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Relevance of the theme
In the last two decades there has been much discussion about the role of digital technologies in school education. It has been argued that digital technologies help to bridge the gap between children’s out-of-school and in-school literacies. In addition, the inclusion of digital technologies is seen as an imperative for children’s later learning and participation in an ever-changing digital world. However, there is a lack of reliable comparative data on digital literacy in early years education and a lack of understanding of what it should mean to be digitally-literate in early years. Moreover, despite some attempts, there is an absence of a common competencies framework for digital literacy in early years. On top of that, educators’ lack of digital capacities does not help in the development of good teaching practices for children
Background: Why do we work on an Annual Topic in ELINET?
In our General Assembly 2019 in Copenhagen, ELINET members agreed to establish a new working format which shall involve all our Thematic Working Groups and activate all ELINET members and external experts. Our goal is to involve a broad range of international experts and practitioners to bring in their specific expertise and give us access to national research and good practice (which often needs translation into English) in order to create a European policy paper (position statement) as the final product of this annual work process. Thus, our annual cross-cutting topic shall become the main focus of content-related work within ELINET. This kind of exchange on relevant literacy topics shall on the one hand serve as a kind of further professional development (enlarging our individual expertise) for all of us, on the other hand address all actors in the literacy and education field in order to serve our main goal as a policy network: to raise literacy levels of children, adolescents and adults in Europe.