Funded by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the Digital Literacy for All Learners project serves to foster digital literacy skills and computational thinking for all learners, with special focus on families from low socio-economic status households. National initiatives have raised awareness of the importance of developing innovative approaches to digital literacy and computational thinking, especially within elementary and middle schools. Success is further advanced when parents, caregivers, and neighbors are also able to collaborate in education.
To specifically emphasize work with entire families whose students are at risk of academic failure as a result of poverty or disability, Digital Literacy for ALL is creating a federation of community technology centers (CTCs) and expanding programming at existing CTCs within schools, public libraries, and community centers.
We take a multi-stakeholder community building approach to digital literacy and computational thinking by building from the assets brought to the federation by schoolteachers, librarians, after-school teachers, student scholars, parents, and volunteers, as well as local community and business leaders. The approach creates site-wide and community-deep inquiry groups developing and sharing innovative resources and approaches. We refer to those attending training as participants rather than students in recognition that everyone brings critical insights that can inform innovative development.
