Learning with Digital – learner digital literacy theme

This page outlines some of the key digital literacy skills and knowledge that learners could make effective use of in the classroom. This ranges from being able to upload, share and collaborate on platforms like Teams and Classroom to using platforms like SeeSaw and Showbie to journal and share their learning.

Back to learner digital literacy

Where to start

Learners should be able to:

use digital devices and platforms to communicate, collaborate and share information online
find, manage and store digital information and content securely

See more information on this in the accordion menus below (click to expand the blue bars):

Using Glow to communicate, collobarate and store information

Glow provides access to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace productivity suites allowing learners to practice and develop the skills and knowledge required to use these for learning, life and work.

Support for teachers with the fundamentals of these platforms can be found on the Teacher Digital Skills page:
go to Teacher Digital Skills page

What skills and knowledge should I start with?

Teachers should consider creating a ‘pencil case’ of essential tools they expect learners to use in the daily or weekly course of learning. This will reduce the choice overload (Baymer and Thomson, 2015) of apps and the cognitive load (TES/EEF, 2023) of content knowledge on learners. An example of this might be:

Teams for distributing learning
Whiteboard to collaborate and share ideas with peers
Stream to screen record a demonstration of a skill for teacher feedback or self-assessment
OneDrive to create and store documents, such as Word or PowerPoint
Immersive Reader screen read-aloud feature to support learners with reading on screen

What next?

There are further examples and contexts in the accordion menus below (click to expand the blue bars):

Communication

The first aspect to consider is how learners can use Glow and other online platforms to connect, contact and communicate with each other. Are they using email, direct messaging or video calls? How are these skills useful in learning, life and work?

What are digital communication systems? – BBC Bitesize

go to Cyber Toolkit for advice and guidance on communication

Collaboration

Using cloud drives, such as OneDrive (Microsoft) and Drive (Google), learners can create and share content with peers, teachers and even learners in other schools or countries. Not only can they be shared, they can be co-created and edited at the same time on multiple computers at once! How is this useful for life, learning and work?

Collaborating using IT – BBC Bitesize

Tech She Can has a short video explaining how cloud computing works for younger learners:

Tech for Katie and Tex explore the cloud (techshecan.org)

Literacy & English

When planning learning around the functional tools in Glow, it is worth considering their purpose and application. Text-based documents, such as Word, Docs, PowerPoint and Slides might lend themselves to Literacy & English Es and Os:

When creating documents (writing a text) consider the impact of layout and presentation
Make use of lettering, graphics and other features to engage readers

Typing is a useful, but not essential, skill in modern digital literacy. Teachers might plan some typing practice as part of this functional suite of learning in order to enable learners to use them more effectively:

Dance Mat Typing for 7 – 11 year olds – BBC Bitesize

go to the Literacy Trust website for more examples and information

Numeracy & mathematics

$numeracy and maths experiences and outcomes$

When planning learning around the functional tools in Glow, it is worth considering their purpose and application. Text-based documents, such as Excel and Sheets might lend themselves to numeracy & Mathematics: