Digital competences are necessary to survive in our modern society. This has been made clear in the moment, when thousands of people started to work from their home office. Also, pupils and students stayed and studied at home because their school or university was closed.
Suddenly, there was a situation in which teachers taught their students from home, the students had to learn from home, and in many cases the parents had to do their work from home. All this was forced by the quarantine situation in many European countries.
There were some weaknesses that immediately needed to be remedied:
- Many teachers were overwhelmed by the new situation: from one day to the next, they should have been experienced in eLearning, but had little training or had no idea how to do it sensibly, efficiently and with good quality.
- Many students were unable to pick up the materials their teachers provided.
- Internet connections became slow because of the quantity of people who were now sitting at home and watching movies, videos, and music through Netflix and other streaming services. So, bandwidth was reduced.
This is an incomplete and short list – but shows significant some of the problems.
The missing Digital Competences can be proofed by a survey, the European Initiative for Education has done timely before the Corona crises.
The simple problem of copyright demonstrates that there must be invested in teaching digital competences. The sample covers the Austrian population within 18 and 80+ years old.
The work with social network is obviously at a higher competence level.
