Do you keep a blog?  

cartoon showing a newly hatched chicken reverencing a paradigm shift

Doug Peterson says ‘One of my first questions when I meet an educator is what’s the address of your blog?’ Doug’s JISC piece lists reasons for having an online presence. These include blogging for research, employability and simply yourself. One of the reasons I hear for not blogging is not having anything to say. Really?  Nothing? Doug says there’s no such thing as a bad blog. Well, with respect, I disagree. There are plenty of blogs which are too long, too wordy and plain boring but I get his point. Better to blog badly and have an online presence rather than not at all. It’s about digital engagement. Social media are creating niche networks within higher education. Activities like blogging and tweeting emphasise divides between those who do and those who don’t. The gap is getting wider but it’s largely invisible. Like attracts like. If you do it’s with others who do. If you don’t you are less likely to be reading this in the first place.

This week I picked up from a tweet a piece in THES by Bob Harrison about making FE more of a digital experience. Here is the same old language of technology transformation. ‘Hopefully says Bob, ‘this time the transformative potential of technology for learning will be recognised rather than ignored’ People have been saying this since 1997 and the Dearing Report into the future of higher education. Today’s use of technology is mostly limited to uploading documents to a VLE. While this offers 24/7 access to information, the VLE can do so much more in terms of collaborative interaction. The problem is shifting from a repository approach to an activity one. Bob says we need ‘critically, refreshed workforce skills’, a ‘paradigm shift in how learning programmes are designed, delivered and assessed’ (cue favourite image!) and it’s ‘important to remember technology-enhanced blended learning is not a cheap option.’  We know all this. It’s the doing it which is the problem. The article linked to an Opinion piece in the TES about teaching digital literacy.

(This is the risk of social media – one thing leads to another and another until an hour is gone – does this make me digitally literate, a champion procrastinator  or internet addict?)

Matt Dean says ‘FE needs to work out how to teach digital literacy.’  It was reminiscent of the 2007 blog post about technically illiterate teachers. The question for Matt is not should we teach digital literacy, but how to do teach it well. Good question but Matt is writing about students. The academic staff perspective is missing. HE have the same issues. I think we need to go back further and look at how teachers develop their own digital skills and identities in the first place. To see digital capabilities as ways of being and seeing as well as knowing which buttons to click. Digital divides are growing but for most institutions, access has become less of an issue than meaningful engagement. This is where help is needed. Rather than ‘teach digital literacy’ in isolation, it should be embedded in the curriculum to help ensure digital graduate attributes. In staff development and teacher education programmes to support staff trying out digital pedagogies and practices in safe supportive environments.  We not only need to change what we do but change how we think and this is the challenge.

#BbWorld15 part five; personal reflections at the end of the show

This is the end of BbWorld15. My home has been the largest hotel, resort and convention centre I’ve ever seen. It’s a glass and steel bubble. For days I didn’t step outside. Apart from being too hot – in the mid thirties – you didn’t need to. Everything was on the inside including the trees and gardens although the glass lifts were not for the faint hearted! Also outside there wasn’t a great deal to see or do.

But on the inside it was was busy. Over 3000 delegates and dozens of parallel sessions, even going full pace you only scratch the surface. Already the conference is starting to blur but I have the key points loaded into these blog posts. They’re a bit rushed.  Some of the pictures aren’t too good and not all of have alt text but they will be my reminder of the privilege of being here.  Blackboard is one of the few conferences which crosses the boundaries and brings together this peculiar hybrid breed of academic developer, learning technologist and researcher.  What unites us is the value we place on technology to make a difference to the student experience. What separates us is the work we do supporting the late adopters and digitally shy academics whilst promoting the need for inclusive practice so ensure no one gets shut out or left behind.

Adoption was a core feature of many presentations. There was a distinct shift in emphasis from what could be done to how to encourage and support engagement through sequential stepping.

I’ve got some new ideas. Maybe developing a rubric for universal design; capturing the core content of the four TELEDA learning blocks – learning design, open education, social media, working with audio and video –  and releasing them as OER; continuing to find ways to apply the essential criteria of higher education – communication, critical thinking, deeper approaches to reflective practice – and applying them to technology training.

Underpinning it all is the affirmation I’ve received this week how core to all adoption just might be the shift from training to teaching – seeing e-teaching as the corollary to e-learning. While one of the messages of BbWorld  is to put the student first, it’s increasingly clear how some people are starting to consider the changing attitudes towards digitally shy academics. Overall, attitudes to ‘faculty’ were not hugely sympathetic and this is part of the problem. If ever I needed evidence of the digital divides on campus between technologists and teachers there was plenty to choose from. Looking back over the years it’s difficult to find many attempts to rethink how digital support is provided and now we’re in a time where everyone is stretched and squeezed, the suggestion to invest more resources into digital staff development will not be popular. It needs more people to recognise and accept the adoption of digital technology is problematic. What troubles me is how those who promote, support and maintain it are often those who find it easy to use. They forget or have never experienced what it feels like to be digitally lost and confused.

The phone on the hotel room has a button called Consider it Done.

It’s linked to your room so you are greeted with your name and what comes across as a genuinely meaningful-sounding question ‘What can I assist you with today?’ Once I’d experienced this response I actually felt ok about using the service again. It made a difference to how I experienced not knowing something or not understanding how things worked. This is the effect we need to generate and make happen.

 

Changing discourse of digital exclusion, Martha Lane Fox and the Dimbleby Lecture 2015

image of Martha Lane Fox Dimbleby Lecture on BBC iPlayer

In the 2015 Dimbleby Lecture, Martha Lane Fox called for de-commercialisation of the interne (transcript) and setting up an independent body, informed by the ‘….original promises of the internet – openness, transparency, freedom and universality…’  This may be too little too late; I think the damage is already done. Amazon brings the high street to our mobile devices and we love the convenience. Twitter not only keeps us in the loop, we become the loop-makers. Whether artists, scientists or humanitists – the internet offers resources on a previously unimaginable scale. Like having a Britannica set behind every keystroke. That’s 32 volumes. RIP Britannica – 1768-2010. The day knowledge stopped for the digitally excluded.

MLF extolls the advantages of being online and says ‘Crucially, we must ensure that no one is left behind; that the 10 million adults who can’t enjoy the benefits of being online because they lack basic digital skills, no longer miss out.’ Sounds promising but… digital divides are not new. They need less talking and more genuine opportunities for challenging and bridging instead. MLF said nothing about exclusion through lack of access. Instead digital exclusion now equates to poor digital literacies iinstead.

The discourse has changed and this has been happening for some time. The focus of the Go On UK website has shifted from promoting affordable and usable technology to the quality of access without even a mention of poor broadband. The digital debate has become personal rather than political and is now about individuals. Go On replaced Race Online, also setup by MLF, with the aim of getting the nation connected for the end of 2012. At least it contained acknowledgment of digital divides. The Go On vision only addresses the lack of basic digital skills, calling this a ‘significant social issue’ – which it is – but even more crucial is the lack of internet access in the first place!

After watching and reading the lecture by MLF I signed the Dot Everyone petition calling for a public institution for the digital age. I’ll sign anything which offers opportunities to raise awareness of digital divides and exclusions. On clicking sign I was immediately asked for money in order to share my signature with others.

<#Sighs> So much for MLF’s lecture call for de-commericalisation of the internet!

image showing dot everyone petition page

The ee’s have it; examining e-teaching as essential element of e-learning

Quote from Blackboard conference on supporting digitally shy to become digitally confident

The post-conference reflections continue…feeling more like a dream, snatches of memory here and there as the event fades under ongoing work weight.  My presentation title was ‘e-teaching; moving from digitally shy to digitally confident with Blackboard Learn’. The message was shifting institutional investment to the technology users rather than its maintainers or managers. Evidence from colleagues who teach and support learning, who’ve taken part in Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA), suggests examining the e-teaching element of e-learning has the potential to make a real difference.

“…I realise now how naïve I was in the past to simply open the discussion board with a question and expect the students to participate. As a tutor I have to make it possible for my students to participate through the design of my tasks…”

“… It seems obvious now that the lack of student engagement with my online resources was due to inappropriate design. I placed too much emphasis on text based, self-directed learning and  didn’t recognise the important roles of self and peer assessment, interaction between students and probably most importantly, investing time in building solid foundations and helping students develop skills for online learning.”

“…Being an online learner is confusing and disorientating. There is no tutor to check what you are doing ‘is right’…”

“As a tutor in the classroom you can be on hand to make connections for students or clarify activity instructions. This is less easy online, you have to almost pre-empt questions…”

In the beginning there was a triad of technology, students and teachers. The technology has been promoted as transformational, the student as in need of engagement, the teacher as…….errr…..well, maybe their time will come through the growing realising e-teaching is the missing link. With technology playing an increasing role in design and delivery of learning opportunities on and off campus, assumptions about digital confidence have to become more realistic.

Digitally shy teachers need to be digitally confident before they can teach online

The Blackboard people posted the first comment during the conference but it could just as easily have said the second 🙂

 

social media selfies from #BBWorld14 – the moral of storify is think before you link!

Twitter is the ultimate in contagious self-promotion. With over 2500 delegates at #Bbworld14 it was a challenge to stand out from the crowd. Social media is one of the few ways to achieve a permanent  ‘presence’.  In every session I attended the majority were heads down working on a mobile device. I understand this. Apart from the ease of making digital notes, the tweeting  motivation was strong. You don’t travel all that distance to be invisible.

There are multiple layers to social media as well as a multitude of options and #BBworld14 made good use of them, as you would expect. Even the Twitter Wall was huge!

Twitter Wall at BBWorld14

In the world of social media your audience is often singular and cen be seen in the mirror. My Twitter stats from the event might be derisable to some, but for me they’re now a challenge to emulate!

BBWorld14 Twitter Stats

This tweet was picked up by one of the Storify collections which inspired me to make my own very first Storify Story using tweets and photos from the event. I was impressed with the ease of the software. It does all the work for you and easily brings together any content with your name on across a whole range of social media. I linked it to Twitter and Fickr to produce a useful reminder of the event.

Storify at BBWorld

 

Lastly, I became 4130th person to be followed by @Blackboard!  🙂

BBWorld blog mention

Our digital identity is integral to digital literacies. Social media platforms make it easy for mistakes and the permanent nature of digital footprints mean errors made in haste can truly be repented at leisure. Whether Google will agree to taking down something you later regret is another issue but for the majority of people ‘think before you link‘ is essential. Sometimes it’s less about your own actions and more about the social media actions of others. Storify listed everyone who appeared in my #BbWorld14 story with an option to contact them and it was surprising how many faces showed up which I’d forgotten I’d included in tweets.  Not all social media does this. Maybe they should.

Talking Xerte pictures; should we cite, steal or DIY?

image of baby with ipad from http://proservicescorp.com/wp-content/uploads/ipad_baby.jpg

I’m guilty of image theft. Digital images in general and this baby one in particular. Gimmicky I know but illustrative of the social impact of the internet; in particular on digital literacies and education. I cite a url to show I’m not claiming ownership but frustratingly, this might not be enough. The protection offered through the concept of fair use is not as much as we might think. EDEU futures need to include the C word – shhhh……..copyright.

At the Making Digital Histories ‘Talking Xerte’ workshops this week, it was suggested managing copyright requirements by DIY. Digital technologies make content production feasible and this is an interesting idea. Given time and a heap more creative talent, I’d be happy to adopt a DIY approach but it’s not without challenges and reinforces how guidance on using visuals in teaching resources would be a useful development area for the new EDEU team; maybe we could build a TELEDA or EDEU image bank. Digital pix are fun ways to develop digital literacies staff and students on the Making Digital Histories  team can demonstrate.

I attended both ‘Talking Xerte’ workshops with presentations from Sarah Atkinson and Adam Bailey, University of Brighton; Bob Ridge-Stearn, Newman University, Birmingham and David Lewis, University of Leeds* all sharing experiences of students producing learning objects with Xerte – a free tool from the University of Nottingham. We talked Xerte, used Xerte and had lunch. A perfect model for any practical professional development event aimed at enhancing digital literacies and knowledge 🙂

Xerte is a resource which brings digital content together. Text, images, multimedia and hyperlinks can be inserted into pre-designed Xerte template pages. It isn’t arguably the most exciting of environments but like Blackboard, Xerte is about active learning; using tools to generate interaction with content and facilitate learning opportunities.

Xerte is free. At Lincoln it lives at http://xerte.lncd.lincoln.ac.uk Sign in with network name and password; examples and help resources on the login page. As with all things digital there’s a learning curve but once colleagues had a go, getting their hands Xerte (sorry, couldn’t resist!) they all saw potential.

The example below is one I put together to demonstrate different template page styles. It’s part information and part guidance on using Xerte. Quick tip – the size can be customised in the embed code. Direct  link https://xerte.lncd.lincoln.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=2267

Xerte is a great tool for developing and enhancing digital literacies. It ticks all the essential skills identified by SCONUL in their digital lens for information literacies. Identify, Scope, Plan, Gather, Evaluate, Manage and Present digital information  http://www.sconul.ac.uk/publication/digital-literacy-lens A key message from last week’s Festival of Teaching and Learning was to have a list of supported software for generating teaching resources. My suggestion is Xerte has an evidence-based and well deserved place on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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* All projects funded through HEA/JISC Digital Literacies in the Disciplines.

baby with ipad image from  http://proservicescorp.com/wp-content/uploads/ipad_baby.jpg 

 

Testing Twitter Widgets

Recipe

Ingredients

One twitter feed.

Method

1. Go to Settings and Help and select Settings.

2. From the Account menu on the left select Widgets.

3. From the Widgets menu select Create New, choose settings click Create Widget button to reveal the embed code.

4. Copy and paste this into the HTML page of your blog or website.

Twitter Settings menu    Twitter Account Settings menu  Twitter create new widget menu

It will look something like this 🙂


Let’s get digital – digital literacies workshop with Doug Belshaw

 modules flipchart resources flipchart engagement flip chartDoug suggests eight elements of digital literacies. If we interpret elements as characteristics this gives some idea of their complexity but not what they are. Maybe we need to look at categories. For example media digital literacies, information digital literacies, web digital literacies etc. But there are also digital literacies at subject level where the requirement for arts, science, food manufacture, nursing and social work might all derive from different learning styles and professional ways of working. Add digital scholarship,  digital pedagogy and digital identity and it’s clear you can have too much of a digital thing – there are too many digital literacies. We need an alternative taxonomy; a way to simplify the complexity.

all things digital flip chart

‘Digital literacy is a condition not a threshold.’*

Doug repeated this several times. But it’s only a condition if you are in the right place and time for it to happen. A shared starting point is necessary to begin the conversation. We might need thresholds after all. In Social Work in a Digital Society, I use threshold concepts to present digital literacies as social practices  Social Work in a Digital Society Threshold Concepts  Here each successive layer of understanding increases knowledge and alters practice. A threshold is like a starting line – a place to begin.

I think I get the concept  of digital literacies as a condition – being prepared to accept a digital dimension to your life and having the confidence to explore new digital landscapes – but access and support  is necessary as are specific goals and outcomes. In the way you need the alphabet to read, so you need basic tools to become digitally literate. The tools are the thresholds. We need to look at the building blocks of digital literacies like file formats and management, attachments and file sizes before RSS, building mashups and remixing code. 

Maybe the best way to grasp digital literacies is to see them as the online equivalents of everything we do off-line.

To encourage and support confidence with digital ways of working means engaging with the affordances, finding the tipping points or thresholds which make a difference. These will be different for everyone but they are already out there. We just need to find them; like Doug’s quote from  William Gibson ‘ The future is already here, but is unevenly distributed.’

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* Martin, A. (2006). ‘Literacies for the Digital Age: A Preview of Part 1’ in A. Martin and D. Madigan , eds, Digital Literacies for Learning. London: Facet Publishing, pp .3–25.

Doug Belshaw talking about mozilla badges at Lincoln

I’d forgotten I had this Badge although I thought there were more. I stayed with OLDS-MOOC eight weeks before my group faded and there was no one left to talk to. My OLDs MOOCing is still on Cloudworks http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2743 So are the badges. I’ve retrospectively applied for some additional ones hoping no one will notice the time warp.

mozilla badge from OLDSMOOC

image from http://backpack.openbadges.org/share/e7f1d70c27db05a8ba1d6c3d9c8e4579/

The range of badges has expanded since OLDS-MOOC. I hadn’t appreciated their full functionality so learned a lot from listening to Doug Belshaw at Lincoln today. Most of Doug’s views on digital literacies I agreed with; there’s no one single definition – they are plural, individual and should be co-produced. I liked the Mozilla pedagogy; learning through doing and making and thought the Mozilla X-Ray Goggles http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/webmaker/x-ray-goggles was a cool way to get up close and personal with coding. Doug has an impressive online presence from his blogsite,  Phd thesis, Essential Elements of Digital Literacies eBook and all his presentation text and graphics from today http://bit.ly/lincoln17dec13 

doug belshaw digital literacies

Tomorrow is a workshop with Doug looking at the development of a digital literacies module. It will be interesting to see how many aspects of digital literacies participants bring to the session eg media, information, text, web etc. The eclectic range of subjects covered by the phrase reflects the difficulties involved in trying to enclose or shape them in anyway.  Yet it needs to be done if we are to move away from an assumption model which overestimates individual confidence and competence working in digital environments. The longest journey begins with a single step and tomorrow may well be the first footprint.

The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies from Doug Belshaw

TEDxWarwick – Doug Belshaw – The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies (17.29)

Directlink http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78

Teaching and learning in a digital age; the myth of digital competence

digital age image

The human need to create, manage and control information and communication remains constant. It could be said books and Blackboard sites are different ways of doing the same thing and the gap between Gutenberg and Google is not as wide as it might first appear. In 370 BC Plato has Socrates bemoaning the introduction of writing as damaging to human memory.  In 1981 Neil Postman predicted the rise of cable television would result in us all amusing ourselves to death. Back in 15th century Europe the printing press caused such alarm the Catholic Church introduced censorship; all books were to be approved before publication. It’s not unusual for new technologies to be heralded with doom and gloom.

Marc Prensky’s concept of Digital Natives Digital Immigrants could come into this category. In 2001 he offered a provocative but enduring image of technology as the agent of changing brains and behaviors of young people. While his ideas have since been challenged the myth of the digital native remains persistent. Young people are imagined to be tech savvy while older ones struggle.

Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA) begins with Prensky’s Digital Natives Digital Immigrants paper. Online discussions get lively because everyone has a view on Prensky. Even colleagues initially unsure about contributing to virtual conversations find their nerves are partially overcome because they have something to say about the need to support individual digital literacies and how they cannot be taken for granted.

Confidence and competence with learner technologies cannot be anticipated. Early, mid or late career is no predictor of Blackboard use and engagement. There are older people comfortable with online collaborative working and younger ones unsure of how to insert a picture or attach a file. All roads lead to the same place. Digital literacies are too often assumed rather than addressed. Where technology plays a prominent role in people’s lives, it can create digital closeting which prevents awareness of the full spectrum of digital engagement. This is the myth of digital competence. More meaningful communication is needed between those who support, maintain and mandate the technology and those who use it as a part of their day to day teaching practice.

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image from http://www.heraldboy.com/how-does-innovation-in-the-digital-age-survive/

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives Digital Immigrants. Available from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

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