Digital Fluency goes beyond digital literacy it is a more comprehensive understanding of digital mediums (Howell, 2012 ). Programs application and devices are constantly expanding growing and adapting to the ever expanding digital world it is not enough just have skills in one operating system or program style but an understanding on how programs work and how to get the most out of all programs, application and databases. So how do teacher improve their own digital Fluency and that of their students?
The best way to understand an application or program is to experiment with it see what are its limitations thru trial and error the most comprehensive learning is accomplished. It is important for teachers to construct learning activities that assist students learning to stay in the zone of proximal learning (O’Donnell et al. 2015) by using scaffolding (O’Donnell et al. 2015) to help direct the student learning and trial and error. Let the student make their own mistakes and assist were needed to direct the students use of the technology to learn as many useful skills as possible and use the program to its full potential creating a learning environment that caters to individual students needs and encouraging digital fluency. Gomez believes that students that are encouraged to learn programing are able to see things differently. Learning Programing allows students to understand what is going on behind the gooie or interface of a program or application allowing them the understanding on how to debug, fix and use a program to its potential, as well as the ability or possibility to create their own applications and programs. Digital fluency is the future students that don’t get the opportunity to work on the digital skills and fluency will be left behind in the digital revolution. The teaching of digital skills can and needs to start in the early stages of education teachers need to be equipped with the skills to be able to incorporate physical learning and development of motor skills along with skills towards digital fluency.
References
O’Donnell, Dobozy, Bartlett, Nagel, Spooner-Lane, Youssef-Shalala. (06/2015). Educational Psychology, 2nd Edition. [VitalSource Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9780730324904
Jennifer Howell, 2012, Teaching with ICT Digital Pedagogies for Collaboration and Creativity, published in Australia by Oxford University Press.
Jeff Gomez, you tube Transmedia Storytelling with Jeff Gomez UNITECZ added 2013 sighted on https://storify.com/jehowell/transmedia-learning – 14/04/2016
Images
Fluency and networking – https://corasunflowers.wordpress.com/author/corasunflowers/
Digital era connect – https://ladybowring.wordpress.com/weekly-reflections/week-6-digital-fluency/
Teaching in a Digital World- By Emily Bond 