How is digital fluency different from digital literacy? In learning a foreign language, a literate person can read, speak, and listen for understanding in the new language. A fluent person can create something in the language: a story, a poem, a play, or a conversation. Similarly, digital literacy is an understanding of how to use the tools; digital fluency is the ability to create something new with those tools. Digital fluency can be viewed as an evolving collection of fluencies including, but not limited to, curiosity fluency, communication fluency, creation fluency, data fluency, and innovation fluency.

Digital literacy is a language; the more digital skills you have, the better you can speak it.

Cornell University defines digital literacy as ‘the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies and the Internet’6. By this definition, digital skills are any skills related to being digitally literate. Anything from the ability to find out your high-score on Minesweeper to coding a website counts as a digital skill.

Mid-career is the worst time for academics and professional staff to be up to date with technology: I've just been reviewing some audits that show that older and more secure academic staff may actually have more time to experiment and are more confident to admit they need to learn. It's all about having time, having opportunities for 'peer supported experimentation' - which turns out to be the best way to learn new technical tricks, and of course, having some incentive.

Digital literacy should be positioned as an entitlement for students that supports their full participation in a society in which social, cultural, political, and financial life are increasingly mediated by digital literacies

Discovery learning can occur whenever the student is not provided with an exact answer but rather the materials in order to find the answer themselves.

confidence

Broadly speaking, digital fluency is a combination of these three concepts:digital, or technical, proficiency: able to understand, make judgements about, select and use appropriate technologies and technological systems for different purposes; this might include knowing how to use technologies to protect one’s data, digital identity, and device security.   digital literacy: in digital spaces, being able to read, create, critique and make judgements about the accuracy and worth of information being accessed; being fluent in critical thinking and problem-solving online; Use digital tools to collaborate and construct information across all relevant and significant contexts social competence, or dispositional knowledge: the ability to be able to relate to others and communicate with them effectively; able to manage one’s identity, information, relationships in ways that are appropriate, responsible, safe and sustainable.