PROMOTING DIGITAL COMPETENCE FROM UNIVERSITY

Digital Competence involves the confident and critical use of Information Society Technology (IST) for work, leisure and communication. It is underpinned by basic skills in ICT: the use of computers to retrieve, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via the Internet. Some arguments cited for promoting the inclusion of ICT in education are the potential benefits of ICT for teaching and learning, the pervasiveness of technologies, and the necessity for present people of being functional in our knowledge society. Education standards need to include the kind of skills and competences that can help students become responsible and performing users of technology and to develop the new competences required in today's economy and society which are enhanced by technology, in particular those related to knowledge management. So, in some countries, particularly in Spain, there is necessary a general change in the curriculum, not related to any specific subject. In this sense, among different options, an international contest with the same theoretical concepts for all countries as an evaluation methodology can be a good practice for improvement educational systems and the level of the Digital Competence, like a positive double-edged sword. First, because it can be used to assess some skills and competences of students of different countries with different education systems; and second, it may be a very valuable tool for developing Digital Competence not only in those countries participating in the contest, but also others. So, it can be the seed for a change in the curriculum. We present in this paper some actions related to the promotion of the Digital Competence in the pre-university education system.