Digital Literacy for Chilren and Adults In the world of ‘Knowledge Revolution’, our children are no longer ‘digital natives’; they are now ‘digitally naïve’ who are homey in using technology and operating it, but can’t keep up with the advancement and manipulation of information. Moreover, many a time they lack skills and thumb to critically use technology. Hence, it is the duty of school, parents and society to literate the children digitally instead of intruding into their privacy and creating an environment of mistrust. Moreover, it is not possible all the time to keep a watchdog on them. Generally, our children are theoretically aware of most of the online dangers. However, practical application of the learning in the due course of life is still missing. Eventually, they fail as they couldn’t overcome the temptation of posting and sharing, being immature in critical and digital literacy skill. There are various ways of training our children into critical and digital literacy. Firstly, they must be trained into distinguishing ‘Facts’ and Opinions’, they must know a given message can be proven true/false or its merely an opinion of someone to mislead others. This skill can be learned through a little practice in class or at home. Secondly, they must be informed about ‘Fact Checking’ methods and tools i.e. checking date, source and supporting sources of information, etc. There are various reliable online sources which help to apply this check. Thirdly, they must
apply P.I.E. (to Persuade, to Inform, to Entertain) Check which bolsters to find out the purpose of a message or post. If the purpose of a message/post is to inform then ‘Fact Checking’ methods must be applied to find out if it is a fact or opinion. Therefore, training our children and adults in digital and critical literacy is imperative for our nation’s well-being and to make them ‘literate of the 21st century’; as they would be able to identify prejudices and biases to an extent, and at the top all, they would not be misled, misinformed or manipulated. By Dr Sayyada Aiman Hashmi