Social Distancing Inspires New Digital Literacy Strategies

Digital literacy work — which involves teaching folks to use computers so they aren’t left behind by societal digitization — often plays out through classroom instruction, library initiatives, or direct outreach at community events. COVID-19 and social distancing, however, have made all of that limited or impossible. As a result, public servants on the front lines of the efforts — a group that most often includes librarians but in recent years has grown in some places to encompass city hall staffers with connections to the central IT shop — have had to develop new approaches to helping more citizens learn to use technology.

This has manifested in a few different efforts at the community level and will likely continue to do so nationwide. Chief among these new efforts is a program called Digital Navigators. Created by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), this program is described by officials in its simplest sense as “an adaptation of traditional digital inclusion programming to this new reality, providing one-to-one dedicated support via phone service.” This service will be accomplished by trained and dedicated staffers.