I spent significant time learning about Indigenous Digital Literacy and how it differs from typical digital literacy. I have a couple takeaways I wanted to list that lead to me becoming more informed on the subject!!!
Firstly I realised that indigenous children often have different experiences with technology then most children learning programs are targeting meaning that different ways are needed to effectively reach indigenous children. For most children, an interest in digital literacy comes from either the parents or a love for modding video games. Most digital literacy programs are made to inspire children by targeting these interests. In indigenous communities, children often find interest for digital literacy from connecting it to their community or real life experiences, where they can actively create and contribute knowledge rather than just consume it. Therefore typical digital literacy tools are less effective towards indigenous communities as there are different interests among children.
My next takeaway was that in digital literacy indigenous perspectives can be overlooked completely. often digital literacy can be thought of as just having technology or access to it. In reality it is how knowledge for technology is passed between people. Most traditional standardized systems of education are not built with diverse communities in mind. This means indigenous perspectives can be overlooked all together. Learning processes that instead allow for knowledge to be shared between individuals accounts for diverse points of view including indigenous perspectives. Therefore in typical digital literacy approaches may overlook indigenous perspectives however an alternative approach where ideas are shared accounts for all perspectives.
These takeaways make it clear that indigenous communities could use an alternative resource for digital literacy. Luckily Solve 10 has addressed this need and provided a resource that both recognizes the differences indigenous children need to acquire an interest in digital literacy as well as the overlooked perspective of indigenous communities. I would highly recommend checking out their website through the link above! Thanks so much for reading today’s blog and I’m excited to write to you soon !!!!!!!!!!!!!