Information, Media, and Technology Skills
- This strand has three literacies: information literacy, media literacy, and ICT literacy.
- Information literacy helps students find, evaluate, organize, and use information.
- Media literacy helps students read media messages for purpose, bias, audience, and persuasion.
- ICT literacy helps students use digital tools to learn, communicate, create, and solve problems.
- Responsible use is part of every literacy: safety, privacy, copyright, and honest use of AI tools.
This strand asks one question: can students use information, media, and technology wisely for learning? It groups three related literacies, and each has its own chapter of articles.
- Information literacy finds, evaluates, and uses information. See the Information Literacy chapter.
- Media literacy reads how media messages are built and why. See the Media Literacy chapter.
- ICT and digital literacy uses digital tools to learn, create, and take part responsibly. Covered across this chapter.
The Strand at a Glance
| Literacy | What it means | Classroom example |
|---|---|---|
| Information literacy | Finding, evaluating, and using information | Students compare two websites and decide which source is reliable. |
| Media literacy | Reading how media messages are built and why | Students study an advertisement for its purpose and target audience. |
| ICT literacy | Using digital tools to learn, create, and communicate | Students build a presentation from researched evidence. |
More Than Using Devices
A student may know how to open an app or run a search and still struggle to judge a source or behave well in a learning space. These literacies are about the choices behind the clicks: which source to trust, what a message is really doing, and which tool fits the task. That is why the strand matters for ICT in education. The goal is not technology use; it is informed, critical, and purposeful use.
Responsible Use
None of these literacies is complete without responsible habits. Students should protect personal information, credit their sources, check facts before sharing, respect copyright, and use AI tools honestly and as the teacher directs. These habits keep learning safe and ethical for the student and for others.
A Common Mistake
The common mistake is to assume students are skilled because they use phones and social media every day. Confidence with entertainment apps does not mean a student can evaluate a source, cite it, protect privacy, or use a tool for real learning. The second mistake is to treat this strand as button-clicking training. Students need judgment and ethics, not only technique.
How was this article?