Tools to tackle digital literacy announced

NZCS announces further tools to tackle Digital Literacy

Following research showing New Zealand losing $1.7 Billion per year by not sufficiently tackling digital literacy, the NZ Computer Society (NZCS), a non-profit incorporated society focused on ICT education, today announced the immediate availability of a number of additional educational tools and initiatives to help improve core computing skills in New Zealand.

The tools, released as part of the Society’s KiwiSkills Programme designed to improve digital literacy, were released today to improve the awareness and availability of digital literacy benchmarking and training options and to help New Zealanders assess their core computing skills.

Rebecca Boyce, who oversees the NZCS KiwiSkills Programme, said today “What’s clear from recent research is that the first step in tackling digital literacy in a community is to improve the awareness of benchmarking standards and the availability of training and assessment programmes such as ICDL, the International Computer Driving Licence”.

“The steps announced today are designed to do just that; make these tools more accessible and available than ever before and, combined with the over $300,000 of digital literacy training and assessment NZCS is providing to charities and communities in need at no cost, will make a real difference to New Zealand,” Boyce said.

The initiatives announced today include:

• A free Skills Analyser on the www.kiwiskills.co.nz website, allowing New Zealanders to quickly gain an idea of their relative core computing skill level.

• An up-to-date listing of where to go to tackle digital literacy in New Zealand, with details of all KiwiSkills digital literacy training and assessment providers throughout the country listed on the KiwiSkills website.

• For those unable to get to a KiwiSkills Training Provider or wanting to undertake training at home, the ability to access low-cost ICDL training instantly from the KiwiSkills website.

• NZCS members, numbering thousands of IT Professionals throughout New Zealand, now able to access and provide discount digital literacy training for their clients, colleagues, friends and family to help address digital literacy in their own communities.

“NZCS is focused on promoting digital literacy education for the general public and these tools and initiatives will make a genuine difference to the future of thousands of New Zealanders currently left behind by the digital divide,” Boyce said.

“ICDL is the world’s most widely accepted digital literacy standard. ICDL is the only United Nations UNESCO-endorsed programme and has assisted over 10 million individuals in 149 countries and 41 languages around the world,” Boyce concluded.

Background

Earlier this year the NZ Computer Society (NZCS) commissioned research looking at the impact of not addressing digital literacy in New Zealand.

The resultant research report, completed by research consultants KnowledgeWeaversNZ on behalf of the Society, analysed the findings of research conducted throughout the world then applied the result to New Zealand’s environment to find the expected outcome of implementing similar programmes en masse in New Zealand.

In terms of improved productivity, the report conservatively projects average savings per worker in New Zealand of $1820 per annum as a direct result of improved ICT skills and confidence after implementing a digital literacy standard such as ICDL. Projected across 70% of the country’s working population, this results in a net productivity improvement of $1.7 billion per year.

In response to the findings of the report, NZCS announced the KiwiSkills Programme, a resourced core project of the Society to help tackle digital literacy in New Zealand.

The research report is available here: http://bit.ly/diglit, and more information about the KiwiSkills Programme is available at www.kiwiskills.co.nz

About the NZ Computer Society

NZCS is the professional body of ICT Professionals, and as a non-profit incorporated society works with industry, academia, Government and the wider community to achieve its mission of increasing the education, standards and professionalism of the New Zealand ICT profession, and the base-level computing skills and confidence of New Zealanders.

About ICDL

The International Computer Driving Licence, or ICDL, is the leading global digital literacy certification programme, with over 10 million participants in 148 different countries.

ICDL is vendor-neutral and is made up of 7 modules including Concepts of ICT, Using the Computer and Managing Files, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Using Databases, Presentations, and Web Browsing and Communication.

ICDL is NZQA Accredited and endorsed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and is overseen internationally by the not-for-profit ECDL Foundation and in New Zealand by the non-profit New Zealand Computer Society (NZCS).

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