Indeed, the multiple forms of critical digital literacy reflect the array of academic disciplines involved with this area of research and their different theoretical underpinnings and goals. Against this backdrop there is clearly a need for continuing to challenge and test what we mean by critical digital literacy in the complex, contemporary digital landscape.<\/p>\n(Pangrazio, 2016)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Considering this, it’s disappointing that a quick CMD+F search for “literate” in the National Curriculum on computing only highlights one mention of digital literacy in the introductory section of the document. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The UK government says “computing also ensures that pupils become digitally literate”. <\/p>\nNational curriculum in England: computing programmes of study (Department for Education, 2013)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n While it’s encouraging to see such a detailed focus on computer science in the national curriculum, it’s equally discouraging to see digital literacy covered at such a cursory level. While the curriculum outlines the need for understanding safety, acceptable use, and respect, it fails to link these digital literacies coherently to the skills covered in each key stage. How<\/em> will computing ensure that students become digitally literate? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Emejulu and McGregor’s article on radical digital citizenship delves deeper into the socio-materialist and socio-political underpinnings of technologies and movements in the Global South and North, inviting the reader to consider some inconvenient truths. The article should provoke educators working in this space. How can we best serve students in a landscape where we are often ignoring the darker underbelly of the technologies we use and the critical skills we hope to instill? Can we teach students computing fundamentals in an ethical way? How can we highlight the hidden curriculum at the core of technologies we use every day? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, digital literacy is a much more complex concept. A few years ago, I was part of a project team led by our department for developing a framework and open resources to improve staff and student digital skills and literacies, the All Aboard!<\/a> project. The team ultimately designed interactive lessons and curated other resources<\/a> that any user could complete to receive a digital badge. My colleague, Blaneth<\/a>, developed this metro map framework to represent the broad clusterings of skills that emerged within the project, and the map became a central metaphor for the work. At the time, we focused quite a bit on technical aspects of areas we take for granted, like how our smartphones work, digital images and video, and online identity. These resources could be embedded in any form of teaching and learning, and have been reused widely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In our higher ed context, this was a solid start, but nowhere near sufficient to aid students or staff in developing critical digital literacy, unless of course they were so inspired to continue the journey independently! I was reminded of the metro map as a metaphor after the readings this week, I think it visually represents some of the complexities of digital literacy in a similarly messy way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It also provides an interesting comparison to the national curriculum given the wide array of tools and spaces that the map covers. While it’s understandable that the national curriculum is tool\/technology agnostic in its language, it’s worth acknowledging that the technology, tools, and methods that the teacher ultimately uses in the classroom to teach computing will not<\/em> be neutral. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Key Stage 4 stood out to me as it seemed to address higher-level skills that more specifically foster digital literacies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was surprised to notice that this stage focuses on ‘sufficient depth’ that would allow students to progress to higher levels of study or employment. Personally, I would view these as fundamental skills upon which digital citizenship would be grounded. As Emejulu and McGregor argue: <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why we argue that a radical digital citizenship must be predicated on relational understandings of materialities: understandings which work relentlessly to expose the raced, gendered and classed bodies masked by the digital fetish.<\/p>\n(Emejulu and McGregor, 2016)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n There is so much more depth required beyond the skills addressed in the curriculum, yet no obvious link between the act of the coder or maker and the ethics of what is produced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m personally struggling with what seems like this missing link between the competencies covered in the national curriculum and the inherent biases that humans can code into technologies. I’m reminded of Ruha Benjamin’s Race after Technology<\/a><\/em>. The author provides a short overview of her work below: <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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