The Impact of the Students’ Gender and High School Type on the Level of Digital Competency Development for Lifelong Learning

Abstract

The concept of a lifelong learning is a major step point of the world’s social, economic and educational policy. Its realization depends on the individual capabilities in dealing with majority of information, as well as being skillful in searching, selecting, evaluating and effective usage of information, or in short it depends on the digital literacy. 

The main objective of this paper is to examine the students’ qualifications in approaching, selecting and administrating of information as well as taking part in computer used communication. For that purpose, a questionnaire is made with evaluation scale which was applied on 160 high school students from the municipality of Tetovo. The results collected, show that the students are capable of using digital technology when it comes to simpler tasks, but it is needed more work on the further development of the digital competency. The process of learning with a computer is not the same as learning from a book or lectures. It is known that the aim of the one and the other way is to gain knowledge, but forms of learning are different. Most other ways of gaining knowledge leads to better understanding.Learning through ICT is not necessarily, any better or worse than teaching in a classroom, but it's different when it will accept, a change in the way of looking at the role of digital competence in teaching The individual today has to be competent to use the technology in order to find the needed information and to select the one that is needed from the majority. Thus, it can be concluded that the traditional literacy (reading, writing and calculating), recently includes the digital literacy, as well. The 21^st century literacy introduces one new amount of knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for successful and quality life.

Keywords: Digital Competency, Lifelong Learning, Technology