Five Ways in How Educational Institutions Can Improve Student’s Digital Literacy
1. Making Social Media/ Digital Literacy Into a School Subject
The gap between the workplace and traditional education is forever increasing and social media is becoming more vital for success in the workplace.
It is also a danger and probably a likely cause to the anxiety pandemic young learners experience.
Schools should implement programmes where they guide students on what to share. This would enhance their professional presence and allow them to make connections which would help them in their future pursuits.
When asking adult learners about their digital literacy capabilities they all came up to an agreement that technology and social media helped them in their professional lives, but was detrimental in their personal lives.
Implementing digital literacy and social media practises into the school system will allow young minds to differentiate between their professional pursuits and how technology can aid in this journey. To the purpose that their professional digital practices overtake their personal practices so that they are using technology with a reason and purpose.
Currently, schools offer very little experience in students digitally networking and exploring their professional pursuits and aspirations. Schools can start by investigating safe online platforms where students can demonstrate their work and creativity.
2. Learning through Each Other — Parents, Teachers, Students and the Community
Of course implementing digital programmes is easier said than done. Teachers are expected to teach something they may have no prior knowledge or experience and technology in the classroom with projects can sometimes come across as half-baked. This can lead educators to revert to tried and tested traditional practices, hence omitting much needed ICT practises.
A classic viewpoint is to also blame the parent if their child is being passive with technology, such as staring at a screen when they are at a restaurant.
However, this perspective can be flawed as in an ever-changing more technological immersed world, how can we expect the parents to be digitally literate themselves.
Hence, there would need to be a greater collaboration between teachers, students and parents. Homework assignments need to move beyond basic worksheets and be replaced by digital projects, where the student will be creating a digital project under the guidance of both parents and teachers and enabling a multigenerational learning process to occur.
3. Teacher Training and An Injection of New Blood
Currently, in my home Portugal there is a teaching crisis as the majority of teachers range from 40 to 60 years old, and there is a lack of members from generation Z wishing to become teachers.
Of course, this is not stating that younger teachers make better teachers. However, most teachers in Portugal have been in their positions for decades and there is a strong presence of fatigue and burnout which is detrimental to the goal of teachers embracing digital practices.
There seems to be a global pattern where young people do not wish to be teachers due to immediate low pay and lack of opportunity. However, the world of entrepreneurship and becoming an influencer in a profession does seem appealing to many young minds.
An influencer and a teacher have similar characteristics bar a digital divide. Governments can focus on this aspect to appease to younger people as they have an immediate audience with their students .
They can provide digital platforms for teachers to grow their audiences and experiment with the aid of young helpers. Of course, content must fit into the ideals and practises of education, however teaching can be a platform to launch their digital careers in becoming influencers of their profession.
We must remember that teaching is heavily cerebral and there is a common stage of burnout. I would say from my experience that an individual can experience twenty years maximum in a classroom. By changing methodologies and making them more digital, we equip young learners with vital digital skills and we can appease younger people who wish to pursue a digital career.
4. Replacing tests with Projects
Of course the main obstacle in the way of students’ digital proficiency is what we ask them to do.
Schools are built to supply standardised tests in order to funnel students into higher education and not to enhance their autonomy in surviving and functioning in the modern workplace and society.
One priority to clear the clutter of an archaic system would be to evaluate the effectiveness of tests, and which ones can be replaced by projects instead.
In an ever-increasing AI dominated world where a chatbot can do a test or essay better than a human hand, it shines a light on the redundancy of tests.
Instead, students should be encouraged to incorporate the use of AI in their projects. But find a right balance so that they can avoid ‘Imposter Syndrome’ when it comes to the ownership of their work.
As it currently stands in a conformist educational system students are looking for hacks and cheat codes, this reflects on the popularity of the Youtuber Mr Beast who is considered the king of hacks and cheat codes. With AI they are given the ultimate cheat code; however it is the responsibility of educators to lead the collaboration between students and AI in order to enrich their content.
Knowledge is best when it is applied, procedural and practical. The workplace is filled with tasks and projects and hence education has a responsibility to reflect the the modern world.
5. Regulating Tech Companies in Order to Enrich Children’s Digital Learning
Observing the differences with Facebook and Instagram we can see a slight lexical change that has had a profound impact on society. The transition from friends to followers. We are no longer looking to build mutual friendships but instead consumers of our content.
It is not a hidden fact that tech companies’ main priority is consumption. From Google and Metas consumption of our data, Apple’s need of locking us into their ecosystems, and articles misleading headlines to lead you in to consume, It is a fierce, competitive playing field and young minds are caught in the crossfire.
My experience with online teaching has sadly given me the preconception that Generation Z are the consumers of the digital world. I myself am a millennial, however I have seen a shift with students who once knew how to create digitally, but now they only know how to consume.
I could be wrong, however it does not deter from the fact that the online world is a dangerous place for children and if we want them to be digitally literate in order to prepare them for the ever online workplace,institutions must create safe online platforms which will not farm their data, and help them to focus on making qualitative and educational content.
It is a worrying aspect that the fundamental application of AI is for consumeristic purposes where they see the human agent as nothing but a passive consumer. Imagine a world where the principal application of such a dangerous, fascinating, autonomous tool would be to learn with the human agent and enrich their educational process and productive/creative abilities.
