Josie Fraser - Digital Literacy in Practice

Josie Fraser will outline the experience of and lessons learnt from working with schools, teachers and staff supporting learners. Leicester City Council’s digital literacy workforce development programme, DigiLit Leicester, worked in partnership with De Montfort University and just under 2,000 staff members across 23 mainstream and special education schools, supporting over 20,000 learners. The project identified current school staff digital literacy practice and confidence levels, identifying strengths and gaps across city schools. A range of approaches were taken to support staff in developing their digital literacy skills and knowledge in the context of their practice - raising baseline skills and confidence levels across the city, and promoting existing effective and innovative teaching. The work provides a model for practical and scalable approaches to supporting school districts, individual school and staff members. Additionally, it points up the current disconnect between policy, staff and organisational development and capacity, and our aspirations for supporting learners to be able to work, learn and develop within digital society.

Presented at the State of Digital Education Conference in January 2017 in Malta, as part of the session on Teachers, learners and digital education case studies.