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howtobedigital

Free · no account, ever · 8 lessons and 26 explainers

You are not behind.
Nobody taught you.

Short lessons on the digital and AI parts of work, in plain English. Not sure where to start? Twelve questions will tell you, and give you the next three things to do.

Find your starting point 3 minutes · nothing is stored

Or skip that and browse all the lessons · or look at the 26 explainers

How this works

Step 1 · 3 minutes

Say what is true for you

Twelve plain statements. Tick the one that matches. No scores, no right answers, and nothing leaves your browser.

Step 2 · straight away

See where you are

Four areas, and where you stand in each. Then the three lessons to do next, in order, with the real time each one takes.

Step 3 · today

Do one real thing

Every lesson ends with a task on your own machine. Print the path, or come back to it whenever your circumstances change.

Digital Skills
Copilot and Agents

Levels 1 to 3 · 0 published · re-checked every 60 days

What your employer has actually bought, what it can see, and how to get one useful thing done in an app you already use. Nothing is published here yet. This section is listed anyway, because a track with nothing in it is a fact about the site and hiding it would not be.

What is planned for this track

Not yet written

Somebody said "we have Copilot". You are not sure which one.

Find out what you have been given

Planned · no date promised

Digital Play
Digital Play

You have never used one of these and would rather not start at work.

Ask it something daft and see what happens

8 minutes · Level 0

The first go should not be at work, with something that matters, in front of somebody. It should be at home, with nothing of yours in it, for no reason at all. That is what this track is for.

The have-a-go path · All Play lessons

What changed · week of 3 August 2026 · 4 minutes

The government published a new national standard for essential digital skills in July, and almost nothing is taught against it yet.

Read this issue · All issues

All working notes

Explainers

26 pages · about 3 minutes each

Show me, don't tell me

One idea per screen, a big picture on every screen, and under a hundred and twenty words on the whole page. Not lessons — no steps to follow, nothing to complete. They are for the moment before a lesson, when you need to see what the thing actually is.

All 26 explainers

The numbers

8m

UK adults cannot do all eight of the tasks that make up the basic level.

Ipsos for Lloyds Banking Group · Essential Digital Skills 2025 · Fieldwork 5 March – 2 April 2025

35%

of UK businesses with ten or more staff use at least one AI technology.

Office for National Statistics · Artificial intelligence in UK businesses: 2023 to 2026 · 20 July 2026

11%

say more than half their workforce has had any training on it. Same release, same base.

Office for National Statistics · Artificial intelligence in UK businesses: 2023 to 2026 · 20 July 2026

Every number on this site, with its source — and the ones that were rejected

Spaced Learning Practice

For channel partners and enterprise reinforcement — a vendor-neutral retention and transfer layer that sits beside organisational teaching programmes, not instead of free lessons.

Spaced Learning Practice

For organisations

Councils, housing associations, charities, SMEs

Find out where your team actually is before you buy anything

The same check, run across a team, shows the floor: the one person who cannot open the thing everybody else is being trained on. Programmes are built from that, not from a catalogue. Plain scope, plain price.

Run the team check · 4 minutes

Or work out what an agent could actually do for you — a board for a team, twenty minutes

What a programme includes, what it costs, and what is not offered

Photo slot · 16:9 · a team session, hands and a whiteboard · your own, not stock
A programme starts with the team's own jobs on a board, not a catalogue.No image yet
Nothing here is sold to you

Employers, councils and housing associations pay for team programmes. That is what funds the free side. No lesson is ever paywalled, delayed, or made worse in order to sell something.