T.Varis 2004 1

Digital Competence Strategy Seminar

Professor Tapio Varis

University of Tampere, Finland

UNESCO Chair in Global e-Learning

www.uta.fi/~titava

T.Varis 2004 2

T.Varis 2004 3

Challenges of the 21st Century

• Digitalization: analog to digital

• Globalization: local to global

• Economic trends: the role of the information and communication technology

• New literacies and competences

T.Varis 2004 4

21st Century Literacy in a Convergent Media World

• From Information Society to Knowledge Society and Society of Dreams

• eKnowledge

• Education, e-learning

• Workplace Skills

• New Citizenship and the Role of Civic Engagement

T.Varis 2004 6

Reductionism

Digital literacy as operational knowledge

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A technological process

T.Varis 2004 8

Historical, social and cultural process

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Educational inventions

• The phonetic alphabet

• Printing

• Telematics (computers connected to networks)

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A technical change

Computerization and mediatizationTechnicalTechnical

SemioticSemiotic

IdeologicalIdeological

Organized socialization dimensions

Organized socialization dimensions

Programming and audiovisual languagesScience and technology

Transnational actors

Visualization and virtualization

Programmed society

Globalization and cyberspace

DimensionDimensionProcessProcessObjectsObjects

Computers and the Media

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Digital literacy is key to:

• Learning to learn

• Learning to work

• Facilitating job opportunities

• Providing each citizen with skills and knowledge to live and work

• Providing the confident use of new tools for assessing and using knowledge

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Mental and semiotics change

Linked to alphabetical signs

Linked to reading and writing

Communicative textual competence

Computers and screens

Computer signs and icons

Basic computer languages

On-line interactive media competence

DigitalCompetenceDigitalCompetence

Linked to texts

AlphabeticalCompetenceAlphabeticalCompetence

BasicCompetenceBasicCompetence

Basic cognitive operations

Oral and body expression

Personal and community media competence

Basic operations and manipulations

Socio-communicative textual competence

Global socio-communicative competence associated to cyberspace

Basic socio-communicative competence

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Basic questions

• Whose responsibility (society, learner?)

• Temporary telework, virtual family?

• Educational goals?

• Critical thinking skill• Social competence• Multicultural world• Basic values

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A sociocultural change

TechnicalTechnical

SemioticSemiotic

IdeologicalIdeological

Organized socialization Organized socialization

Print and books

Alphabetical and linear writing

Modern thinking and industrial capitalismFamily, community and national

Computers and telematics

Interactive and hipermedia systemsPost-modernism and financial capitalismGlobal societies and cyberspace

DimensionDimension ModernSocietiesModern

SocietiesInformation

SocietiesInformation

Societies

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Knowledge management

• Anticipating changes in working life and in industrial structures

• Incentives for the development of know-how (taxation practices etc)

• Wide-scale cooperation

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eWorld

• “On-line” civil society, net groups

• Local contents• ICT in everyday life,

work

• ICT as employer• B2C e-commerce• B2B e-commerce• e-governance• B2E employees• Legislation, ethics• New pedagogy

T.Varis 2004 17

21st Century Literacy SummitBerlin, 7-8 March 2002

• technology literacy• information literacy, contextual literacy• global literacy• media creativity• social competence and responsibility

T.Varis 2004 18

eLearning Competencies

• What knowledge and skills will enable people to do human resource development work?

• General competencies

• Management competencies

• Distribution method competencies

• Presentation method competencies

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Critical thinking and social competence

• Alvin Toffler (2000): need for critical thinking to what people see in television or read in newspapers to question the so called ”truths”

• Social geography (social competence)