Deadline Extension – Special Issue on “Digital Literacy and Digital Competence: Facts, Problems, Needs & Trends” – IJDLDC

International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence (IJDLDC)

(DOI: 10.4018/IJDLDC, ISSN: 1947-3494, EISSN: 1947-3508)

 

Special Issue on

“Digital Literacy and Digital Competence: Facts, Problems, Needs & Trends”

 

Guest Editors:

• Antonio Cartelli, University of Cassino • Carlo Giovannella, University of Rome Tor Vergata • Antonella Nuzzaci, University of L’Aquila

*** Deadline: September 30, 2014 (extended) ***
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Overview

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Since its appearance the mission of the International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence (IJDLDC) has been to offer itself as an international think-tank on digital literacy and competence for everyday instruction, without excluding lifelong learning. While once the focus was mainly on youths because of their supposed need for more meaningful approach to new technologies, nowadays we need to recalibrate it.

In fact, the overwhelming technological and social evolution occurred in the last few years has highlighted the deep wounds of: a) an educational and research system that is struggling to support individual and societal transformation in expectations and needs; b) a decision-making system that hardly understands the undergoing changes of the educational settings.

Much the same as in the case of drifting continents, educational agencies collide with each other (e.g. school and family), new continents emerge from the sea of knowledge (e.g. internet) and new deep breaks open to underline the increasing distance between students, teachers and the school system, research and daily practice, teaching professional and private use of technologies, policy-makers and the educational system, among different school settings.

All this while the societal evolution seems to demand for the construction of training ecosystems in which all the components are expected to integrate to meet at best new needs and expectations of individuals and communities.

The precondition to satisfy needs and expectations is, of course, the acquisition of an adequate level of those literacies that appropriate to the role played by each actor of the learning eco-system and that necessarily include also the ability to force technologies to exploit all their hidden potentialities, not just to use them.

 

Trends like that of urban areas and educational environments that are getting increasingly smarter (smart city learning) and foster the integration between formal and informal learning, or that of learning processes that are becoming increasingly open and self-regulated (just thinks to the MOOCs), make us realize that in the future nothing will be like once.

However, if on the other hand, we reflect on the increasing divide between schools that have access to advanced technologies and schools that are “out of the wave”, between private use of technologies and the use of the same technologies in the educational settings (either by teachers or students), between tools and methods offered by the research and their actual application in schools, between the demands of everyday instruction and the responses of the policy makers, we cannot avoid to formulate questions as the following:

– given for granted that most young people, and nowadays also teachers, are skilled enough in the use of personal devices – skills that changed their style of life – which could be adequate strategies to foster the transfer of such skills in schools and learning environments, so that educational processes can take advantage of them?

– governments and administrations are striving to adopt a “digital agendas” to improve the use of digital equipments by teachers and professors, but how decision makers effectively take care of the acquisition by educators of adequate technological, methodological and managerial skills ?

– since 2005 European Community proposed the description of the “key competences for lifelong learning”, needed by citizens in the knowledge society and, later, even more evolute frameworks of key competences emerged, but no or little educational strategies have been designed and put in place to support people in the acquisition of such competences in a measurable manner; what role should be played by present and future learning eco-systems ?

 

Next issue of of IJDLDC, and as well future ones, will foster the discussion around these and other related questions with the aim to make emerge inspiring best practices to export and guidelines to follow. Such questions, in fact, can not wait any longer to get an answer, otherwise we will assist, in a short while, to a disruptive transformation of the learning ecosystems and processes.

 

The special issue welcomes original research papers from topics including, but not restricted to:

 

• Digital literacy, digital competence divides • Digital literacy, digital competence in transforming and smart learning ecosystems • Digital literacy, digital competence in transforming learning processes and strategies • Digital literacy, digital competence, and lifelong learning • Digital literacy, digital competence, and multicultural society • Digital literacy, digital competence assessment • Ecology of the use of digital equipments and virtual environments in education • Frameworks to support acquisition of digital literacy and digital competence • Interaction of digital literacy and digital competence with open education • Interaction of digital literacy and digital competence with communities of practice and social networking • Interaction of digital literacy and digital competence with design and development of learning environments • Interaction of digital literacy and digital competence with knowledge management • Interaction of digital literacy and digital competence with learning organizations • Interaction of digital literacy and digital competence with policy making • Interaction of literacy, digital competence, and e- and active citizenship in smart territories and cities • National and international initiatives and policies for DLCD

 

KEYWORDS:

digital literacy, digital competences, transformation of educational ecosystems, teachers’ DLDC, students’ DLDC, research-daily practice divide, teachers-students divide, educational system-policy makers divide formal and informal learning, open education, education strategies

 

 

Submission procedure and Authors’ guidelines

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Only original and previously unpublished articles will be considered.

 

INTERESTED AUTHORS MUST CONSULT THE JOURNAL’S GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at http://www.igi-global.com/journals/guidelines-for-submission.aspx PRIOR TO SUBMISSION.

 

All article submissions will be forwarded to at least 3 members of the Editorial Review Board of the journal for double-blind, peer review.

Final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection will be based on the reviews received from the reviewers. All submissions must be forwarded electronically.

 

All manuscript submissions to IJDLDC should be sent through the online submission system:

http://www.igi-global.com/authorseditors/titlesubmission/newproject.aspx

 

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For scientific advices and for any query please contact the guest-editors:

 

• cartan [at] unicas.it

• giovannella [at] scuolaiad.it

• antonella.nuzzaci [at] univaq.it

 

marking the subject as: “IJDLDC, special issue on: ‘”Digital Literacy and Digital Competence: Facts, Problems, Needs & Trends”‘”