The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training (2012, 12) states in the Framework for Basic Skills that digital skills are seen as a prerequisite for active participation in working life and in a society in constant change. An active participation in working life and society is according to Lindström and Erikson (2010, 27) at the core of the Ottawa charter to function as “active participating subjects in our own life”. This raises the question about whether those digital skills the way they are practiced in our project schools (and probably in many other Norwegian schools) are enough to secure such an active participation in their own lives, now and in the future.
In the empowerment concept education, knowledge and competence play an important role (Freire 1980).
What claims of empowering the schoolchildren and preparing them for an ever more digitalised future do the digital competence goals express? As we can see in the above citations from the Basic Skills, the focus seems to be on
“computer media literacy” the way Buckingham (2007) defines it, i.e.
handling computer program products, retrieving information and handling digital media. Such skills point more to consumer activities, to retrieve and handle existing digital products like program packages, apps, using search engines, games and provided teaching material. There is little room for the children to be creative actors in the digital world; they are rather consequently guided into a consumer position. Using computer programs to write stories, paint pictures or compose music is, however, no more creative than doing those things without computers.
It is not enough to do creative things on the computer, using pre-made tools.
In the context of the computer and of the user’s digital life it is the mere consumption of those tools that ultimately someone else controls. Strong market forces guide the consumers into a position of helplessness where they have to accept the rules set by mainly Microsoft or Apple, two giants in the software market. To find alternative software and operating systems, computational skills are needed to understand functions and the capacity of your still general-purpose computers. But, time is short as the hardware development moves towards less general and more specialised computers
such as smartphones and tablets (O’Donnel, Reith, Saini & Shirer 2013) with which the capabilities are often limited by what the manufacturers choose to make available in their appstores, rather than the physical limitations of the machines.
Arguments from scholars like Papert and DiSessa for a new pedagogy, integrating digital technology cognitively through teaching the use of programming, and Richard Stallman (2010, 3–6) advocating the use of free software (referring not to price but to programs where the freedom to share, modify and run the program for any purpose has been guaranteed by its author) in order to shift the locus of control when using computers entirely to the individual users and their community.
However, development shows a strong tendency to make the consumers more and more dependent. With tablets where you can only install prefabricated and pre-approved apps or new generation laptops where you instead of installing the software use software as a service, typically marketed as the cloud, for storing your documents rather than storing them on your own computer or own private server (Stallman 2010, 209–
213). To work and access your documents, you need an internet connection and electricity, the result being that the locus of control is placed beyond the individuals’ reach, the self- efficacy to a large extent limited, with helplessness and stress likely to occur. Both teachers and parents reported stress and
helplessness; they were talking about frustrations with the lack of, or bad
internet connection, bad software solutions etc. that
wasted both work and the learning situation.
Still, general-purpose computers are available to the children and present a wide variety of possibilities for creative use. Therefore, it is necessary to teach computational competence so children can understand and use all of the computer’s capabilities to solve problems, and make it do work for them. As we saw, computational competence was low among our informants and since the 1980s the development has gone to ease the user position with more and more consumer friendly solutions, software and apps; programming competence has been left to experts. Our informants were unaware of the alternatives to proprietary software and emerging activities worldwide to regain common insight in what computers are. In addition to the earlier mentioned growing network of
“kidsa koder” activities in Norway another growing computational activity are the Hackerspaces where people of all ages meet for sharing computational knowledge, programming and program development, experimenting with electronics, robots, and as Stallman (2010, 97) defines hacking: enjoying playful cleverness.
The power struggle for governance of the internet might also be a threat to individual freedom, independence, self-efficacy and good quality of life, and needs to be known to the users. So far the internet is still an organisation never seen before, organically developed by the users. However, there are both strong economical interests, with the enormous profit potentials of gaining control over the internet, as well as strong political interests in internet governance (Jonson 2010). Both the teachers and the parents
in our sample group were unaware of such a struggle. Unrestricted access to the internet is taken for granted. We believe it is important that the teachers and parents as well as the schoolchildren become aware of the need to take part in discussions with politicians about the future of the internet. Knowledge and insight is, however, needed and we recommend the schools to look into such challenges regarding the digital future.
Summary and conclusions
We have chosen the theory of Salutogenesis (Antonovsky 1979; 1988) as a theoretical framework in this article because we want to focus on eHealth in a broad perspective. In our efforts to analyse the health aspects in the digital age, Antonovsky’s model of the health continuum (1979) might be useful. There he represents health as a continuum stretching from H-, a state of bad health or “dis-ease” towards H+ representing
“ease” or good health.
Let us look at the digital life and mental health from an ease/dis-ease perspective.
In the results from our surveys and interviews ICT plays an important role in everyday life; it contributes positively to easiness and improves life quality in many dimensions. Easing workload both physically (industry) and mentally (intellectual activities like education and research) ease the access to knowledge for everybody. Social media eases connectivity and a wide variety of entertainment is made accessible. The public might not be fully aware of dis-ease factors in our digital world such as
surveillance, censorship, the earlier mentioned hegemony exercised by multinational enterprises in hardware and software production and copyright enforcement. Digital bullying, sexual harassment, drug communities, obsessive gaming and internet addiction are more obvious dis-ease factors. People encounter stressors daily regarding their digital life that might upset their position on the health continuum. Depending on the situation, the tension might either cause a breakdown or people find their resources to help them regain their mental health through salutogenesis and move towards H+. In a digital world computational skills represent such useful resources. From an empowerment perspective computational skills can be seen as salutogenic factors in handling stressors in an ever more digitalized everyday life to avoid a pathogenic development. Therefore, from a health perspective we will again emphasize the need for reconsidering the goals set about digital skills in school. The question is to empower the schoolchildren to be active participants in the digital development for themselves and for their future.
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The purpose of this article is to search for an answer for school children´s good life and health. The goal is to produce information about which point of views must be taken into consideration in school children´s health promotion when developing online health services in a multicultural environment, for example in Finnish Lapland. This article is based on my way of thinking about life and health that I have scrutinized during the years (Seppänen 2010; Eirola [current Seppänen] 1996; 1999; 2003; Eirola [current Seppänen], Nikkonen and Pietilä 2000). I have applied this thinking to an orientation compass of school children´s good life and health.