The digital world enables us to connect, collaborate, innovate, and discover information on an ever-broadening scale. Learners need to learn to use technology effectively, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. You need a clear, structured programme to support learners to engage with technology and apply critical thinking to the information they create and discover.
What will students learn?
Students will develop essential digital skills to support their future learning and development. They will:
- learn how to use digital technology safely and protect their own physical and emotional wellbeing
- understand how access to digital technology can enable collaboration and support community building
- make educated decisions about the information that they encounter and source using AI
- learn how to become positive contributors to the digital world
- learn when to apply, and how to differentiate between, human and artificial intelligence
- develop skills to create learning outputs like reports and presentations, appreciating their responsibility to retain the role of main creator
- develop knowledge and understanding that will allow them to respond to and evaluate technology of the future.
How is the programme taught?
You can teach Digital Literacy as a separate subject, or embed the content within broader learning, depending on your school approach and timetabling. For example, embedding could include:
- safety messages integrated within cross-curricular sessions on how learners should conduct and protect themselves
- learners develop content creation and critical literacy skills while preparing to present their work in mathematics or Cambridge Global Perspectives
- apply media literacy skills to evaluate AI outputs to identify bias and validity in humanities or science.
There are significant links between the Cambridge Wellbeing curriculum and Digital Literacy, from identifying and managing emotions, maintaining healthy habits and relationships, dealing with change and above all staying safe.
This course supports progression to Cambridge Lower Secondary Digital Literacy.
Support to help you deliver the course
Explorations are available for each Stage. These cover the learning objectives listed in the Curriculum Framework.
Explorations provide tools, resources and tangible lesson ideas to help learners investigate and explore the Digital Literacy course in a safe and practical way. Each Exploration contains activities for learners to engage with the learning objectives to support them to develop the skills and knowledge to use digital tools successfully.
Key features:
- Activities within Explorations are written with clear instructions for teachers
- Each Exploration has activities that work together to develop skills
- Key terms help explain important concepts and improve teacher confidence
- Activities can be adapted; guidance is available for each Exploration on how to adjust the length or challenge of the activities
- Learners develop digital literacy of the topics through experience and exploration as they move through Primary.
Explorations are available on the School Support Hub.
How is Cambridge Primary Digital Literacy assessed?
The emphasis of this course is on giving learners formative feedback on the digital skills you want them to develop. This will be through discussion, observation, and lesson outputs where you discuss with learners ‘what went well’ and how they can improve further, so that they can reflect on, and improve, their performance. When discussing learning outputs, it is vital that learners demonstrate ownership and understanding of the work that they produce, particularly where AI has been used.
To support assessment in the classroom, we have produced guidance that is available on the School Support Hub.
There is no Cambridge Primary Progression Test or Cambridge Checkpoint for this subject.