In addition to competencies in reading, writing and arithmetic, understanding and navigating the digital world with ease and confidence represents a further fundamental skill that more than a third of the population of Switzerland do not have. Unfortunately, digital illiteracy is a reality in our country, making this issue of literacyforum.ch all the more relevant. Additionally, even if Switzerland is significantly advancing digital innovation, older people, those with reduced formal education, those living with disabilities and those living in socioeconomically precarious conditions cannot always benefit from this innovation. 

Although digital literacy is an area of pressing concern for education systems, its teaching remains a blind spot in curricula and classroom practice. We propose a definition and a conceptual framework which places reading strategies at the core of digital competence. One major source of difficulty for adolescents is selecting and evaluating information, especially when it comes from multiple, diverse sources, as is the case
in social networks. We summarise current and ongoing research that has explored the impact of educational measures at various educational levels among school pupils aged 10-19.

This study examines beginning teachers’ sense of competence in digital education, the value they attribute to training when developing this sense, and the extent of digital media integration in the classroom, as measured by the range of usage types. A questionnaire was sent to primary and lower secondary teachers who graduated in July 2022 from three teacher education institutes across five cantons in French-speaking Switzerland. The results reveal that each group has a moderate level of competence in digital education and that there is a link between the value attributed to training when developing this sense and the degree of digital education. However, initial training appears to support the development of the sense of competence in digital education only for primary teachers.

This article introduces the Seniors’ Computer Club of Delémont [a town of 12,000 in the French-speaking region of Switzerland] and Region, which is known as CAID for short. It recounts the club’s history, the reasons for its founding, its goals, philosophy and structure, as well as the challenges faced by its facilitation team and members. Current perspectives on digital inclusion for seniors are also discussed. Concluding the article, some members share what the club brings to their lives. 

In addition to competencies in reading, writing and arithmetic, understanding and navigating the digital world with ease and confidence represents a further fundamental skill that more than a third of the population of Switzerland do not have. Unfortunately, digital illiteracy is a reality in our country, making this issue of literacyforum.ch all the more relevant. Additionally, even if Switzerland is significantly advancing digital innovation, older people, those with reduced formal education, those living with disabilities and those living in socioeconomically precarious conditions cannot always benefit from this innovation. 

In addition to competencies in reading, writing and arithmetic, understanding and navigating the digital world with ease and confidence represents a further fundamental skill that more than a third of the population of Switzerland do not have. Unfortunately, digital illiteracy is a reality in our country, making this issue of literacyforum.ch all the more relevant. Additionally, even if Switzerland is significantly advancing digital innovation, older people, those with reduced formal education, those living with disabilities and those living in socioeconomically precarious conditions cannot always benefit from this innovation. 

This article discusses the relevance of transformative processes in education which can help ensure that schools are not simply digitalised, but that they also develop into places where children and young people are equipped for critical and considered participation in our digital society. The Navigator Education Digitalisation – a conceptual roadmap and guide to the state of digital transformation in education in the school education sector in Germany – offers a framework which identifies and specifies 21 areas of digital transformation. These indicators can guide schools and show them new perspectives within the context of their transformation. Using the example of the CoTransform project, I illustrate how schools – organised into so-called ‘school families’ consisting of three to five schools – can collaboratively shape change and how scientific knowledge can be made usable in practice. As part of a joint development strategy, a participatory approach is presented which positions teachers not merely as participants, but as active co-creators of the digital transformation.

Digital media do not simply replace pen and paper with a digital tool; instead, they significantly change the writing process (Steinhoff, 2022). This article uses text production to show how teachers can foster digital literacy. Both the corresponding incorporation into Curriculum 21 and the SAMR model (Puentedura, 2006) are used as methodological foundations for integrating digital media into classroom work. Media education topics play a central role here, complementing aspects of writing instruction which locate writing as a social practice. Practice-oriented teaching examples illustrate how students in Cycles 1–3 produce texts in different modalities and as part of a writing community. Special emphasis is placed on the platform myMoment, which supports digital text production by means of interactive functions. The new version of the platform uses integrated tasks to offer further opportunities for targeted student guidance in developing digital literacy skills. The web address www.mymoment.ch is being replaced by new.mymoment.ch to reflect this change.

As a digital reading medium, the internet offers a wealth of information sources. This is an advantage but also a challenge to readers, who both cannot and should not assume that they will encounter genuine knowledge when reading and researching. Readers must therefore be sufficiently able to critically evaluate epistemically uncertain online information. This article focuses on the skills needed for this kind of evaluation and organises them as part of an initial theoretical framework into two groups of epistemic strategies. With various analytical focuses, first-hand evaluations serve to directly assess the validity of the content. Second-hand evaluations are indirect assessments of the content, drawing on additional information beyond the textual content in the respective focal document. Ideally, these evaluations will be substantiated by reasoning that demonstrates analysis and appropriate critique. This topic is addressed in the second theoretical framework, which is based on critical-analytical thinking.
The article concludes with four implications for reading instruction.

In German teaching methodology the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been met with great interest. While in writing and literature teaching methodology there are already numerous conceptual proposals and also initial empirical studies on the use of AI, a focused discussion of AI in reading instruction is still emerging. The former is primarily driven by the hope that AI could help address the persistently poor performance in reading by school pupils in the German-speaking countries. To provide an overview of current developments related to reading in the context of AI, this article first charts contemporary concepts regarding the use of AI and the handling of AI-generated texts in reading instruction. Building on this, it explores, in the context of teacher professional development, what knowledge must be shared in initial teacher education and continuing professional development to make meaningful use of AI in reading assessment and support. In the conclusion, further implications of the assessment conducted are drawn for teacher education and professional development, as well as for research into reading instruction.  

In 2015 six Hamburg primary schools located in socially disadvantaged areas introduced into their timetables a dedicated reading slot, so as to foster the development of reading competence using empirically tested read-aloud methods. The success of the project prompted further schools to adopt the idea. This article introduces the project ‘Read along with me’, which ran from June 2022 to December 2023 in schools in the Gütersloh region. It linked the dedicated reading slot with regular reading assessments and a series of training events for teachers of first to fourth classes. Accompanying empirical research explored whether basic reading skills can be improved with the help of this systematic support. After 18 months considerable progress in reading skills was observed, regardless of gender, background or year group. No effects on reading motivation, reading self-concept or reading behaviour were observed, however. Preliminary data around quality of instruction raise further questions.