing is that we should be aware of the copyrights when we will research in the net. Ethics it is.

See? In order for us to create digital instructional materials we should first improve our basic digital fluency skills.

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