Five Influences

The Five Fluencies of Digital Citizenship
The minister of education from a high-profile country once stated at an international conference: “Our students are among the very best performers academically in the world on the TIMS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study). The problem is that most of them couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag if their life depended upon it. They’re nothing but highly educated, useless people” (Crockett, Jukes and Churches. 2011:1). What this minister was trying to say is that the students in his country had excelled at mastering academics, cramming for tests and perfecting writing tests. What he was also saying is that outside of school, these students lacked ‘street smarts’ or moreover, skills to think out of the box. Given that technology is changing, updating, and increasing at an astronomical rate, learning these skills is imperative to be able to succeed in the world of work.

In the Shift Happens 2008 video we see quite a few scary statistics that support this need. The first statistic is that by the age of 38 most people will have had between 10 and 14 jobs. This is unlike our parents who stayed with their company for years, if not for their entire career. Another statistic that is quite daunting is that the top 10 jobs today, did not exist in 2004.
How can we then study then for a career in those fields, when the jobs don’t yet exist? The final statistic that is most daunting is that given the rapid change in technology, students studying for an IT qualification will have learnt things in their first year that will be out dated by their third year of study! So how best do we deal with this? By learning skills, that will enable us to adapt and adjust to these rapid changes. These skills are called Fluency Skills, as identified by Crockett, Jukes and Churches (2011), which are essentially processing skills.
These processing skills are listed in the graph on the right, and are essentially the skills that will enable you then to adapt to new environments, job tasks, as well as new careers.
Therefore, these five fluency skills have been incorporated into the structure of this manual, to better enable you to adapt to new learning and working environments.
In addition to this manual, it is strongly recommended that you participate in the Web and Digital Literacies course that is available online.

(Third International Mathematics and Science Study).
(Crockett, Jukes and Churches. 2011:1).