Personal Blogs

Though hollowed out by 'stage fright' for most of the day I last night deliverd a formal, observed 90 minute online class to a group of students. To get my head in order I successfully used the UCL Learning Designer; I have been learning how to use this on the UCL FutureLearn Massive Open Online Course which has been running for the last two weeks and end this week.

This is one the Learning Designs I created > Digital Literacy  

The session was recorded. Though I'll need some breathing space before I revisit it. I will also have formal feedback from the person who observed.

I have to wonder why I put myself through this kind of thing! I guess I wanted to wake up my sleepy soul and have succceeded in doing so. 15 minute before I would have (I had the line in my head) "Eat Shit". This is somewhat exaggerated - I would have made excuses. I would have preferred to have been going on stage to deliver Hamlet in a thong.

But I settled in quickly. I am not delivering a TED lecture.

The pacing was about right. Introduce this, show about of that, seeking their point of view. And I purposively kept the Tec low key (despite the subject). This is not the place for me to show off my skills - it is all about them.

My insight into teaching and learning could not be greater. As I realised a decade ago, even 20 years ago when I first did an OU Module on Open and Distance Learning - the theory has to complement practice, not be something that is done in isolation. Who does? How could I think I can study education without doing it myself? You can't learnt to dance only by reading books - you can only acquire an appreciation. But you can be an art critic without being able to paint? 

I've attached my rationale and a 'running order' with timings for the lesson I delivered. The timings were spot on - more or less. We took a 10 minute break an hour in which I readily accommodate and just added 10 minutes to the plan and continued accordingly. 

Assessment and Feedback

Learning as a journey or skill acquisition to be the best that you can be, either like interrailing between London and Rome via Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, or running a swimming club for disability swimmers.

A disability a person may have can be physical or mental, or a combination of both and will present itself along a spectrum.

Accessibility set up

On/ off

Chair, position of screen and keyboard

Touch screen - voice activated

What is being assessed? Know what they can do, believe what they could do.

Find content

Differentiate between true and false, safe and dangerous

Profile and passwords

Employability

What 10 Digital Skills do Employers most want ?

1. The ability to understand and utilize social media effectively. 

2. Search engine marketing

3. Analytics

4. Content marketing

5. Email 

6. Mobile

7. Strategy & Planning

8. Social Selling

9. Pay per click

10. Video 

From NESTA

• Animation

• Multimedia production

• Design in engineering

• Building and maintaining IT systems and networks

• Research and quantitative data analysis

Suggestions

• Respond to and send email

• Complete an online form (application)

• Create a profile and then a CV

• Safeguarding yourself and others

• Take part in an online discussion

• Do an interactive quiz

• Find your way to x

• Purchase a ticket

• Decide if something is true or false

Activity 1

Simple computer related tasks

Book something

Answer a question

Communicate

Organise: a trip to the beach, to see a film... 

Activity 2

What was your grade?

Grade yourself

Grade others

Activity 3

Feedback to students based on their needs.

Complete a workbook

Yes/no answers

Add an image

Tell me your learning story

Outcome

Explain what is meant by accessibility (who it applies to and who benefits)

Explain what feedback is.

Explain how the above differ in the digital domain

List some strategies for implementing digital assessment and feedback methods for a variety of students with accessibility needs.

Create a working example of both digital assessment and digital feedback in practice

• Digital Literacy

• Data Visualization

• Diaryland

• Design for all

• The Digital Scholar

• Deep Learning

• Dewey

Everyone needs to develop digital literacy alongside literacy and numeracy. Knowing your way around the Internet and skill at using computers, whether they are in your pocket or on someone else's desktop matters in the 21st century.

Data visualised and animated, with a voice over, can help explain the complex. Beware the nonsense infographic produced by an advertising agency though.

The Digital Scholar is a spurious and elitist concept. Either a person is or is not scholarly whether or not they use the Internet a lot or not at all. For digital we could just as well so e-Scholar, which rather undermines my idea for the 'A to Z or e-learning' as, if not already, and to some, learning is learning however it is achieved and where it matters is in the brain of the student wherever they read or do.

Whether learning goes deep or is left a the surface is platform non-specific too. Indeed, too many games or watching videos might be the surface learning that is of such little value compared to the effort of reading, the effort of sitting in class and the effort of revising for and taking an exam.

Diaryland is one of the earliest blogging platforms where much that we see online was first played with: friends, likes, groups, surveys, stats, advertising ... 

Dewey is one of a couple of dozen learning gurus that you need to know about to understand learning, which is no less important just because you stick an 'e' in front of it. Dewey saw reflection as a specialised form of thinking. ‘a kind of thinking that consists in turning a subject over in the mind and giving it serious thought’. More on reflection later. Here the Internet has a valuable role to play - you reflect online in order to share thoughts, issues and ideas.

Did serendipity bring me to ‘Contemporary Perspectives in E-learning Research.’ Conole and Oliver (2007) or did I notice that H808 students were reading and critting it?

Either way I bought it as I’m yet to get my head around e-Reader.

Can you recommend an e-Reader?

A kindle or the Sony Reader perhaps? I can’t see the point in an iPad for reading academic journals and books. I don’t want to be printing off a forest and filing on shelves I don’t have either.

Chapter 11 of ‘Contemporary Perspectives in E-learning Research’ looks at ‘Academic literacy in the 21st century’

E-literacy is an irresistible term of course.

‘Electronic Literacy’ or ‘E-literacy’

‘Involving the capacity to locate, organise, interpret and use digital information.’ Conole (2007:160)

Martin (2003) appears to get the credit for coining the term.

There are many forms of literacy, all have their place:

• information literacy
• digital literacy
• electronic communication
• computer literacy
• transliteracy
• information/IT skills
• computer-mediated communications
• knowledge construction
• research

Shetzer and Warshauer (2000), McKenna (2002), ‘Writing as a social practice’ (Ivonic et al, 1999)

These literacies are:

• shaped by disciplinary norms
• institutional power dynamics
• impact of audience
• notions of identity

‘What we choose to read and how we read may lead to fundamental changes in our understanding of authoritative scholarship.’ Conole (2007:160)

It interesting that Google is often the preferred means of locating academic information (Borphy et al, 2004). Does this apply to undergraduates and graduates? At times frustrated with the OU Library Services I ended up in Google Scholastic but no longer had the access privileges so had to back pedal. Too often links given in text, journals and book are out of date. By way of example of the three links I wished to follow up in this chapter I found only one and that was at a different URL I am yet to find the SCONUL or SCORM articles.

SCONUL (1999) ‘information skills in higher education’, SCONUL position paper. Available online at: www.sconul.ac.uk/activities/inf-lit/papers/seven-pillars.html (CAN’T FIND)

SCORM (2004) Shareable content object reference model. http://www.adlnet.org/scorm/history/2004/index.cfm (ERROR PAGE)

Ingraham (2005b) Filmic and even melodramatic narrative ... used purposefully.

Ingraham (2005b) Exploring the Frontiers of E-learning: border, outposts and migration. ALT-j, 2005. 6-8 Sept 2005.

Beyond the ‘essentially medieval apprenticeship system’ (Ingraham and Ingraham, 2006) ‘E-Quality: a dialogue between quality and academia’, E-learning, 31) http://www.wwwords.co.uk/elea/content/pdfs/3/issue3_1.asp

(ACCESSED 16 AUG 2010. But not at this address, but at this one

http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/freetoview.asp?j=elea&vol=3&issue=1&year=2006&article=11_Ingraham_ELEA_3_1_web

I have a problem with some PDF files too, but that’s down to an eight year old iBook not being able to upgrade to the latest ADOBE PDF software. A new iBook beckons.

This theme of literacy given a book in its own right. How though do institutions recognise the many different ways students may wish to pursue and assemble content and information in future?

Literacy and multiple literacies (Kress, 1997)

‘It is a normal and fundamental characteristic of language and literacy to be constantly remade in relation to the needs of the moment.’ Conole (2007:169)

Kress, G (1997) Before writing: rethinking the paths to literacy.

‘The are many ways of making and communicating meaning in the world today.’ Conole (2007:169)

The goals of education

The development of ‘concrete-operational skills of technical reason coupled with functional, utilitarian language skill.’ (Jones, 1991)

Two conflicting directions for education

‘The desire to stimulate the growth of autonomous, entrepreneurial, IT-literate, multi-skilled individuals’ or ‘the desire to create a compliant, low-expectation labour force inured to the demands of flexibilisation.’ Conole (2007:171)

Surely this isn’t a case of either or, and surely both ends of the scale can be viewed positively – society needs a community of people working at different jobs to remain viable and coherent. Conole should be quoting Government policy here but prefer to suggest that there is a choice while clearly favouring one over the other.

Prison Officers, we are told, don’t need a university degree; they aren’t the only ones. Unless you want people to endure their necessary jobs like Marvin the Paranoid Android. Adams. (1979)

REF Kress, G (2003) Literacy in the new media age.

REFERENCE

Adams, D (1979) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Conole, G and Oliver, M (eds)  2007. Contemporary perspectives in E-Learning Research. Themes, methods and impact on practice.