Digital Intelligence

As my regular readers will know, I'm spending the summer with my mother who has dementia.  As I knew I would be spending many weeks out in the countryside with very little to do, and because I also know that much as I love my mum it is incredibly frustrating to spend hours each day having the same conversations over and over again, I decided I needed a bit of intellectual stimulation and so signed up to take the Role of Technology online PYP workshop.  It's fascinating - and although I consider I'm somewhat of an "expert" on technology integration, there are many resources that I've not come across before and which I'm exploring.  One of these that I've been looking at today is the DQ Institute website.  According to the World Economic Forum, Digital Intelligence (DQ) is the sum of social, emotional, and cognitive abilities that enable individuals to face the challenges and adapt to the demands of digital life.  These abilities can be broken down into 8 areas:

Digital identity: The ability to create and manage one’s online identity and reputation. This includes an awareness of one's online persona and management of the short-term and long-term impact of one's online presence.

Digital use: The ability to use digital devices and media, including the mastery of control in order to achieve a healthy balance between life online and offline.

Digital safety: The ability to manage risks online (e.g. cyberbullying, grooming, radicalization) as well as problematic content (e.g. violence and obscenity), and to avoid and limit these risks.

Digital security: The ability to detect cyber threats (e.g. hacking, scams, malware), to understand best practices and to use suitable security tools for data protection.

Digital emotional intelligence: The ability to be empathetic and build good relationships with others online.

Digital communication: The ability to communicate and collaborate with others using digital technologies and media.

Digital literacy: The ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share and create content as well as competency in computational thinking.
Digital rights: The ability to understand and uphold personal and legal rights, including the rights to privacy, intellectual property, freedom of speech and protection from hate speech.

As I read through these they immediately reminded me of the 9 Elements of Digital Citizenship.

I started to put these 2 side by side to see where the overlap is.  This is how far I have got at the moment.  

As I'm not very familiar with the DQ model, I'd love some comments about this.  Is there an advantage to using one approach over another?  The DQ model seems a bit more fleshed out than the 9 Elements one, and as I explored it further it seems as if there are different levels - as you can see digital citizenship is Level 1:

• Level 1: Digital citizenship - The ability to use digital technology and media in safe, responsible and effective ways
• Level 2: Digital creativity - The ability to become a part of the digital ecosystem by co-creating new content and turning ideas into reality by using digital tools
• Level 3: Digital entrepreneurship - The ability to use digital media and technologies to solve global challenges or to create new opportunities

The DQ website also addresses very directly the 8 skills that students should be taught as part of digital citizenship.  You can see these on the diagram below:

The DQ website contains lots of information and resources for educators and parents and in addition there is the facility to sign students up for a self-learning programme.  The DQ World website for students seems very interactive and engaging, the activities are gamified with the option of earning points and getting yourself and your school onto a Leader Board. Once a student signs up, parents get an email activation code which they need to approve.  They also get a personalised DQ report showing the strengths and weaknesses of their child'd digital intelligence, the extent of exposure to various online risks, and some practical recommendations to improve your child’s DQ™ based on their profile.  The website claims that results of this programme have been tested and proven, leading to a 30% reduction in risky online behaviour and an increase in personal strengths such as critical thinking, empathy and global citizenship.   I'm interested to know if anyone reading this blog has experience of this programme.  I'm about to sign myself up as a student to experience it myself, but would love to hear from any teacher who has actually used this with a class.