Module 7: Technology Literacy

In this chapter, we are going to reflect on the growing role that technology is assuming in workplaces all over the world, and how this will impact existing jobs in the near future. We will clarify what technology literacy is, why it’s important to understand and benefit from it, and how to develop these competencies while evaluating our own level in it.

While the fear of being replaced by technology is understandable, in the first part we will see how human work is not likely to disappear but will change in form and structure, requiring the workforce to learn new and different skill sets.

In the second part, we will reflect on how being able to discover and select the best tools, understand how to use their potential, and monitor and solve problems will all be important competencies to have. These will allow us to benefit from technological innovation and work alongside it, instead of resisting change.

Developing these competencies is important now and will likely be even more so in the future. For this reason, a new approach to how we acquire competencies and a change in attitude is required. Technology is evolving too fast to make it possible to acquire all the specific skills we will need in our lifetime during a single period of time.

As such, the last part will focus on learning to learn—the skill to unlearn and learn how to use new technology—and the need for workers to develop it. While not easy, this will prove crucial for the future