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Developing digitial literacies for working in a digital world

by Paul Bailey 24 May 2012 2 comments

We heard this week that too many young people lack the social skills needed to get their first job. The report by the Work Foundation (PDF) doesn’t explicitly mention digital literacy, but perhaps it should. With an estimated 90% of UK jobs requiring some level of IT competency, the notion of digital literacy - those capabilities that equip an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society – is becoming a key requirement for employability.

But will they really make graduates more employable? Why are digital literacies important to institutions and students? Is this something new or the same old skills agenda just repackaged again?

These issues and more are explored in a two part series of Jisc on Air radio programmes that looks at how institutions have recognised the strategic importance of digital literacies of all staff and students working in a digital world.

In the sixth episode we are exploring how universities and colleges can help teaching staff, researchers, support and administrative staff to develop their digital literacies - those capabilities which prepare an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society.

One trend I’ve noticed is that when it comes to ‘keeping up’ with their tech-savvy students, institutions are realising that this is no longer a race they can win. Instead they are looking for approaches that allow them to continue to meet the needs and expectations of learners in the 21st century.

These issues are explored in a two part series of the Jisc on Air radio programme that looks at how institutions have recognised the strategic importance of digital literacies for staff and students working in a digital world.

Find out more about how Jisc is investing in the area on our website.

Watch videos showing how different institutions are implementing digital literacies at a strategic level with our funding

To follow the ongoing developments of the Jisc funded Developing Digital Literacies projects visit the Netvibes page which collates all the project blog postings and subscribe to the Developing Digital Literacies programme blog for up to date information about the developments in the programme

Join our digital literacy mailing list to contribute to discussions around digital literacy and how it affects your institution.

Jisc On Air Podcast Episode 7: Developing digital literacies for working in a digital world
(Duration: 15:48)

Listen now [audio:http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/avfiles/programmes/elearning/jisconair/jisco...

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2 Comments

Steve 30 May 2012, 12:03pm
Good article.
Matteo 26 August 2012, 5:40am
Caution crankiness ahead Frankly, I don't get the hand-wringing about iavsnion of privacy. Public tweets are *public* and on the web already anyone could be archiving them, at anytime. (And I would assume that the Internet Archive has already been quietly crawling the service for years and locking up the discourse on Justin Bieber for posterity.) Since my account is open, I don't tweet about stuff I wouldn't want my parents, or my employer, or anyone else who might Google me, to know about, either now or in the future. Upon further reflection, I'm not always thrilled with what I've tweeted, but that's the risk I assume when I hit send. It's like posting to the listserv sometimes you may regret that you wrote something, but once you've sent it, there's no way to get it back. (One of the reasons the list archives were going to be discarded a few years back was because a few posters asked to have their posts removed and threatened to sue SAA. Most people agreed that was ridiculous, regardless of what they thought of the value of the listserv and its archives.)I also don't get the archival consternation. Yes, there are issues to be worked out and Brad and Terry have brought up excellent points but it seems like we as a profession do too much of debating the nuances of every issue *instead* of taking action, rather than just taking action and working out the details later. With electronic records, the latter is essential since things emerge and evolve so quickly. Though they're not our national archives, and probably this idea is the brainchild of IT and digital preservation people, not archivists, it seems very fitting to me that it's the Library of Congress that is plowing ahead.(Yes, fools rush in where angels fear to tread, but I do think this is a case where we would have come to the conclusion that much of this is worth preserving and worked out a way to do so. It just would have taken us years to get there. And since the NARA is not a collecting repository, LOC is probably the closest we have to a people's archive anyway.)