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The essential elements of digital literacies

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 28 Aug 2012, 09:08
Just as there can be no distinctions between the illiterate and the literate (it is a continuum) and there are different kinds of literacies including text and visual (Belshaw, 2012:8) so I would include scales of musical literacy – reading, writing and listening to music as well as the specialist literacies of disabled groups, such as signing and lip–reading for the deaf and Braille for the blind, even communication that is becoming possible or is recognised with people in a continuous vegetative state who nonetheless show brain function and can communicate using it.

Reference

Belshaw, D (2012) The Essential Elements of Digital literacies http://dougbelshaw.com/ebooks/digilit/

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Talking about social media learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 3 Nov 2011, 22:03

A call from a colleague with a major corporate and we talk social media learning for nearly three hours.

During this time I repeatedly search this blog, using the e-portfolio that it has become, sending charts and grabs from Picasa and from the iPad, creating a mind-map in Bubbl.us and balancing how the MA in Open and Distance Learning compares to the OU MBA he completed last year and the MRes he is doing now.

Just a phone call. We could have gone to Skype, Elluminate or even Google+. The phone freed up the laptop. Several photos picked up from workshops, as well as screen grabs, were emailed from the iPad which was also running.

Social Media Learning Bubbl.us Mind Map

Fig.1. Social Media Learning Mind Map

Timely as I am procrastinating over the ECA which will be on the use of Forums and Mobile devices in e-learning.

A reminder of how a synchronous conversation can achieve so much, especially when there were items set before our eyes to discuss.

We also discussed (I hadn't the energy to take many notes. In retrospect I wish I'd recorded it):

  • Belbin Team Roles
  • Activity Theory
  • Management Mindsets
  • Silos
  • Web 2.0
  • Learning on the periphery
  • Vicarious Learning
  • Medical Market Research
  • TV Production
  • The role of an Alumni Board
  • Narrative
  • Research
  • Assessment
  • Blogs as 'electronic paper'

It was invaluable to have the external point of view, someone from a global comany of thousands talking about social media learning. Looking at the devices we now have, such as smartphones and tablets, it was particularly interesting to be reminded of human nature, how devices may be used for things and in ways that they were not designed.

Whilst the iPad permits mobility, we often use it when static: in our favourite chair, recumbant on the sofa, even in bed or in the bath. Is this mobile learning? It's hardly getting out of the house, drawing down data on the run using augmented technology to enhance the environment your in. And simply having content on an iPad so that you can using the touch screen to open and close the text, enlarging text, flipping the screen size between portrait and landscape all the time - the joy of its tactile nature. Unable to sleep I use the light from the iPad as a torch to sneak away from the marital bed and passed the children's bedrooms and to find my way downstairs withouth having to put the landing light on.

It also was clear how both devices and approaches to learning cannot be isolated, we got our joint heads around Engestrom's 'Activity Systems'. The technology is complementary, the move to personalise everything through device and software choices.

I'd played Devil's Adocat a couple of times suggesting that 'nothing had changed' only to come away agreeing that many of my behaviours were/are different as a direct result of Web 2.0. I have gone from learning in private, hunched over my books never showing it to anyone to a situations where, more like someone tending a public garden, or at least one seen from the street, people can see my thinking. Ironically, it is the end result that often fails to appear because I'm not about to post TMAs and ECAs online.


Some authors I quoted/cited during the conversation:

  • Vygotsky
  • Engestrom
  • Richardson
  • Moon
  • Cox
  • John Seely Brown
  • Jonathan Swift

To which I subsequently add as a result of browsing the blog and so re-engaging with my own experience within the chronology of the module; it is this, after all, that is to be examined, rather than my knowledge from this and the preceding modules. A learning design fault?

  • H807 You diddle about with every instrument in the orchestra and several that have just been invented.
  • H808 You learn to conduct, or at least why a conductor is important (even if you can't play an instrument or read music).
  • H800 You learn to play an electronic keyboard

I quoted Swift as saying (paraphrasing) 'I don't know what I mean until I hear myself speak'. If anyone has any idea how to cite this please do offer your thoughts.

More authors to consider in this context (mobile learning, forums, e-learning, web 2.0):

  • Haythornthwaite
  • O'Reilly
  • Weller
  • Traxler
  • Gregory
  • Mason
  • Sharpe
  • Beetham
  • Belshaw
  • Hinchcliffe
  • Bacon and Dillon
  • Siemens
  • Boyer
  • Wenger
  • Bruner

Other topics that we should have discussed:

  • User Generated Content
  • Collective Intelligence
  • Apprenticeships
  • Problem based learning
  • Participation
  • Demand Pull

BEING DEVELOPED FURTHER HERE

http://socialmedia4education.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/social-learning-for-corporates/

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Measuring metrics for Social Media in Higher Education

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 1 Nov 2011, 21:03

'Do a blogger and a non blogger in the same disciplines have less in common than two people who blog?'

So asked Martin Weller of the Institute of Educational Technology this morphing during a day long event on Social Media Metrics.

I'd say so.

I find I have an affinity with those who use social forums, who blog and discuss online. They are traceable conversations, cumulative conversations unlike there non-digital counterparts that have short unshared lives.


'Even at the professional end you are giving more of yourself, your points of view, your political beliefs.' He added.

And so the academic who chose such a life to avoid the limelight finds themselves thrusted into it.

I remarked through the Twitter feed that the lonely writer in the garret now found himself in a greenhouse with the digital world looking in. Will this be the era of the celebrity academic?


Scholarship has become more demanding, or has it?

Doug Belshaw has had his PhD thesis online since its inception in 2007.

It isn't being written form him, but his reputation is being established.


There are new social norms that academia has to accept and tolerate rather than resist.


What do views mean, comments mean and how do they compare to citations?


You social media identify drives the views of your papers.


E.g. Online identity as a result of paper is Tweeted about, blogged and shared, and then you get invited to keynotes and a virtuous circle begins.


A set of alternative representations of you.


What can metrics be used?


Visual representation this is your digital academic footprint, within my community ...


Metrics will become part of what we do.


We mustn't be guilty of subjugating new methods into old.


Martin Weller then talked about writing for the sword-dancing community as if in these troubled times his toes and dancing between sharp blades.

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