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Web Literacy Map

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 2 Aug 2014, 10:51

Fig. 1. Mozilla Webmaker Digital Literacy Map

Learning online for a degree means that over a number of modules, sooner rather than later, you are likely to master a number of these digital literacy skills; the more the better. 

Navigation, search and credibility and vital for any student. Can you find your way around the web and the OU library, the student forum and Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Can you search elsewhere for credible results - remembering to tag and cite these. 

You may never need to code, but other 'building' skills are important; the basics of this blogging platform for a start, remixing and re-blogging and accessibility issues. 

Connecting might be the most important skill and habit to acquire: sharing, collaboration and community participation are what make the OU learning experience so special. 'Connectivity' is considered to be the learning theory of the 21st century; that by taking part, connecting and commenting you and others benefit from insights gained, mistakes corrected, problems solved, issues understood, theories tested ... 

While 'openness' is a state of mind that takes a bit of getting used to; some make feel it is 'exposure' or compromising their privacy. Others simply prefer to get on with a task alone, and therefore with less disturbance. You can see that I am an exponent of openness and connectivity. 

 

 

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Why does the phrase 'Boolean Logic' give me the collywobbles?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 29 Sept 2013, 14:04
I've managed for three years without Bolean Logic as an approach to searching for content in a database, but that is about to change - hopefully with some help from you guys because the very phrase has put me off all this time. It would be like calling a hearty breakfast cereal 'Bowelean Nuggets' - the title alone puts me off no matter how good it might be for me.
 
Boolean  Logic is: using 'and' or 'not' to create research strings.
 
... adding each new AND to reduce the search.
 
'OR' adds synonyms of the words so widens the search.
 
'NOT" – narrows a long list.
 
Truncation – asterix acts like a blank slide in Scrabble. e.g. soldier*
 
Phrase searching: put it in parentheses to make it more precise. 'world' 'war' 'one' not 'world war one'.
 
If you're a convert do share.
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iPhone

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I got an iPHone three weeks ago.

Today my son (13 years 3 months) loaded the Carling APP, and a fish pond.

He then showed me how to turn it off. So one of these smile and one of those sad

I do now follow various foriums with the RSS feed to my email, picking them off as the happen, responding from time to time, rather than letting them stack up.

For the second time today I did a Google search only to come back to this student blog, whilst in one respect chuffed, it doesn't help me correct the considerable volumes of nonsense that exist here.

This possibly explains the 1,000+ page views a day.

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The best form of ‘cognitive housekeeping’ is to sleep on it.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 6 Nov 2011, 17:58

So I blogged three months ago when considering the merits and demerits of keeping a learning journal and reflective writing.

It transpires that sleep really does sort the ‘memory wheat from the chaff’ according to a report in the Journal of Neuroscience, DOI, 10,1,1523.jneuorsci.3575-10.2011) referred to in the current New Scientist. This Week. 5 FEB 2011.

‘It turns out that during sleep the brain specifically preserves nuggets of thought it previously tagged as important.’ Ferris Jabr says.

I have always used sleep to reflect on ideas.

If I expect or wish to actively dwell on something I will go to sleep with the final thought on my mind, a pen and pad of paper by my side. Cat naps are good for this too. I will position myself with pillows and a book, or article and drift off as I finish. Waking up ten or twenty minutes later I glance straight back at the page and will feel a greater connection with it.

I wonder if there is commercial value in working from home and doing so up 'til the point you need to fall asleep? It's how my wife works when she is compiling a hefty report. It's how I work when I have an assignment, or a script to deliver ... or a producton to complete. The work never stops and it doesn't stop me sleeping.

Going back to tagging.

How does the mind do this? In curious ways. We all know how a memory can be tagged with a smell or a sound. For me how mothballs remind me of my Granny’s cupboard (an image of it immediately in my mind). A Kenwood blender will always remind me of my mother grings biscuits to put on the basae of a cheesecake. And a sherbert dip the Caravan Shop, Beadnell, Northumberland. Often when a random recollection enters my consciousness I try to think what has triggered it: the way the light falls on a tree, the exhaust from a car or even a slight discomfort in my stomach. It is random. Indeed, is a random thought not impossible?

There has to be a trigger, surely?

Can any of these be used?

Perhaps I could categorise content here, or in an eportfolio by taste. So chocolate digestive biscuits might be used to recall anecdotes. Toothpaste might be used to recall statistics. Varieties of Bassett’s Liquorice Allsorts might be associated with people I have got to know (a bit) during the MAODE.

The mind boggles; or at least mine does.

Colour and images (Still or moving) is as much as we can do so far.

I’m intrigued by memory games. I like the journey around a familiar setting where you place objects you need to remember in familiar places so that you can recall a list of things. Here the tag is somewhere familiar juxtaposed with the fresh information.

Are there better ways to tag?

Look at my ridiculously long list of tags here. Am I being obtuse? When I think of a tag do I come up with a word I've not yet used? How conducive is that to recalling this entry, or grouping similar entries to do the job?

I like the way some blogs (Wordpress/EduBlogs) prompt you to use a tag you’ve applied before; it offers some order to it all. I long ago lost track of the 17000 entries in my blog. Would I want to categorise them all anyhow? I think I managed 37. I prefer the 'enter@random' button I installed.

Going back to this idea of tagging by taste/smell, might a word (the category) be given division by taste/smell, texture and colour? How though would such categories work in a digital form? Am all I doing here recreating a person’s shed, stuff shoved under their bed or stacked in a garage, or put in a trunk or tuck box in the attic?

In the test reported in the Neuroscientist those who went to bed in the knowledge that they would be tested on the information they had looked at that day had a 12% better recall.

See.

Testing works.

It doesn’t happen in MAODE, if at all. When are we put on the spot? When are we expected ever to playback a definition under ‘duress’?

‘There is an active memory process during sleep that selects certain memories and puts them in long-term storage.’


Like an e-portfolio?

Is the amount of sleep I've had, the 350 or so nights since I started the MAODE ... part of the learning environment required?

REFERENCE

Sleep Selectively Enhances Memory Expected to Be of Future Relevance
Wilhelm et al. J. Neurosci..2011; 31: 1563-1569

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Finding My 'Stuff'

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 3 Nov 2012, 21:12

'The ultimate aim of personalization is to offer material that meets the needs of the individual learner at the exact moment they need that information.’ Weller. (2007:112)

Unfortunate then to look for Mark Prensky's piece on Digital Natives that I have read, taken notes on and surely put here in the OU Blog and MyStuff.

Unfortunate that I read a few months ago, and took notes, on a piece of research testing Prensky's ideas and concluding that they had no basis in fact. Whether or not a person is tuned into digital technology has nothing to do with when they were born, but everything to do with wherethey are born (opportunity/wealth), the level of education (socio-economic group) they receive and access to kit and Internet access (geography).

What have I failed to do? I tag furiously.

P.S. I use the term 'stuff' with its recently acquired modern defintion as in 'stuff online' or 'any digital asset, so photo, animation, podcast, text, pdf etc:'

P.P.S. I takes me over an hour to find the llink and article. I had quoted this in my ECA for H807. I searched by title and author in the E-Journal part of the OU Library, with no joy. Then went into the Journal itself, had no joy where is shared/managed through EBSCOT but finally had succcess through the publishers homepage and courtesy of my access privileges as an OU Student.

Helsper, Ellen Johanna and Eynon, Rebecca (2010) 'Digital natives: where is the evidence?', British Educational Research Journal, 36:3, 503 - 520, First published on: 17 June 2010 (iFirst)

Can be found here:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/01411920902989227

My mistake, finally spotted. Not 2009 as I had, but 2010. I wonder if my tutor will spot this when marking my ECA. She's very good at this kind of thing!

REFERENCE

Weller, M (2008) Virtual Learning Environments

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Self-discipline & professionalism ...

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Whilst I can still get away with typing off the top of my head into a blog, this will not do when responding to messages or in a forum.

Sitting back, taking on board what is being discussed, doing my research then reflecting long & hard on a response will be a more productive way froward. I've taken some hints from the OU.

Personal entries in my decade old blog must also be forever locked.

Or removed. Having trawled through this 1.5 million word nonsense removing or changing names, there are still those who occasionally pop up in my life with an amused remark about the detail of their antics ten or twenty years ago. Much of this blog are transcripts & extended reviews & reminiscences of the 70s & 80s.

'Exposure' became my creed in 2001.

'Discretion' will be my approach from now on ... as it is so easy to google a person's name and find out all kinds of things that they may not want to know, that are blag & bluff in any case and could be detrimental to their career hopes (let alone their personal relationships).

Meanwhile, in a time consuming effort that needs to be addressed my sixth draft of the TMA01 is rocking back and forth between 1500 & 2350 words. I may just sit it like an exam and see if I can contain my ideas that way, addressing each in turn a set of points, six at most, that I feel need to be made

Oh to feel like a teen sitting exams again smile

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