Yarning on the Digital Track: Building Our Digital Skills Together

Taoundi Aboriginal College in Port Adelaide is providing Aboriginal students with culturally responsive, hands-on digital training in a safe, supportive environment. And the College hopes to expand the program to the wider Aboriginal community.

Through support from the Learning Changes Lives Foundation which enabled more computers to be purchased, more students are now working to develop digital literacy skills so they can confidently move into training and employment, while others are building skills for their daily life and connections.

The program is evolving in an organic and student-led way so that it works best for students with differing digital literacy levels. Tutors have also found that the program is most effective when delivered one-on-one or to a small group, rather than the traditional teacher at the front delivery.

Delivery of the program is also being driven by trauma informed approaches that meet the needs of vulnerable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners.

The program focuses on increasing knowledge and awareness, including around the use of passwords. A small group talked and shared information about how to identify and create a safe password and a young learner began to develop his own powerpoint presentation on password managers to share with the class. Initially, very anxious about the writing this involved, with support and encouragement and no judgement, he is now creating a fantastic resource in plain English with images.

Another learner is now able to email images from her phone and through text messages to her daughter. She wants to learn how to use online shopping so she no longer has to ask her daughter to do it for her.