‘Digital natives’ are people who have access to all aspects of information and communication technology right from their childhood. They eagerly explore the astonishing potential of novel technology to revamp the world around them. Highly sophisticated skills are essential to face the challenges posed by interminable escalation of virtual interactive experiences. Harmoniously designed life skill education is the need of the time to tackle such crisis effectively. This study analyses specific characteristics of and issues in the life of digital natives. Also put forward certain practical suggestions to help structural and procedural modification for life skill education.

1. LIFE SKILL EDUCATION
FOR DIGITAL NATIVES
Dhanya G.
Research Scholar
School of Pedagogical Sciences
M. G. University, Kottayam
Kerala

2. Today’s generation perceives life in a
distinct way as they have been
immersed in a world infused with net
worked and digital technologies.
They can quickly acquire digital and
technical skills needed for the active
involvement in virtual world.
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3. virtual socialisation skills
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4. Life skills education
“Life skills education is designed to
facilitate the practice and reinforcement
of psychosocial skills in a culturally and
developmentally appropriate way; it
contributes to the promotion of
personal and social development, the
prevention of health and social
problems, and the protection of human
rights” (WHO, 1999).
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5. Characteristics of digital natives
Multi tasking
Creativity
Media orientation
Information fluency
Dazzling performance in a
digital environment
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6. Cyber vandalism and
identity theft
represent enormous
threats in a
computer-driven
world (Kizza, 2002).
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7. Issues faced of digital natives
• Increased suicide rate
• Social mal adjustments
• Cyber crimes
• Life style diseases
• Psychological problems are recent.
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8. Objectives of the Study
To categorize and record life skills
needed for digital natives
To suggest practical strategies for
integrating digital citizenship skills in
existing life skills education programme.
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9. Integration of life skills and
digital citizenship skills
• In this scenario proper life skills
education programme integrated with
digital citizenship skills is
indispensible.
• Life skills of digital natives are skills
which will help them to become more
successful, faithful and resourceful
citizen of digital world.
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10. Major characteristics of life skills for
digital natives
Different from technical skills
Extrapolation of life skills in digital era
All these skills are interrelated
Deliberate methods should be adopted for
teaching such skills.
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11. Categorisation of life skills of
digital natives
Life skills
of digital
natives
Digital
community
building skills
Cyber ethical
skills
Skills for
electronic
commerce
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11

12. Digital community building
skills
• The most universal tool for community
building in virtual world is the social
networking sites.
• Social network sites are web-based
services which permit individuals to
construct a public or semi-public
profile within a bounded system
(Danah & Nicole, 2007).
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13. • Online chatting, sharing, video
conferencing, news group formation
etc were various services provided by
popular social networking sites like
face book, twitter, orkut, myspace.
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14. • The skills used public discourse and
community building through social
networking sites can be aggregated as
digital community building skills.
• This confirms the need of structural
and strategic changes for integrating
life skills education with digital
citizenship skills.
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15. Confidentiality protection
• Discrepancy between privacy
concerns and actual privacy settings is
known as digital paradox (Barnes,
2006).
• This can be avoided by developing
skills to make clear boundary
between public and private
information that should be shared.
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16. Purpose tangibility
• This includes the ability to set an
unambiguous goal.
• Individuals should have clear purpose
for forming a community in digital
world.
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18. Virtual communication
• Virtual world is a permanent display
place for all information and data.
• So communication should not be on
the basis of abrupt emotions.
• Ability to process texts, pictures,
video and sounds is significant in
digital communication.
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19. Skills for electronic commerce
• Electronic commerce is the use of the
global internet for purchase and sale
of goods and services, including
service and support after the sale.
• Global marketing accessibility,
dramatically reduced distribution cost
are two significant causal factors for
the popularisation for ecommerce
(Treese, & Stewart, 2002).
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20. Money management skills
• Electronic banking
• Online shopping
• Money transfer
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21. Electronic banking
• Almost all banks are now providing
informational, communicative and
transactional services through
internet.
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22. • Major aim such provision is to make
time consuming banking process
simple.
• But inefficiency of the client may
cause other complex issues including
account safety risk.
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23. Account management
Electronic statement filling and
making deposits and payment
Management of credit and debits
cards
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24. Online shopping
• Skills should be developed to review
the details of the goods and to
compare the qualities of the based on
review description are essential before
purchasing.
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25. • Shipping charges
• Taxes
• International costs
• Trader details
• Delivery and return policies.
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26. Service consumption
• Health services
• Revenue collection tax return
• Train ticket booking
• Transportation details
• Google maps
• Career searching tools
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27. Cyber ethics
• Cyber ethics is the comprehensive
term used to refer ethical issues
related to technological world.
• Strategic steps should be acquired to
handle ethical, moral and legal issues
in cyber world.
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28. Cyber ethics and related subject
area
Cyber
ethics
Philosophy
Law
Computer
science
Engineering
Sociology
Behavioural
science
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29. Professional Perspective
• These skills are linked with
engineering and computer technology.
• Tavani, (2011) identified professional
responsibility, system reliability and
safety codes of conducts as the
related issues.
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30. • Pirating
• Hacking in the system
• Computer virus programming
• Cyber bullying
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31. Philosophical Perspective
• This includes skills of philosophy and
law.
• Privacy
• Anonymity
• Intellectual property
• Freedom
are related issues.
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32. Descriptive Perspective
• These are of skills related to Sociology
and behavioural science.
• Analytical and predictive skills about
the impact of technology in personal,
institutional social are the highly
significant.
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33. • Delivering electronic services will be
largely depending on the faith and
confidence of the user .
• Freedom and privileges of website
users and to follow behavioural
expectation.
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34. controlled exposure to avoid
personal
health and like
•Caporal
tunnel
syndrome
• Vision
problems
wellness
problems
•Internet
addiction
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35. Life Skills Education as digital
citizenship skills
• Collaboration
• Publication
• Peer review
• Exchange of precompetitive
(Trapscott, 2008)
• Parental and community partnership
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36. Strategies
• Online activity recording
• games and simulations
• use of visual tools
• resource channelization
• modelling
• recognition to creativity
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37. Online activity recording
• Online activity details
• Time duration
• Purpose
• Sites visited
• Deeds done.
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38. • These records are not intended for the
verification of teachers or parents,
instead are useful for self assessment
by the student.
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39. Use of visual tools
• Recognize visual effect produced
• Training in the primary process of
designing and reforming of digital
products.
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40. Online resource exercise
• Online games
• Simulations
• Wikis
• Blogs
• Portfolios
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41. Recognition to creativity
• More significance to originality than
unfeasible perfection
• Discourage to use unauthorised
products or information from the
internet
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42. Providing models
• Emails, blog post and social network
sites of teachers and parents should
reflect higher principle of ethics and
integrity.
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43. • Mutual respect
• Positive language
• Solution fluency
• Information fluency
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44. Value dilemma sheets
• Perspectives of students on specific
issues related to cyber crime can be
collected by giving them to fill
carefully designed value dilemma
sheets.
• Open discussion sessions will be
followed by this.
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45. Conclusion
• Adolescent education programme and
constructivism based curriculum are
two fruitful efforts to integrate life
education with formal schooling.
• But relatively less significance have
been given to life skills related to
digital citizenship.
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46. • Infusion of life skills education with
digital citizenship skills will make
available more refined and pertinent
learning experiences.
• This will be a sincere endeavour for
the meaningful facilitation for
personal and social development of
students.
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47. References
• Barnes, S.B. (2006). A privacy paradox: Social networking in the united states. First Monday, 11, .
Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cg iwrap/bin/ojs.
• Danah, B., & Nicole, E. (2007). Social network sites:definition, history and scholarship. Journal of
Computer-Mediated,Communication, 13,.( 1), 210-230. DOI: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x.
• Kizza, K. M. (2002). Computer network security and cyber ethics. North Carolina: Mcfarland.
• Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
• Tavani, T. H. (2004). Ethics and technologies: questions, and strategies for ethical computing computing
(3rd ed.). New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Publishers.
• Trapscott, D. (2008). Wikinomics: How mass collaborationchanges everything: New York: McGrow-Hill.
• Treese, G. W. &. Stewart, l. C. (2002). Designing Systems for Internet Commerce (2nd ed.). Boston:
Addison-Wesley Professional.
• WHO (1999), Partners in Life Skills Training: Conclusions from a United Nations Inter-Agency Meeting,
Geneva. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/mental_health/media /en/30.pdf
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