Digital Literacy is the ability to use technology tools for different purposes including accessing and analyzing information and collaborating and communicating with others - all while remaining safe online and being a good digital and global citizen. 

Building Digital Skills

We seek to support Irish and European teachers to help them improve the teaching and learning of digital skills, given the increasing demand for digital skills across the European workforce.

Blended learning methods to upskill teachers and assist them to update their teaching approach could enable the EU to improve its relative position internationally. The sector is increasing the use of learning technology to update teaching methods through funded projects, but the work remains uncoordinated and inefficient.

Highlighting the importance for teachers to use technology for scalable models, shared innovations and collaborative learning, we support teacher and adult education providers to keep pace with innovation in teaching in an affordable and sustainable way.

Models for change are:

• • Scaling up learners’ use of digital methods across the curriculum
  

More elements of vocational courses could benefit from technology-enhanced learning activities and formative assessments, using automated and peer-reviewed methods. Digital methods would enable the sector to complement the future move to local autonomy with sector-wide collaborative provision of online courses that could be sourced centrally and tutored locally, thereby offering a wider range of provision at the local level.

• • Employer-provider collaboration projects on workplace digital skills
  

There are proven models in the sector for building collaborative partnerships between employers and training providers. The new national colleges could greatly extend their value if they were to follow these models of utilising digital resources for learning and use online learning to offer central expertise plus local tutoring to other regions.

• • Teacher support via peer collaboration to accelerate innovation
  

If the expectations of teachers explicitly include digital education skills for teaching both specific and generic digital skills, peer collaboration would help teachers to meet the accelerated innovation requirements being demanded of them.