By Tassos Anastasiades
Digital technology has evolved over the past few years, changing the way we interact with our surroundings or perform daily tasks such as shopping, communicating with others, making payments etc. Digital technology has become an important life skill – our daily routine work is now highly dependent on it.
Therefore, it is important to understand the use and concepts of technology. We believe that it should be to the students from a young age. Considering the fast-paced technological changes, the ability to use digital platforms, devices and navigate through the digital world to study, upskill and also build careers is a critical need for students, today. With the onset of AI change has become much more rapid.
Digital skills can be categorized as a ‘future relevant skill’ because it allows the user to find, create and use information on the internet. It not only makes accessibility to information and other skills faster, but also catalyses work efficiency. According to the World Economic Forum, over half of the global workforce will require upskilling and reskilling by the year 2025 making it even more critical to ensure students are familiarised with this.
The changes have definitely begun, with students across the world going digital during the pandemic using Google and Microsoft Teams across their online classes. This not only caused schools and other educational institutions to scale up their teaching methodologies and student communication practices, but the youngsters also learnt about technology at a very young age leading to more interest and ease in machine learning.
Here are some reasons that explain why digital literacy is a big plus for students-
Evergreen Skills: Digital literacy ensures that students learn collaboration, agility, teamwork and leadership, to deal with challenges, take risks and even manage risks. Secondly, it sharpens their critical thinking, reasoning and analytical skills while their sense of creativity and innovation also get a big boost. Students also learn about problem-solving, multi-disciplinary approaches and understand that a problem can have multiple solutions, thereby encouraging a mindset that looks at a subject from a different lense.
Communication: Communication is one of the most future relevant and in-demand industry skills and nothing can beat its power. The young learners are exposed to various communication tools like how to be a good listener, observe things carefully, present anything in a simple but impactful manner and most importantly, use technology to communicate effectively through social media tools.
Responsible behaviour: With great power comes great responsibility. This is especially true for digital usage. In fact, it’s a responsible mindset on both sides that needs to be cultivated—the educators and their students. Keeping this in mind, curricula have begun to collaborate with industry giants like Meta to craft skilled courses in digital citizenship for students in middle years, to make them understand everything about the impact of their digital actions in the virtual and real world. Besides other subjects, the students are also given an understanding about responsible social media behaviour and distinguishing between propaganda/fake news and real news.
Digital literacy also bridges social divide and grants more accessibility to groups who may be marginalized and ensures equality. It also opens doors for community engagement, constant upskilling and better education with the help of supporting tools that provide an immersive experience to the young learners.
But most importantly, digital learning is a critical key to the future because it can empower a country and build a talent pool that can catalyse great economic growth. At GGS we are cognisant of the importance of the safe and sensible use of technology and the potential for innovation. Our Academic Honesty policies are not empowering oracy, so that students can confidently speak about their research and become confident resilient learners with a strong voice.
The author is principal- IB of Genesis Global School, Noida. Views are personal.