What is digital competence

During recent years, digital competence has become a key concept in the discussion of what kind of skills and understanding people should have in the knowledge society. It is more or less a political concept, reflecting beliefs and even wishes about future needs, and has its roots in the economical competition in which the new technologies are regarded as an opportunity and a solution (e.g. Punie, 2007, see also Sefton-Green, Nixon & Erstad, 2009; OECD, 2010). In research, the concept is still seldom used. Because of the novelty of the concept, we decided to consider digital competence from two points of view: first, based on research evidence and, second, based on some main policy-related papers. It was also needed to consider the synonyms and the related concepts to cover the entity of digital competence because the technologies are in rapid change, and they change also the practices and the necessary competences.

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[2]  Jan van Dijk,et al.  The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon , 2000, Inf. Soc..

[3]  Kirsti Ala-Mutka and Yves Punie and Christine Redecker.  Digital Competence for Lifelong Learning , 2008 .

[4]  Barbara R. Jones-Kavalier,et al.  Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century , 2006 .

[5]  Alexander van Deursen,et al.  Using the Internet: Skill related problems in users' online behavior , 2009, Interact. Comput..

[6]  V. Carrington.  The Uncanny, Digital Texts and Literacy , 2005 .

[7]  Yoram Eshet,et al.  Changes Over Time in Digital Literacy , 2009, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[8]  O. Erstad,et al.  Reviewing Approaches and Perspectives on “Digital Literacy” , 2009 .

[9]  P. Gilster.  Digital Literacy , 1997, Encyclopedia of Education and Information Technologies.

[10]  David Ley,et al.  6 – Emerging technologies for learning , 2010 .

[11]  2010 joint progress report of the Council and the Commission on the implementation of the Education and Training 2010 work programme , 2010 .

[12]  Yves Punie,et al.  Learning Spaces: an ICT‐enabled model of future learning in the Knowledge‐based Society , 2007 .

[13]  Guy Merchant.  Writing the future in the digital age , 2007 .

[14]  O. Erstad.  Educating the Digital Generation , 2010 .

[15]  Robert B. Ruddell,et al.  Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging From the Internet and Other Information and Communication Technologies , 2004 .

[16]  Ola Erstad,et al.  A new direction? , 2006, Education and Information Technologies.

[17]  Ola Erstad.  The Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills Project , 2009 .

[18]  Yoram Eshet-Alkalai,et al.  Towards a Theory of Digital Literacy: Three Scenarios for the Next Steps , 2006 .

[19]  Rune Krumsvik,et al.  Situated learning and teachers’ digital competence , 2008, Education and Information Technologies.

[20]  Julie Coiro,et al.  Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging From the Internet and Other Information and Communication Technologies , 2008 .

[21]  Yair Amichai-Hamburger,et al.  Experiments in Digital Literacy , 2004, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[22]  Earnestine Wright Adeyemon,et al.  Integrating Digital Literacies into Outreach Services for Underserved Youth Populations , 2009 .