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Video: Digital Literacy, Part 7
Rachelle Chong
Special Counsel
Office of the State Chief Information Officer
November 17, 2010
MS. CHONG: It's about teaching students and workers to use computers and internet networks through their lifetime. And the reason I like that kind of "digital literacy for dummies" definition is it captures three main concepts. The first concept is when we're young, kindergarten to high school, we're learning how to use a computer. We're learning about how to surf the net, what's reliable information, what's unreliable information. And so it's very important that our educators, our students, and the parents are digitally literate to help in that process.
But then we graduate and we move into the workforce. And so in the workforce we're using computers and the internet in a different way. For example, we might be researching a project for our worker -- our employer, and we will need to do research. We might be in a professional capacity and using a computer to create architectural drawings.
So there's new training and new ways to use computers and the internet that those workers need. So this is why employers and employees and the business community needs to be involved in making their workers digitally literate.
And the final concept that I like about the definition is it captures the fact that throughout your whole life, you've got to keep up with technology. Right now the different types of technologies are evolving very rapidly. It used to be in my day your tools were a pencil, maybe a typewriter and an encyclopedia. These days your tool is a smartphone who might have basically the equivalent of a computer in it so that you can reach all over the world to find information. And those technologies for which you reach that information are changing every two years right now. So we have to keep striving and work hard to know what's going on, to keep up with it and to make sure that we know how to use those tools.