Digital Competence

Inaugural issue - Table of content

Digital and Inter-Generational Divide
Paolo Ferri
Digital divide can be considered a macro economical index representing the social differences and the separation between the North and the South of the world. Since the first definition of digital divide, it has been shown that it is also a great and unrecognized problem in the developed countries, especially in the field of education. “Digital disconnection” is a key problem for School and University as institutions. In this article, the above questions are widely analyzed with a special attention on the spreading gap between digital natives (i.e., young students), and digital immigrants (i.e., parents, teachers and policymakers in the school).

Bebras Contest and Digital Competence Assessment: Analysis of Frameworks
Antonio Cartelli, Valentina Dagiene and Gerald Futschek
The article is made of two parts. The first part discusses the importance of informal education environments supported by IT/ICT in students’ learning, followed by reports of some international competitions and the role they have in improving students’ interest and use of Informatics and related disciplines. At the end of the section, it describes the Bebras contest, an international competition supporting students’ Information and Communication Technology competences with emphasis on cross discipline competences, which are useful to solve real life problems. In the second part of the article, the outcomes of a research study on the features of a framework for digital competence assessment are reported. Based on this, some criticisms emerging from the analysis of the answers that students gave to a questionnaire built on the guidelines of the mentioned framework are analysed. They are integrated by the comments that teachers, colleagues and researchers made on the structure of the hypothesized framework. At last, a new model for digital literacy assessment is proposed. In the conclusion, the necessary elements for making the last framework effective are outlined and its suitability for the construction of the yearly questionnaire of the Bebras contest is discussed.

Digital Literacy in a Lifelong Learning Programme for Adults: Educators' Experiences and Perceptions on Teaching Practices
Athanassios Jimoyiannis, Maria Gravani
The study presented explores aspects of adult learning on digital literacy in the context of a lifelong learning programme for social cohesion in Greece. The article outlines the framework of the digital literacy subject and underlines its associated objectives regarding adults’ knowledge and competence in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The exploration draws upon the experiences and perceptions of eight adult ICT educators. The findings reveal that the educators tried to use flexible instructional practices that were adjusted to adult learners’ needs and interests. Common effective instructional practices used were: ICT competence sessions, interdisciplinary and multi-literacy lessons, ICT-based projects, individual instruction sessions. Additionally, the article reveals the difficulties that adults faced in the course of developing ICT literacy skills. The article ends with implications for the design of adult digital literacy courses in lifelong learning programmes, and for the preparation and development of the ICT educators in the years to come.

Framework for the Experiences in Digital Literacy in the Spanish Market Carmen De Pablos Heredero
The information society must be considered, above all, a society composed by people. For that reason, a social priority for the information society development should be centered in the acquisition of knowledge. To be included in the digital literacy means to have the technological capabilities that allow a person surviving in the information society. We try to offer real examples for the development of digital literacy in a variety of areas of application: education, social inclusion and firms. For that reason we describe and analyze the contribution of digital literacy to the following Spanish projects: Educared, which promotes the spread of Internet for innovation and pedagogical training amongst teachers, parents and students in primary and secondary schools; the Dana Project, which identifies good practices to reduce the digital gap based in gender; and Competic, a program offers good practices for the promotion of information and communication technologies in small and medium size firms.

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