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Text 1. ICT and Life-Long Learning
Due to the shift towards knowledge-intensive economies, creative industries and ICT a new set of learning paradigms have evolved around the concept of incidental learning:
This brings up an essential question for the debate around lifelong learning: If it is correct that incidental learning is more important than learning in more formal settings, does this imply that efforts which aim to increase adults’ participation in training courses and other structured and intentional learning activities should be abandoned, and that policy should rather concentrate on boosting chances of people to acquire knowledge through experience (such as “learning by doing” on the job)?
This perceived antagonism between working, playing and learning can only be resolved as these three become recognized as various components of the same: both the person and the group need learning in order to cope with societal changes. Strange enough ‘learning’ has conquered its relevance too far; it has become a tool for overcoming social stratification and has thus become a goal in itself.
Discussing “the right to learn” and “the duty to learn” has obscured the essence of learning. The genuine life-long learning can best be seen as the ideal way to both avoid “surviving by adapting” and “surviving by escaping”. Learning is the optimal combination of accommodation and assimilation. Its goal is to preserve the person’s identity by incorporating the essence of his/her surrounding.
Life-Long Learning addresses both formal and informal aspects of learning. Formal education has met severe problems to assimilate and exploit the added value of ICT. At the same time we have seen the relevance of the web for learning in daily life.
The question is whether lifelong learners will master these new learning skills as a large part of the older population did not learn to use ICT for learning at schools or work places. In so far as directly ICT-related skills are concerned, a distinction is being made between e-skills and digital literacy skills.
E-skills themselves can be broken down into:
In addition to these directly ICT-related skills, there are skills of a more generic nature which are required to fully participate in a society which is increasingly dominated by knowledge- and information-rich environments and technologically mediated communication. These are often subsumed under the term “digital literacy skills”. For the conceptualization of the different kind of skills which make up digital competence, the following categorization is of particular value. They differentiate between operational (instrumental) skills, informational (structural) skills and strategic skills:
It is important to take into account that digital literacy is by no means limited to the utilization of the Internet. Any definition and operational definition of digital literacy needs to include the full spectrum of (current and future) ICTs, which include mobile applications and services which are expected to become much more dominant in the coming years.
More generally, any definition of digital literacy must be open to new technological and market developments which will become relevant in the future. Against this background, it may make sense to define as the focus of digital literacy any ICT-enabled means with which to access, manage, integrate, or evaluate information, construct new knowledge, or communicate with others.
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