Defining Digital Literacy
Digital Literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills (Digital Literacy Defined
ALA Digital Literacy Task Force, the person would:
1. Possess a variety of skills that are both technical in nature, as well as intellectual. These skills are then used to “find, understand, evaluate, create and communicate digital information in a wide variety of formats”.
2. Be able to use a wide variety of technology in an appropriate and effective manner to find information, interpret it and judge the quality of that information.
3. Understand the relationship between the technology used, life-long learning, privacy and the responsible use of information.
4. Make use of their skills along with the appropriate technology to communicate and collaborate with others.
5. Use their skills to engage and contribute to civic society, creating an informed and engaged community
Information Fluency
We have established that there are a lot of websites and pages available on the Internet, with more and more being added every day. The amount of readily available information is incredible to even try to imagine. This is often referred to as the InfoWhelm; the bombardment of information, much of which is irrelevant and useless. As a result of this rapidly increasing volume of information, facts become obsolete far quicker, with the knowledge built on those facts becoming less durable.
Here is a scenario depicting this. It is the year 2010 and you are preparing a presentation on the need for tertiary education in the 21st century, and you need to know how many people there are in the world. The crux of your argument is that we urgently need to address the way in which people access tertiary education, as there are limited numbers of tertiary education institutes with an ever-growing world population. You visit the site Worldometers.info to get the latest facts. You see that the world population is over 6 billion. Your presentation is a resounding success, and you become an expert on the need for education in the 21st century