Digital Literacy in D&T

My name is Aaron. I’m a lead practitioner for digital learning at a single academy school, and I’m also head of education for AI Confident. Digital literacy is really important to me, so I wanted to talk about how well placed D&T is as a subject to meet that need.

I wanted to make one point, digital literacy, with three punches to get it across adn like any good teacher, I wanted to link it to a pyramid! There’s something deep inside me that likes that I can’t quite explain. *laughter* So I’ve linked it to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, because there are a lot of parallels we can draw when it comes to digital literacy. The physiological needs down here at the bottom are exactly what we just heard about with equity: access to devices, Wi-Fi, and being able to actually access these kinds of skills. I’m not going to touch on that today, as it’s well beyond my five minutes.

Instead I’m going to move on to safety and security. We are all teachers of literacy, and I believe we should now all be teachers of digital literacy too. Students are no longer just passive users. As we know, they are targeted by the platforms they use, which try to manipulate their behaviour, shape their beliefs and exploit their attention. We know all this, and governments across the world are acting on it, or not. Please do come and talk to me about that later.

Our students are termed digital natives, and for some reason we believe their competency is inherited through their birth year, although we know that isn’t true. Core skills like critical thinking, device use and even simple file management require explicit instruction. They have to be taught, and as teachers we are absolutely in a position to do that. KCSIE 2025 even states that we have to. It’s statutory, and it’s not subject-specific. It shouldn’t sit in one bucket. It should sit across our curriculum. I’d argue today that D&T is a subject that can take us through this whole spectrum. But at the bare minimum, for the safety of our students, now and for the rest of their lives, we should be hitting that minimum for all of them.

That brings me to my second point, this level here: esteem and belonging. The economic argument for digital literacy is a tired old one. It’s well known, it’s been well argued, and people have spoken about it for a long time. However, I’d argue that the pace of change today means the argument has now shifted. Dario Amodei describes where we are as the “compressed 21st century”. I’ve written this down, because I’m not good with figures. The idea is that we’re going to see a hundred years of progress made in ten. I absolutely believe that, and I don’t think it’s setting the bar high at all.

The World Economic Forum tells us that 39% of job skills will change by 2030, and 22% of occupations will be disrupted. I think we’ve all heard that many times. AI and data literacy has been identified as the second-fastest-growing skill in the world. So we need to prepare our students for that world and its growing pace. At the moment, the ladder into the workplace and the job market is built on entry-level jobs, and those jobs are changing, being eradicated and disappearing completely. So I believe it’s our job to teach these skills and give students the advantage, so they’re able to jump up and grab that ladder before it’s moved away from them.

We know from research that visual communication is all about images and emotional response. Communication is a word I’m using a lot today: how students are communicated with, and how they can communicate within that world. We need to teach them to understand how they’re being communicated with. That matters from a safety point of view, but also so they have agency in the workplace and in a world that is changing around them and around us. I see it daily with teachers who come to me, hand over a laptop and say that famous line: “I’m not good with tech.” I don’t believe that’s an excuse any more, and I don’t think it’s an excuse for our students either.

That brings me to the top part, which is where the fun stuff happens: self-actualisation. This is where our students make, where they create, and where they use the tools of now and of the future. In our classrooms, they are using modern techniques and professional-standard tools, particularly digital ones. On the way here today I was having a little chat about capacity at primary and secondary level, and about these tools and the new budgets. I’m in danger of repeating a lot of what’s already been said this morning, but it’s about giving these students access and the ability to use those tools for their own benefit.

Maslow tells us that humans cannot self-actualise until they first feel safe. As teachers, we can give students solid digital foundations so they can move up this building, up this ladder, and reach self-actualisation.