Abstract:

Information and Communication Technologies are one of the most important factors to allow the inclusive growth, according to Europe 2020´s economic strategy. The way technology is handled has transformed the structure of European society, thus modifying also the way to learn.

As specified by the European Commission in 2006, digital competence is central and important to all European citizens. Eurostat 2015 data affirms that about 45% of the European population aged from 16 to 74 have very low digital skills, impacting the way they can participate in society and economy. In order to secure equity, it is vital for education to prepare our students to grow up in a digitalized society. To do this, we need to have a clear understanding of what the digital competence of students is, and to have teachers who facilitate the integration of technologies into the educational process. This way, the student´s learning experience can be optimised.

This investigation is a first phase of a research where we aim to understand if technology integration in our education centers is being done in the best way.

In this first phase we have analyzed the digital competence level of our students, taking as a base the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu), but focusing it on students. This way, we have can obtain what are the competence areas where educators can focus to be able to plan for the strategy to use to integrate digitalization into the educational process. Rather than focusing on the technical skills, the objective is to detail how digitalization should be used to further improve education.

In this first phase of the research, we have measured the digital competence of more than 280 students in more than 5 grades in secondary education.

In the next phase, we plan to study how teachers can fine tune their strategies to integrate technology integration strategies and tactics based on their student’s digital competence.

It is quite obvious that just by adding technology to schools the learning process does not necessarily improve, unless it is combined with a good pedagogy. An efficient technology integration tactic will facilitate the educational process.

Keywords:

Digital competence, technology, DigCompEdu, digital proficiency, integration, strategy, tactics.