 Digital literacy champion David Saedi heads Certiport, which has developed international computer proficiency standards, and offers training and credentials designed to build a competitive global workforce. Certiport works in 128 countries and 20 languages, offering the Certiport Internet and Computing Core Certification (IC³®), along with certifications in Microsoft® Office and Adobe®. Saedi recently spoke to HotChalk about where the US stands in digital literacy and what it needs to do to compete internationally.
Name: David Saedi Title: President and CEO, Certiport, Inc., American Fork, Utah Education:
M.B.A., City University Business School, London, England
B.S., Chemical Sciences and Management
University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
Manchester, England  Q: How do you define digital literacy?
A: Certiport, along with its partners, has a working definition of digital literacy as “the ability to use digital technology, communication tools, and/or networks to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in the knowledge society.” This summer, education-to-employment authorities from around the world will meet in Kona, Hawaii for their third review of digital literacy standards. This will result in a common definition that will drive education, assessment, certification, and employment opportunities. Q: What’s an example of a country moving in the right direction? A: Take the case of China. It has the advantage of a centralized decision-making, even in education, which means that once they are determined to adopt something, nothing will stop them. Right now China’s first priority is to acquire these digital skills for global competitiveness. Q: How does the US fare in contrast? A: Sadly, we are decentralized in terms of education so that each state and district can make its own decisions. When you’re ahead of the game, as we were in education in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it works because creativity and innovation are fostered. Now that the U.S. is behind many former developing countries in basic skills, including digital literacy, the decentralized decision-making works against us. Q: Can you make state-by-state comparisons? A: One of the reasons we’re on Kona is that Hawaii was the first state to enact global digital literacy standards across their educational curriculum. We have to look at education-to-employment, and a couple of states lead in acknowledging digital literacy as a driving force: California and New York. California wants to make sure it keeps its leading edge in innovation and the general level of digital literacy across the entire population. In general, though, the lack of coordination between education and employment has paralyzed other states from making strong decisions to promote the current and relevant digital skills essential for employment. Q: How is industry handling the situation? A: Right now, if you talk to most major corporations in the U.S., they have created their own educational materials for new hires to learn essential practical digital skills. It makes more sense for schools to do some of this in tandem with the expectations of companies. Q: Where does Certiport fit in? A: We have fostered the creation of the global standard, the IC³® digital literacy standard, now adopted in over 80 countries. The standard measures an individual’s knowledge and skills to perform in schools and workplaces. It has three components: computing, key applications, and “living online.” One example is that users understand simple troubleshooting. Another example is managing home finances. IC³® also addresses the significant skill of navigating the Internet safely and securely. Q: What’s the next step? A: We need to first acknowledge that we have a broken educational system that doesn’t give students the skills to compete, and denies the corporations an early start in competitiveness. Then we need to adopt these universal standards to bring ourselves up-to-speed with the rest of the world, and finally foster creativity and innovation in our educational system.  Sheila Riley is a San Francisco-based freelance journalist. She is also an experienced online editor and ESL curriculum developer, and teaches ESL at City College of San Francisco.
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