Abstract:

Nowadays, the modern technologies and media have important impact on the structure and dynamics of social relations. For over a decade the attention of the major European and international organizations has been focused on the issue of media and digital literacy of the individual, its role and importance for personality development and social integration. Even of greater strategic importance is the investment of knowledge in this field of pre-school and primary school age. Object of the study are digital competencies and media education at pre-school and primary school age. The subject of the study is the development of system of indicators and criteria of qualitative and quantitative measurements of digital competences at primary school age.

The term and the concept of digital competence are still new and insufficiently studied and described. The fact that technologies lie at the basis of digital competence makes it even harder to identify precise criteria to define them. Information technologies change extremely rapidly and hence follows a change of practices and necessary competences. Digital competence is defined as a dynamic term. Several terms are used to describe the skills of working with digital technologies: ICT skills, technological skills, 21st century skills, information literacy, digital literacy, and digital skills.

The study, proposed here is planned to provide and analyse data of research conducted that will contribute to detect trends and relationships, which will become the basis for new hypotheses, and to provoke future applied research. Data analysed are from a national contest in ICT, organized by the authors, where students from 1st to 8th grade prepare and present their research projects. To do this, students select the form, the structure, and the technological tools or environment to create their final product. The observations of authors over the past 10 years are based on a rich experimental database collected as a result of active experimental work with children and students in the framework of various research and practical activities and events. The ICT competition for 1st to 8th grade students has been held annually since 2010, with around 1,000 students taking part in it per year. The work of the participants is used to analyse their digital skills as well as their evidence of critical thinking, assessment and self-assessment skills, team-working skills, and the realization of independent research in the framework of the given topic. Based on observations of the same students in consecutive years, the following conclusions can be made: students who get purposeful and systematic training achieve the target results steadily and at an earlier age; students who have gained certain digital skills manage to use them in other everyday areas too; and students also successfully transfer knowledge across other school subjects over the years.

This study presents an analysis of 200 project works from 2016-2017 school year of students from 1st to 4th grade. 50 works per grade level are considered (50 projects for 1st grad, 50 – for 2nd and so on). The aim is to identify indicators and criteria for digital skills students’ level.

Keywords:

Digital skills, primary school, PBL, indicatoris.