Digital Literacy: Current technology

Here are a couple of examples of current technology that is making a difference to peoples everyday lives:

Digital technology moves on incredibly quickly. Even within your lifetime, you may have noticed new digital tech that has the potential to transform how we live our everyday lives (Alexa, anyone?). Skip back a generation and there would have been no such thing as wifi, skip back another generation and the internet was still being tested and wasn’t available for public use. Many of the teachers parents were the first generation to be able to buy ‘personal computers’ (PCs) and many of their grandparents would have found a calculator futuristic!

Discuss: Look at the words in bold – how do you think life/people changed as a result of these inventions?

Think: about the digital technology you use at home and at school (digital is quite a broad term now, but think in terms of devices or apps/software that store, use or process data /information). Make a list.

Do: Pick one of the technologies that you thought of and consider these questions:

1. What does this technology enable me to do?
2. What did I do before I had this technology?
3. What does this technology stop me doing?
4. Do you think, on balance, this technology has a positive or negative effect on physical well-being?
5. Do you think, on balance, this technology has a positive or negative effect on mental well-being?
6. What are the environmental impacts of this technology?
7. What should we be careful about, when using this technology?

We’ll be doing similar tasks across the year groups as it’ll be interesting to see how they compare – what do you predict?