Lesson 6: Developing Basic Digital Skills

Nuñez, Patricia Ann P.              BSEd-English4A             TTh 10:00am-12:00pm

Lesson 6: Developing Basic Digital Skills

This lesson discusses about how teachers can adjust in their teaching process as to suit and engage with the new digital learners, in which they should be guided as to what to be developed as the learner are into it. There were also six essential skills to equip students which they call them fluency skills. First is the solution fluency, which refers to capacity and creativity in problem solving. Second is the information fluency, which involves 3 submits skills which are the ability to access, retrieve and reflect information. Third is the collaboration fluency, which refers to teamwork with virtual or real partners in online environment. Fourth is the media fluency, which refers to channel of mass communication. Fifth is the creativity fluency, which is artistic proficiency adds meaning by way of design, art and storytelling to package a message. Lastly is the digital ethics, which was guided by principles of leadership, global responsibility, environmental awareness, global citizenship and personal accountability. Another point is the higher thinking skills. Bloom’s Taxonomy serves as a general framework of skills that requires information processing, idea creation and real-world problem-solving skills. The following taxonomy may be proposed: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. We also discussed the structured problem solving-process known as 4D’s that also exemplifies the instructional shift in digital learning: define the problem, design the solution, do the work and debrief on the outcome.

As to the experience, when I was in my high school years at Loyola High School we are already exposed in terms of these six fluency skills. We are task to do an Investigatory Project in our Chemistry subject that suit to solution fluency. Another is a research paper in our English subject, that suit to information fluency. Movie making, picture editing, video making, poster making, radio broadcasting, posting of informative pictures, etc. in our Filipino, Computer and Values subjects that suit to collaboration, media and creativity fluency. In my college years, different instructors also exposed us in terms of the Bloom’s Taxonomy general framework in which it enhance our different skills and caters all our learning styles and until now it is also evident. 

As to the reflection, definitely the six fluency skills are vital to digital learners of today's era. There is a need for the learners as well as the teachers to acquire and equip these skills in order to adjust and face the overwhelming challenges brought by modern technology specifically in learning processes. On the contrary, teachers must adjust their teaching to effectively match the new digital world of information and communication technology (ICT). They should be flexible and creative in searching new ways to efficiently utilize and develop the basic digital skills which students truly need. Moreover, the new era opens the way for complex and higher cognitive skills. We as digital learners should not only acquire those digital skills but also we should aim to go beyond with those skills to be more effective and influence to others especially our future students.

           As an application, we future educators must know how to develop these skills to achieve the efficient and effective teaching-learning process. We should be able to impart this to our students, teach them how to gather useful information using the Internet, and use this information properly in finding solutions on the problems they encounter at the classroom setting, school, and in the outside world. Also, for the future generations, we need to adjust our teaching strategies to effectively match the new digital world of information and communication technology. We have the fluency skills that conveyed ease and facility in acquiring and using them in which all of them are very influential in an effective teaching-learning process.