Digital Fluency - A Current Trend...and Issue!

In a rapidly changing educational world, life as a classroom teacher is rapidly evolving from the early days of my teaching career. My classroom practice today is so vastly different to when I first started teaching 16 years ago and I often think about many of the changes that have occured. Many of these changes have been influenced by trends and issues in education or the global environment. Core Education recently released their top 10 trends for 2016.  

While many of these stuck out for me as being relevant to my current and future classroom practice, one that particularly captures my attention at present is related to the cultural domain and the need for our staff and students to have digital fluency.

Broadly speaking, digital fluency is a combination of these three concepts:

• digital, or technical, proficiency:
• able to understand, make judgements about, select and use appropriate technologies and technological systems for different purposes; this might include knowing how to use technologies to protect one’s data, digital identity, and device security.  
• digital literacy:
• in digital spaces, being able to read, create, critique and make judgements about the accuracy and worth of information being accessed;
• being fluent in critical thinking and problem-solving online;
• Use digital tools to collaborate and construct information across all relevant and significant contexts
• social competence, or dispositional knowledge:
• the ability to be able to relate to others and communicate with them effectively;
• able to manage one’s identity, information, relationships in ways that are appropriate, responsible, safe and sustainable.

-Core Education 2016

Core (2016) state that Digital Fluency is “Driven by personal responsibility, online identity, digital literacies and citizenship, cyber security, access and equity of opportunity.”  This is relevant to me because as a teacher of a digital classroom where students are 1:1 with Chromebooks and as a Dean in charge of pastoral care, every day I am faced with issues of how to ensure students are able to use the tools available to them in an appropriate manner and how we can equip both staff and students to manage this. I often have to deal with incidents of inappropriate online behaviour, with students not thinking through the possible long term repercussions of posting a comment or photo online. Within my classroom, I often have to assist my students in choosing the best method for presenting their information or teach them how to use a variety of online tools. How to collaborate with others online is also a frequent lesson being taught, as my students interact with others from around New Zealand and the globe. Being able to define the difference between a social versus a learning interaction (for example the difference between a Facebook and an Edmodo post) is also a new skill my students are learning.  

So how does this influence our education system and my practice as a classroom teacher? According to (Resnick, 2002, p.33) “In the years ahead, digital fluency will become a prerequisite for obtaining jobs, participating meaningfully in society, and learning throughout a lifetime.” [via White, 2013]. As teachers, we have a responsiblity to ensure that our students are prepared for the future world they will live in and we already know that technology is playing a major part in this. Rapid innovation is leading to frequent developments in technology and while this is a positive, it also has many pitfalls. Through the Mindlab, we have seen how many of these technological innovations (Virtual Reality, 3D printing and Gamification to name a few) can be used to benefit our students.  We know that as educators, we need to give our students the knowledge and capabilities to succeed in a variety of contexts on a local, national and international scale. We need to ensure that we keep up with the way technology is being used, adapted and also the impact it has in a number of situations so we can not only make decisions about what we do in our classrooms but also in the wider online world.

Online safety and Digital Citizenship are two aspects of Digital Literacy that I feel are two of the most important. Our students need to be aware of creating a digital footprint and how this can not be erased. In the same context, as educators we need to recognise the potential pitfalls that our own online use, particularly around the use of Social Media can create. We need to develop a curriculum that allows the skills required to be digitally fluent to be woven in, as opposed to being done as an add on, which is something I have seen in many schools including my own. By weaving it in to the day to day workings of our classrooms, it does not become stand alone, it becomes a core part of everything we do and this is vital for our students.

Over the coming years, I can only see the need for students to be digitally literate increasing. I frequently need to consider my practice, look forward and identify ways in which I can develop digital fluency within the students that I teach, so that they develop the necessary skills to navigate successfully and safely in an online world. They need to be able to create knowledge, use this knowledge for a variety of purposes and all the while consider how what they do online might impact on others.  

References

Core Education http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends

White, Gerald K. (2013) Digital fluency : skills necessary for learning in the digital age. Melbourne : ACER

Current Issues in My Professional Context

Socioeconomic data indicates a number of interesting factors that contribute to our school community. Using data from the 2013 Census and as a Decile 4 school, factors that stand out are that 24.8% of our community are one parent families, 46.4% of income earners over the age of 15 earn $20,000 or less per year resulting in a low household income and our school ethnic breakdown includes 46% of our students who identify as Maori. When considering the educational status of many in our community, which the American Psycholgical Association (2016) also highlight as contributing to socioeconomic status, we see that only 14.9% of our community aged 15 or over hold a Bachelors degree or higher.

As a school we are similar to some of those around us. Two of our contributing schools are Decile 4 also, while a third is Decile 9. The Decile 9 school was allowed to recapitate in recent years to also have Year 7 & 8 students. This had a small impact on our numbers of students entering at this level. However, in recent years, we have seen a growing number of Year 9s choosing our College over two others in the wider region that were previously their schools of choice. I believe that this is a reflection of the positive gains we have made through changing our school culture to better meet the needs of our students and wider community as well as raising student achievement through these changes.

So where does our school culture fit in? According to Wilson (2013), a school culture has three key facets; a vision, unity and empowerment. For myself, I believe our school vision encompasses all three of these factors and these contribute fully to developing our school cuture. We are striving for a school where all students feel valued, safe and secure, while also wanting them to have the skills required for the future. Our mission statement supports this where we say we want to develop young people who strive always to be the best they can be. We manifest our culture through a combination of our school values - Respect, OC Pride, Active Learner and Responsibility, our school motto - ‘Kia Kaha’, our use of Te Kawa o Te Ako which acknowledges our connection with our local iwi and of course the way we demonstrate these through our everyday teaching, learning and actions. Our culture does not start and end in the classroom, it carries over in to our wider school and local community when our students and staff represent the college at sporting and academic endeavours or just in day to day life. A recent ERO report highlighted the welcoming feel our school has and how students actions and in class learning reflect our values and vision on a daily basis. Recently, when showing a prospective family with three children around our school, they commented on how welcoming and positive their experience had been. The children also commented on how different it felt to their current schools and how they could see the positive interactions between both staff and students.

The professional environment within my school also plays a key part in developing, and maintaining our school culture. When we consider the norms of improving schools as cited in Stoll (1998), I think these are reflected within and by staff and students. For the professional environment, the way in which the staff work together in a collegial manner is vital as a way of moving our school forward. While the fourth level of collegiality as identified by Stoll (2008) where joint work is highlighted has not always been present, in the last few years this is something that we have developed. Changes in leadership and the way in which decisions are made has had a major impact on our professional environment. Staff are now willing to work together to move the school and themselves forward in a professional manner. People are having the ‘hard conversations’ which would previously have been very difficult to have and know that it is not about an individual person, but actually to help us become better teachers. We are becoming more open in our practice in order to acknowledge and identify thing we need to change but also to celebrate the things that are going well.

When considering the socioeconomic status of our community, it helps us to better understand many of the issues our young people and their families face, when they come through our front gates as well as helping to identify areas in which we want to help facilitate change in order to help not only our students but the wider community. Gargiulo (pg 7, 2014), identified a number of strategies, many of which we have also introduced within our school, which have contributed to and had a positive impact on our school culture. For example, we are a Positive Behaviour for Learning School. In conjunction with restorative practice, our students and staff are fully involved in putting things right when they are not going so well. We have introduced Pre-Trade and UCOL courses which operate in conjunction with local businesses and Tertiary providers, meeting a gap that previously exisited for some of our students. We have food available for students who come to school hungry and staff are always available for supporting students in need. By introducing these programmes and developing our school culture to be a nurturing one, we are breaking down many of the barriers that the socioeconomic status of our community creates in order for genuine learning to occur.

References 

Gargiulo, S. (2014). Principal sabbatical report. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Leadership-development/Professional-information/Principals-sabbatical-reports/Report-archives-for-2007-2014/Secondary-award-recipients-2014/Gargiulo-Salvatore

Stoll (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture

TEdEd.(2013, Jun 21). Building a culture of success- Mark Wilson.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_8Bjz-OCD8

Statistics New Zealand (2016) 2013 Quick Stats About a Place - Otaki. Retrieved from

http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-about-a-place.aspx?request_value=14334&parent_id=14325&tabname=#