What is Information and Communication Technologies Literacy (ICTLiteracy)?

In 2001, Educational Testing Service (ETS) convened an International ICT Literacy Panel to study the growing importance of existing and emerging Information and Communication Technologies and their relationship to literacy; hence ICT Literacy. Through their publication, Digital Transformation; a Framework for ICT Literacy, the Panel emphasized that “technology skills alone, without corresponding cognitive skills and general literacy, will not decrease the gaps defined by a digital divide.”

The Panel provided a working definition to ICT Literacy:

“ICT literacy is using digital technology, communication tools, and/or networks to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge society” (p. 2).

The five critical components of ITC literacy “represent a set of skills and knowledge presented in a sequence that suggests increasing cognitive complexity.” (p. 3). They are defined as:

Access: knowing about and how to retrieve information.
Manage: applying an existing organizational scheme.
Integrate: interpreting and representing information, summarizing, comparing and contrasting information.
Evaluate: judging the quality, relevance, usefulness, or efficiency of information.
Create: adapting, applying, designing, inventing, or authoring information (p.3)

Thus, simply stated, Information Communication Technology (ICT Literacy) is the result when learning skills are combined with 21st century tools (information and communication tools) in core subjects. Learning skills is the essential key.