Mobile Digital Literacy of Australian Adolescent Students

Abstract

The vast majority of adolescents own and use mobile devices on a daily basis for learning and other everyday activities. Mobile digital literacy is a term that captures the various capabilities that these young people have to interact effectively and safely with information and people in virtual environments, as well as to sustain their formal and informal learning across time and space as they develop into independent, self-directed lifelong learners. As part of understanding adolescents' mobile digital practices, this research developed a framework for investigating the students' mobile digital literacy. This research used a quantitative methodology and adapted a generic digital literacy framework to investigate Years 7-10 Australian students' perceptions of their ability to use mobile technology for learning and everyday activities. The results show that the framework can effectively capture students' perceptions of themselves as having high levels of mobile digital literacy in all the three components (technical, cognitive, and social-emotional) of the digital literacy framework. The implications are discussed.