Abstract:

A rapidly changing world with significant changes at various levels, the need to find answers to global problems that affect all aspects of our lives, global trends such as digitization, climate change, together with advances in artificial intelligence present fundamental challenges for goals but also for teaching methods. An effective interconnection of informatics for optimal solutions in various areas is coming to the forefront of today's digital age. We live in a world known as VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) (Nandram & Bindlish, 2017). In today's complex and ambiguous world, we cannot predict the needs and challenges of 20 years. In this world, we need to prepare students for jobs and technologies that do not yet exist, so that they can solve problems we know nothing about. The OECD study Skills Strategy 2019: Skills to Shape and Better Future (OECD, 2019) points to the fact that while previous generations had the skills acquired at school for 26 years, it is currently only 4.5 years. About 65% of children entering primary school will have jobs that do not yet exist. The growing demands on graduates who will have digital skills at the required level point to the need to take into account the development of digital competences in education, both in primary and secondary schools. Education and support for pupils in digital competences development should reflect the vision and goals of the school, be thought out and implemented across different subjects. Therefore, teachers should be aware of the possibilities and approaches for developing pupils' digital competences within a given subject, not only in relation to the use of appropriate digital technologies, but also in terms of task formulation and pupils´assessment. Biology as a subject offers teachers the opportunity to develop all areas of digital competences that The European Digital Competence Framework, known as DigComp, defines for every citizen, and therefore also for the pupils (Carretero et al., 2017). The paper presents approaches and specific examples of digital tools and tasks for developing digital competences of students in biology education in primary and secondary schools. The benefits of modeling, simulating, programming, working with databases, developing and using of mobile applications, image processing and analysing, graph analysing and video creating are interpreted in relation to the DigComp framework.

Keywords:

Digital technologies, biology education, digital competences.