I am profoundly sad to live in a world where computers specifically, and technology more broadly, are only understood by a few, yet relied upon by so many. I’m an educator at heart, and usually describe my job as being “to make your job easier,” so I’ve been Sitting in the question for quite some time about improving digital literacy.
Digital literacy is fundamental to a person’s Dignity, and their ability to participate with value in today’s society. Skills training is not the answer. Education that covers the concepts, backed by skills training is.
I’ll first deal with my assessment that learning conceptual knowledge (digital literacy) is more important than learning just technical skills alone (digital competency) and for that I’ll use the EU Digital Competence Framework (DigComp)1 and files, because it’s a fundamental concept many people have difficulty with. I agree with the intention and categories in DigComp, but believe it assumes knowledge people don’t have. For that I’ll use a couple of related DigComp standards to highlight how easy it is to overlook concepts in favour of technical skills.
- CS1.3.03 (Basic level): “Download, save, retrieve, move and delete digital files”
- CS1.3.07 (Advanced level): “Apply naming convention to digital files and hierarchies to digital folders”
What’s a digital file?
Today’s file based technologies have not yet reached Asimov’s definition of magic, unless we mean they are so difficult to understand they may as well be magic. The two standards above assume you understand what a file actually is because each of the actions apart from “save” which initially creates a file, need you to conceptually understand that a file is a named object that stores information for later retrieval, has a location and can exist as multiple versions over time.2 Naming conventions have nothing to do with files. A file called “shopping list” can also be called “asdfp897”. Naming conventions are about search and retrieval by your Future self and to be fair, DigComp does have this in a section on “Information search, evaluation and management”.
With this concept in place, I contend that it’s easier to understand:
- Different file types
- Why coping a file to a USB can be a security problem
- Why malicious actors want access to files that store personal information
Technology continues to outpace education and when we fail as a society to impart conceptual knowledge people lose agency. In a digital world, the loss of agency translates into a loss of Dignity and becomes a barrier to taking care of other fundamental human concerns.3 What we see as a technology problem is actually a human problem. A person who incapable of using the technology in front of them may be unable to take care of the following domains of human concern.
- Dignity: Assess they are worthless because “I’m no good at computers” when they’ve never been educated in what they need to be functional.
- Sociability: Lacking the ability to coordinate action alongside those who are more digitally literate than themselves, risking exclusion through an inability to participate (at all, or at comparable speed). They may be held to an unfair assessment of competency and if I don’t think you are competent to address my concerns, I won’t involve you.
- Work: Unable to do the work required of their job in a way that meets expected standards.
- Career: Feel purposeless and unable to set a direction in life
- Money: Unable to earn enough money to survive
- Education: Build upon what they know and increase their ability to take care of other concerns because basic principles are missing
In other words, a person lacking the training they need will have difficulty working with others, face unnecessary financial pressure (or be seen as a “cost”), underestimate their value and generally have such a shit time they leave.
Ironically we’ve been “trained” to think training is the right answer and missed the human concern concept that underpins its necessity. Never have we been taught to see the humanity we all share. It matters to me that I do what I can to help people recover their missing dignity and make their lives easier.