Definition of Digital Literacy, Its Benefits, Principles, and Examples

Along with the development of technology, communication and information can be conveyed quickly and easily. Technology that is used properly is very capable of helping the development of important fields in people’s lives. Digital literacy is the ability to understand and use information from various sources that are accessed by computers.

In the field of technology, especially information and communication, digital literacy is related to the ability of the user. Ability to use technology wisely to create positive interaction and communication. This method also allows a person to think critically, solve problems, communicate fluently and have opportunities to collaborate.

Definition of Digital Literacy

Simply put, literacy can mean the human ability to read and write, although the understanding is not limited to that ability. There are many understandings of what digital literacy is, as Paul Glister calls it the ability to understand and use information obtained from various sources.

Then Deakin University’s Graduate Learning Outcome 3 states that digital literacy is an effort to utilize technology in finding, using and disseminating information in the digital world as it is today. Meanwhile, Common Sense Media, has another opinion about the meaning of this term.

Communication and Information digital literacy includes three abilities, namely competence in using technology, interpreting and understanding digital content to assessing credibility by researching to communicating with the right tools. It can be concluded that digital literacy is an effort that is needed by someone in this era to filter information accurately.

Poor literacy can have a negative impact on a person’s psychology, especially teenagers because they tend to be unstable and often swallow information raw. Without first finding out the truth and how accurate the information was, this condition caused a lot of uproar due to the wrong information being disseminated.

Principles of Digital Literacy

According to Yudha Pradana in his book entitled Attribution of Digital Citizenship in Digital Literacy published in 2018 mentions several basic principles. Among them are understanding, interdependence, social factors to curation. The following is an explanation of some of the principles of digital literacy.

• Understanding

In the sense that the public has the ability to understand the information provided by the media, either implicitly or explicitly.

• Dependency

The media are interdependent and interrelated, the existing media are side by side and complement each other.

• Social Factor

The media share messages or information with the public, the long-term success of the media is determined by the disseminators and recipients of information.

• Curation

People have the ability to access, understand and store information for later reading. Curation is the ability to work together in finding, collecting and organizing information that is considered useful.

Benefits of Digital Literacy

Understanding digital information has many benefits for society, starting for oneself and for the general public. Here are some of the benefits that digital literacy provides in everyday life in the Digital Literacy book by Janner Simarmata.

Obtain and expand information quickly and up-to-date, such as if you want to see the flight departure schedule. No need to be at the airport anymore, information about it can be accessed digitally via the internet.

The use of the internet in the digital era makes a person indirectly learn and practice skills. Like when you are going to cook but don’t know for sure what spices to use, everything can be seen and learned through the internet.

The use of internet references anywhere and anytime has proven that the emergence of digital literacy can save time. Today’s internet can be accessed using sophisticated mobile phones, so there is no need to think about what device to use.

Someone is looking for and adding new friends from various regions, as well as countries in various parts of the world only through social media. The new thing that is now increasingly considered as a culture and habit is the ease of using the internet.

Digital Literacy Challenge

• Lots of Information Flow

The first strongest challenge is that too much information appears, this makes people forced to receive a lot of information at the same time. Digital literacy is literacy whose role is to seek, find, sort and understand correct and accurate information.

• Negative Content

The large flow of information inevitably makes it difficult to filter the existing content, this gives rise to the presence of negative content. Like pornography, SARA and so on can be viewed and obtained easily through internet access.

Digital Literacy Example

• School

Communicating with teachers and friends using social media, sending assignments, conducting lessons, and looking for teaching materials from trusted sources.

• Home

Doing browsing using a browser, listening to music, watching movies, watching cooking tutorial videos on the internet to working using the internet.

That was a brief explanation of the meaning of digital literacy along with the principles to the benefits and examples. Having fun learning about education at Sampoerna University is the right choice. Established with a clear goal of meeting national and international standards, Sampoerna University is uniquely qualified to make a substantive contribution to society through education.

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Reference

Wikipedia