It used to be that an added attrac­tion on my resume was lit­er­acy in a few romance lan­guages, par­tic­u­larly Span­ish. While that cer­tainly remains a hot and highly mar­ketable skill, DSL is run­ning over it like a Mack truck. Don’t be silly, I’m not talk­ing  band­width here. DSL is Dig­i­tal as a Sec­ond Language™.

For all the Microsoft woes some may spew, there exists a FREE Dig­i­tal Lit­er­acy Cer­tifi­cate via their Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship pro­gram. It began in Octo­ber 2007 and you don’t here much about it in the for profit world. They prob­a­bly didn’t call it a DSL cer­tifi­cate because Bill didn’t want it con­fused with con­nec­tiv­ity. But, I think that was a mis­take because it has every­thing to do with con­nec­tiv­ity and open­ing doors.

The Dig­i­tal Lit­er­acy Cer­tifi­cate you can earn comes after 12–16 hours of study. It can be com­pleted alone or facil­i­tated by an instruc­tor in those for­tu­nate com­mu­ni­ties that offer it. The cur­ricu­lum con­sists of sub­ject mat­ter you and I could teach in our sleep yet mil­lions of peo­ple have no clue about. They are not tapped into the vast knowl­edge base and resources dig­i­tal lit­er­acy provides. 

One Lap­top Per Child is an awe­some pro­gram I don’t want to stop. Learn­ing and putting an end to dig­i­tal lit­er­acy inequal­ity is a very hon­or­able goal indeed. I want more where I live too though.

The local Area Agency on Aging has a fan­tas­tic pro­gram that places older work­ers in non-profit jobs and pays the salary. My place of employ­ment has had a “Senior Aide” for 2 years. When I came on-board in April I won­dered who the woman always read­ing a Romance novel was. I learned she was there to work but in an effort to go green and reduce costs, enve­lope stuff­ing had been largely elim­i­nated and there wasn’t much for her to do.

I spoke with our nice read­ing is fun under uti­lized office gnome and asked about her com­puter skills. She was wide-eyed and mor­ti­fied. I called the Agency and spoke with the place­ment spe­cial­ist. He told me some­thing I already knew. Older Baby Boomers and the Silent Gen­er­a­tion largely lack in the area of dig­i­tal lit­er­acy. They offer vol­un­tary pro­grams to address it but par­tic­i­pa­tion is low.

Could that be due to lack of pro­mo­tion and incen­tives for par­tic­i­pat­ing, I asked rhetor­i­cally? He offered to find a client with basic com­puter skills. I have yet to hear back.

I’m going to start using DSL in my sig­na­ture and I’m rec­om­mend­ing you do too. Even though we run in the dig­i­tal world it’s a skill not to be taken for granted.

Karla Porter, DSL

Oh, and since I found that fancy ™ cus­tom char­ac­ter, I’m using it on every orig­i­nal term I coin even if it’s just for track­ing pur­poses and to feel important.