Monday, 22 December 2008
e-START Digital Literacy Network & Digital Literacy in Europe
The Project of the Month at elearningeuropa.info is the e-START Digital Literacy Network working in Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Austria and Finland. e-START is a Network of key players for promoting Digital Literacy in Primary and Lower Secondary (K-9) education in Europe and beyond. The mission of the e-START Network is to provide a universal communication base to support Digital Literacy Policies and Actions in compulsory education. e-START has held a number of international symposia, panels and workshops around Europe and organised the First International Conference on Digital Literacy (see conference website: http://e-start.brunel.ac.uk)
For more on e-inclusion, read the Digital Literacy European Commission Working Paper and
Recommendations from Digital Literacy High-Level Expert Group: this Report presents the outcome of the Digital Literacy Review that the Commission has undertaken as part of the commitments made in the Riga Declaration in 2006 and in the eInclusion Communication in 2007: a series of eInclusion targets, including reducing by half the gap between digital literacy levels of disadvantaged groups and the average for the EU by 2010.
Digital Literacy is increasingly becoming an essential life skill and the inability to access or use
ICT has effectively become a barrier to social integration and personal development. 470 digital literacy initiatives across the EU were analysed together with the results of the digital literacy module of the Community Survey on ICT usage in Households and by Individuals. The main conclusions are:
(1) Member States have invested in large digital literacy programmes over the last ten years
as part of their Lisbon priorities for information society and as a result regular Internet
use has grown rapidly, particularly among young persons for whom skill levels and usage
rates exceed that of the USA.
(2) Digital literacy remains a major challenge and more efforts need to be dedicated to
supporting disadvantaged groups, in particular those over 55.
(3) There is evidence that secondary digital divides may be emerging in relation to quality of
use and more needs to be done to increase the levels of confidence and trust in online transactions and the use of ICT for lifelong learning for all.
The Review also identified good practices to bring disadvantaged groups online and the key
features are summarised, grouped according to: motivation, affordability and sustainability,
content and delivery and accessibility and usability.Labels: digital ltieracy, digital_literacy, e-Start, elearningeuropa.info, european projects, european_projects
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:57 PM
