Digital Competency: Developing and Mobilizing Technological Skills

Like the first dimension (Exercising Ethical Citizenship in the Digital Age), this dimension is central to the Digital Competency Framework. It refers to the ability to understand and use digital technologies effectively. This includes learning to program, protecting personal data, and solving technical problems, among other things. It also recommends keeping abreast of digital innovations such as artificial intelligence, robotization, and other emerging issues, as well as keeping digital skills up to date. 

Developing these skills makes it possible to not only perform many digital tasks efficiently, but also to understand how technology influences our daily lives and society in general.  

For teachers, this dimension includes the following: 

• Using new digital tools and platforms with students
• Creating, saving, and sharing files on various platforms
• Reflecting on artificial intelligence and tools like ChatGPT to assess how they are used by students and the potential repercussions of their use
• Securing data with security software and strong passwords

For students, these skills can be assessed by demonstrating competency in the following areas: 

• Understanding how to create secure passwords and the repercussion of using a weak password
• Understanding how to use basic functionalities of programs like Word and Excel
• Understanding how to use file-sharing technologies and locate saved files
• Understanding programming languages
• Being able to independently use various technologies, like search engines and software like Usito

Here’s an overview of the resources and learning activities you can use in the classroom to introduce your students to the Developing and Mobilizing Technological Skills dimension. 

For example, you could use the game Tower of Treasure to help your students learn to secure personal data with a password. The related learning activity Know IT All Secondary Toolkit helps students learn how to create secure passwords. Social Smarts, a graphic novel created by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, will help your high school students learn why it’s important to protect their personal information.

To enhance their awareness of emerging issues, the activities À la demande and Je regarde, qui paie (high school Cycle 2) are an interesting way to explore streaming platforms, while #foryou is a game about algorithms. More specifically, if you want to help your students understand issues surrounding artificial intelligence, don’t hesitate to show them the videos created by CScience. For elementary school students, there’s the Kat’IA series, and for high school students, there’s Allô Lél’iA. The LES IA-tu-pensé (sec. IV) gives a good overview of AI, whereas Dans ta face discusses facial recognition specifically. Note that almost all resources in this paragraph are in French only. 

Learning about computer programming is a great way to develop computational thinking. Code MTL (French only) offers a wide range of in-class programming workshops for all levels of elementary school. There’s also the <ère/code> activity (French only), which is interesting for Cycle 3 elementary school students. You can also look into initiatives led by Digital Moment.

As a teacher, you can use a multitude of tools in the classroom to integrate technology into lessons and teach your students how to use it.  

• Encourage your students to learn with our interactive educational games such as Speedy Rabbit, Book of Spells and more
• Record digital audio or video feedback on your students’ work with Audacity, Talk and Comment, Zoom, Loom, or Vocaroo
• Liven up your classroom presentations with Canva, Hypersay, Genially, or ThingLink
• Create interactive surveys and quizzes with Wooclap, Quizizz, Mentimeter, Quizlet, or Kahoot
• Visually organize your content with tools like Padlet, Trello, Asana, or Planner
• Introduce your students to programming and robotics with Scratch or Code.org