(Blog Entry #5) The Basic Digital Skills: Developing Higher Order Thinking Skills By: Febbie Faith Ramos BSED-4

The Basic Digital Skills 

The traditional model of learning have pioneered the essentialist way of learning where the mastery of the subject matter is highly aimed to be achieved. In here, the three Rs (Reading, Writing and 'rithmetic) are primordially implied. In the modern model of learning however, this way of thinking is not eradicated but IMPROVED. The basic digital skills have paved a way to further learning and knowledge transfer. These skills, in contrast to the three Rs, are more open to the higher order thinking skills which greatly requires the art of META-COGNITION. 

The Skills of a Digital Native 

Solution fluency. This is the capability of the learners to elaborate their thinking on a said problem by giving creative alternatives to solve the crisis. This requires the whole brain and ample creativity as it will require the students to think, design, apply and assess. 

Information fluency. This is the ability of the learner to access information in any resources. This is characterized as the capability of the student to retrieve information in a way that is perceptive to the current trends in digital information. This also refers to the intelligence of the learner to reflect and react upon the information acquired.

Collaboration fluency. This refers to the ability of the learners to build rapport to virtual or real partners to enable teamwork and cooperation in a given task. This is commonly dubbed as "multi-cultural" learning. 

Media fluency. This refers to the learners' analytical means of evaluating the message and information acquire to the different forms of media. 

Creativity Fluency. This refers to the learners' artistic proficiency in the context of designing, creating and innovating layouts. This is the aesthetic ability of the student to distinguish what is visually pleasing and what is not. 

Digital Ethics. This refers to the learners' appropriate usage of the digital realm, 'Internet". The students should be guided in the principles of leadership and global responsibility as a citizen of the internet. 

Beyond Remembering and Understanding

The learners of today's generation must always be exposed to the art of higher thinking. Students should not adhere solely on the lower order thinking skills such as knowledge and comprehension, as teachers we must encourage and engage them to think for themselves. Thinking and analyzing phenomenons should be the primary abilities of the learners as the ways and means of instruction are improving. Students should not be taken emphatic to the factual means of learning, but the analytical way of learning. 

With this, the learners must need to define the problem, to design a  solution, to do the work and to debrief the outcome. Students must know how to  determine a crisis, to formulate a solution, to apply that solution and to evaluation the outcome of that solution. The teacher must always guide the students to be as analytic as possible, to be inquisitive as possible and to be curios as possible. After all, the interest is a flame in learning.