Digital literacy is an essential skill for learners of all ages, including lower secondary students. The digital world allows us to connect, collaborate, innovate and discover new information on an ever-broadening scale, and learners must be able to effectively use technology from the very beginning of their educational journey.
What will students learn?
Students develop the digital skills that will help with many aspects of their future learning and development. They will:
- understand their place, and the place of others, in an interconnected world and make educated decisions about the information that they encounter online.
- develop knowledge and understanding that will allow them to respond to, and evaluate technology of the future
- develop skills to create increasingly sophisticated documents and presentations
- learn how to become positive contributors to the digital world
- use digital technology safely and protect their own physical and emotional wellbeing.
This course supports progression to other IT-related Cambridge Upper Secondary subjects.
How is the programme taught?
You can teach Digital Literacy as a separate subject or embed the content within broader learning. For example, learners can develop content creation skills while preparing to present their work in mathematics or science, and safety messages can be embedded within cross-curricular sessions about how learners should conduct and protect themselves in the modern world.
How is Cambridge Lower Secondary Digital Literacy assessed?
There is no Cambridge Lower Secondary Progression Test or Checkpoint for this subject.
The emphasis of this course is for teachers to give learners formative feedback on the skills they want students to develop. This can be through discussion, observation and lesson outputs where teachers discuss with students ‘what went well’ and how they can improve further, so that students can reflect on, and improve, their performance.
To support assessment in the classroom, we have produced some guidance that is available on the Cambridge Lower Secondary support site.
Support to help you deliver the course
Visit our Cambridge Lower Secondary support site to download a wide range of resources to help you plan and deliver the course:
- Assessment guidance
- Curriculum Framework
- Online training
- Schemes of work
- Teacher Guide.
Online introductory training is available to support teachers delivering these subjects.