Digital competence refers to the capacity to use computers and other digital technologies in all facets of life. In a learning environment, digital equipment can be utilized by teachers to create a productive environment for students to learn. Students can apply the learned digital skills to communicate effectively and gather and extract data to find solutions to everyday problems. Digital competence has revolutionized learning, complementing digital intelligence to make education easier for teachers to deliver.
The notion of digital competence can be defined using an expansive definition and an attenuated one. In the broad sense, it can be said to be the capacity to construct a beneficial digital environment for learners. Alternatively in a narrow sense, it is the ability to supply students with easy reading material from digital media (Furenes et al., 2021). The world today has moved to transact, interact and communicate digitally, and thus learning digital skills is essential for students if they want to fit into it. Digital equipment currently assists in shopping, banking, communication, creating art, making music, and even painting.
Digital tools in education provide ways to implement texts, audio images, and videos for an impressive experience. Teachers use these devices to enhance the learning system, which saves them time and helps their students stay engaged throughout the process. Students must use critical writing skills to support group study goals, collaborate on how to add, edit and delete texts, communicate concerns and use creative solutions to negotiate online group dynamics (Krishnan et al. 164). Digital competence embraces personalized and blended learning, ease of access, digital assessment of track progress, and competency-based and collaborative education.
Learning institutions are fitted with digital equipment, such as computers and tablets that assist students in learning. These tools can ensure that learners study and receive necessary information sooner and more efficiently than before. Hover and Wise (2020) found that teachers made lectures, videos, and assignments available online for the community to access. Previously, teaching required printed books to teach in class. These paper books required learners to read and memorize words to grow their vocabulary. Other than being bulky and environmentally unfriendly, these books were expensive to buy, easy to get destroyed, and depreciated much faster due to usage.
On the other hand, screen usage provided students with more control over their privacy (Asplund & Olin-Scheller 6). As opposed to paper books, the use of digital equipment in class has reduced the costs of buying books and is very environmentally friendly as forests do not have to be destroyed to make paper. All the above aspects make content delivery easy and effective and yield improved digital literacy. Digital books are more effective than paper books, mainly when they include a dictionary that defines infrequent words and expressions (Furenes et al. 506). The teachers have to explain to students how to use digital tools and, at the same time, protect them from harm that the devices can cause.
The importance of availing adequate and ingenious digital tools in the learning environment has grown over the past years. Teachers now have the ability to introduce new and one-of-a-kind experiences for students in class, providing them with unique perspectives and learning opportunities for new topics. Digital tools need recognition as they have become standard instruments for teaching. Hover and Wise (2020) found that teachers felt confident using technology in the classroom and desired more development for integrating technology.
Digital competence requires teachers to have cultural awareness, a positive attitude toward technology use, technological know-how, and top-notch content knowledge. Therefore, more effort should be directed towards exploring additional ways that digital technology could be used in the classroom. Additionally, its advantages and disadvantages, as well as its possible operation and maintenance difficulties, should be investigated further.
The main aim of this paper is to look at all the feasible opportunities for the introduction of digital tools as a supporting framework for enhancing students’ learning experiences and providing them with additional options for improved learning (Støle et al., 2020). In other words, it will examine the optimal digital strategies and ways of providing training and information sources to learners via new means and tools. A further goal of this paper is to look at how teachers can apply the use of digital tools in class to help guide the learning process. The way that these tools are integrated into the classroom will be investigated. The overall goal is to help in contributing to the enrichment of the quality of learning in a digital space.
Children have been gradually losing interest for reading, especially extracurricular reading. While children used to find historical and fiction literature interesting, they no longer do so. Spending much time reading books is now unpopular not just due to laziness, but because teenage social groups find it unacceptable. In mid-to-low social classes, there is no male role model that would stimulate reading, which further alienates adolescents from reading. Instead of spending their time with a book, children prefer to browse the Internet or play video games, and even those who dislike gadgets go out with friends instead of reading books. Thus, in present day Sweden, there is no example for a reading man, which leads teenagers to reject reading not just for homework, but as a hobby, as well.
During classes, children often use their phones for both studying and relaxing. As a study tool, phones are useful for making and using footnotes for building vocabulary without having to rely on a teacher as a mediator. Their downside in that regard is the impossibility to make spelling notes, which causes their literacy to stagnate. The children’s opportunity to relax is caused by teacher being unable to see what exactly a student is reading with their phone. When a student uses a book, the teacher can see the number of the page, pictures, and the student’s facial expressions. However, using a phone renders a teacher unable to see what the student reads, creating a safe and private space for a student. Sometimes, books are used as cover for using a phone, creating a false image of a student using a book.
Children coming from poorer families tend to have lower interactivity when a teacher using a screen, despite having high interactivity with the teacher themselves. This may be explained by them being unused to gadgets, notably the ones with screens. Generally, screens serve as a constant distraction for children, regardless of their families; income. Programs and sites demonstrated on the screen may have design that is too distracting for the children, including flickering, animation, or colorful advertising. Screens have another downside in that information received from them is more difficult to understand and memorize than in the case of a paper book. When reading a fictional story printed on paper, children demonstrate the greatest ability to comprehend information. Fantasy works are perhaps the most exponential example, as they include many complicated names of cities, characters, and countries, but children memorize them all quickly when reading a printed book.
It can therefore be concluded that screen reading represents the children’s independence from teachers and their opportunity to choose their own study material. However, the children’s ability to memorize information from the screen and even the ability to understand it is limited by the usage of a screen. Thus, a problem is raised, where teachers of the future have to decide how they can organize classes to continue their role as an intermediary between students and study material, which would be undoubtedly provided via technology.
The Swedish subjects’ teaching elements involve using digital tools to enhance communication and collaboration while ensuring information literacy. This aspect also involves problem-solving when students are distracted by social media platforms like Snapchat and Twitter when classes are ongoing. Exposure to ‘cyber safety’ education throughout the school and portrayed in students’ social media habits (Selwyn and Pangrazio 4). The Swedish subject involves teens such as Liam, thirteen years old, and his classmates. Using phones as study tools can assist Liam to track his progress by finding the last web page he visited on his phone.
Using phones has enhanced communication and collaboration, where students such as Erik engage their classmates in discussions about the images they are studying on their laptops and phones. The use of digital competence in the Swedish class is also relevant in enhancing information and data literacy, where the students learn how to organize digital data, information, and content. Noise pollution is discouraged by the teachers, and this leads to the students striving to maintain a learning-friendly environment. The students use headphones when watching moving images with sound during classes (Asplund and Olin-Scheller 11). A quiet and serene environment enhances understanding of the subject currently being instructed.
Considering personal experience, digital competence has proved to be vital in teaching Swedish to adults, aged 25–60, most notably, medical staff. As the classes are conducted online, a lack of technological know-how on the teacher’s part would render the classes impossible. However, the classes do not just include switching the Internet on. As contextual approach to teaching is used, students are often asked to describe items and the situation around hem in order to expand their vocabulary.
While such a method would be more associated with offline studies, it proved to be effective online as well. The students walk around their houses, showing them to the class with their phone cameras, and learn the words associated with their property together with the class. Some of the students join the classes from work, as they tend to overwork in hospitals. In that case, they use their gadgets to show the class what environment they work in. Because of that, the classes are now jokingly known as ‘Swedish doctor classes’.
Naturally, these teaching elements would be impossible without digital competence of both the teacher and the students. Several of the older students had difficulties with the technological requirements the classes have. In that case, digital competence was taught to them for free. Is the older students paid for a long period of classes in advance, the teacher offered their help with acquiring the lacking technology.
Of course, digital competencies are not just used for trying to invent novel teaching elements, and Powerpoint presentations, headphone sets, and certainly screens are standards of teaching in the classes. Because of the classes’ online nature, it would, again, be impossible to conduct them without these technological advantages. In other words, the online classes themselves are one large teaching element not only involving, but entirely based on digital competence. Therefore, online classes are one of the most significant digital competences by themselves, providing teachers and students with an opportunity to teach and study. Otherwise, in certain situations they would not just be limited in their opportunity to do so, but might have chosen not to teach or study altogether.
Digital competence allows students and teachers to merge paper and digital books, enhancing learning. The two types of books help keep the students motivated by knowing they have options to use a method they understand best. Existing digital literacy frameworks should incorporate the purpose of student’s skills use into their definition of digital literacy (List et al. 13). The main challenge in using digital tools for learning, especially for teens, is disruption from other social media platforms.
Curiosity guides teenagers, which is a significant setback when they have the means to satisfy their curiosity, yet they should be learning. Training in digital competence is required when considering the technological and content knowledge needed to teach (Guillén-Gámez et al. 19). A major ethical issue in digital competence is autonomy, where students will misuse it if they do not use technology without oversight.
Digital competence has brought many benefits to students and teachers. Embracing technology in education eases the learners understanding and keeps them engaged throughout the learning process. Teachers save time and avoid stress by ensuring students understand and visualize images of what they have read. Students who acquire digital competence skills are more suited to integrate into society since many functions have been digitized. These are essential skills to have, especially in the connected world that is around us.
Works Cited
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