Helping our Children Become Digitally Literate-celebrating the new school year 2019-2020

Our Posterity = Our Children

Posterity comes from Middle English posterite, from Anglo-French pusterite, from Latin posterus ("coming after")

“Tweet others the way you want to be tweeted.” ― Germany Kent

Most of us monitor our children's screen time, but are we monitoring how they are navigating through cyberspace? Are we confident they know more about being online than gaming or posting pictures and videos? Do they know how to:

Avoid scams
Evaluate the authenticity of an online source
Understand their digital footprint
Create resumes
Organize group projects
Build Healthy digital habits
Identify cyberbullying

Our world is becoming more digital by the day, which is why teaching our children to become digitally Intelligent is crucial.

What are Digital Skills?

Digital skills consist of principles like clear and concise communication, conducting online transactions, problem-solving and being safe and legal while online. The World Economic Forum has a great article that outlines the type of skills that we should be teaching our children. Here is how the break down some important digital skills to have:

Digital identity: The ability to create and manage one’s online identity and reputation. This includes an awareness of one's online persona and management of the short-term and long-term impact of one's online presence.

Digital use: The ability to use digital devices and media, including the mastery of control to achieve a healthy balance between life online and offline.

Digital safety: The ability to manage risks online (e.g. cyberbullying, grooming, radicalization) as well as problematic content (e.g. violence and obscenity), and to avoid and limit these risks.

Digital security: The ability to detect cyber threats (e.g. hacking, scams, malware), to understand best practices and to use suitable security tools for data protection.

Digital emotional intelligence: The ability to be empathetic and build good relationships with others online.

Digital communication: The ability to communicate and collaborate with others using digital technologies and media.

Digital literacy: The ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share and create content as well as to be competent in computational thinking.

Digital rights: The ability to understand and uphold personal and legal rights, including the rights to privacy, intellectual property, freedom of speech and protection from hate speech.

To read the full article go to the World Economic Forum website.

As parents and teachers, it is up to us to teach our children about the digital world, whether it be through a laptop, tablet or phone. The cyber-world is a vast area where they can learn and be creative, but It is our responsibility to keep them safe while they explore it.

Activities and Websites

Applied Digital Skills is a google website that focuses on computer science education. According to the website, "More than 65% of young people will work in jobs that don’t exist yet—building new technology, advancing artificial intelligence, and designing better ways to analyze data." This website is designed for children in middle and high school, as well as some lessons that are geared towards adults.

Learning.com is one website that can help sharpen skills such as Keyboarding and Computer Fundamentals to Online Safety, Digital Citizenship, and Internet Usage. It was founded in 1999, and its purpose is to give educators the right tools to help their students learn important digital skills.

Consumer.ftc.gov/media is the website of The Federal Trade Commission. Their site has many good videos for you and your children to watch that refer to things like cyberbullying, what and what not to post online, having good internet security and other important digital principles you should be taking care to know about.