e-Competencies

Kellie McRobert, e-learning lead teacher at Nayland Primary School, explains how you can use e-competencies to break e-learning down into manageable competencies to create e-awareness.

The five e-learning competencies are:

• e-Awareness – awareness of ICTs and their relevance in society, including digital citizenship
• Digital literacy – using technology for information and knowledge (students locate, organise, create, adapt, and share information)
• Media literacy – understanding the manipulation and the way that digital media crosses over with mainstream media
• Informational literacy – understanding and interpreting information from different sources
• Technological literacy – confident and critical operation of ICTs.

e-Competencies and The New Zealand Curriculum

e-Competencies and key competencies

Kellie McRobert explains how she developed a framework of e-competencies, which have been aligned with the key competencies.

Strategies to promote the development of e-competencies
This study by Juan Cristobel Cobo Romani, published in 2009, analyses the effectiveness of policies, strategies, and programmes that promote the acquisition of e-literacies. Based on the benchmarking of different studies about the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on students’ learning, this work proposes a re-definition of the term ‘e-competencies’. Moreover, a set of best practices for the development of the future e-competent labour force are identified. Although the scope for this paper is primarily the countries of the European Union, worldwide studies are also considered.