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The Role of
Vendor Qualifications in Developing Digital Literacy for the Information
Society
Dr Jenny Gilbert, School of Computing & Management Science, Sheffield
Hallam University, UK,
j.gilbert@shu.ac.uk |
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ABSTRACT
e-Government initiatives in Europe have economic and
competitiveness agendas, together with an emphasis on effective
citizenship and social inclusion. These strands of the e-Government agenda
demand a highly computer literate population. In order to maintain
economic competitiveness a skilled work force is required and citizen
engagement in the e-Government agenda requires that everyone has the
skills to utilise e-Government systems. Thus it has been acknowledged that
ICT usage and education should begin in primary and secondary schools.
There is a requirement to ensure that pupils develop the necessary skills
and cognitive abilities to use computers and ICT has been well embedded
into the National Curriculum.
This paper sets out to explore issues around the teaching of ICT in
schools using outputs from two projects. The first is a research project
which is investigating secondary school pupils’ perceptions of higher
education and of studying ICT at school. This is particularly pertinent
given the significant drop in applications to higher education computing
courses nationally in the last two years and the worry that the teaching
of ICT in schools may be discouraging young people from continuing the
study of computing after school. The second project is a curriculum
development project which is currently developing materials to prepare
school pupils to take Microsoft Office Specialist exams. In one region of
the UK schools are being set targets which require a certain number of
pupils to pass such exams. This paper asks whether, as a nation, we are
motivating students sufficiently through ICT, whether we are focussing on
developing pupils’ skills to the detriment of their wider cognitive
abilities and whether we are developing the necessary critical thinking
ability for the Information Society.
Keywords: skills, e-Learning, ICT, cognitive, curriculum |
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