Digital literacy: Impacts of technology on learning from Generation Y

Abstract

This article reports the results of a research project whose purpose was to understand the form of acquisition of digital literacy by Generation Y. The project goal was to identify how this new generation learns and uses Digital Technologies of Information and Communication (TDIC) in and out of school. It also sought to analyze how the domain of such technologies affects such generation’s performance in school. The digital literacy is understood here as a set of skills to read, write and interact with other people, mediated by digital technology devices, whose acquisition by Generation Y occurs at home, still in infancy. A questionnaire about socio-economic and technological development was applied, and the participants (children and adolescents aged 9 to 14) were filmed when performing learning activities in the school computer lab in order to observe what were their technological skills. The results
indicated that exposure to early technological equipment makes the acquisition of digital literacy by Generation Y as natural as learning
to walk and talk and bring in positive impacts on its school learning.

Key words: digital literacy, technology, learning.