Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

How, as content creators and learning designers,  do we start to think about and approach race and racism in our work? How do we do this individually and when working with programme teams? 

In our previous post we introduced some of the ways in which race and racism feature in all levels of content creation. But how can we ensure we consistently consider and address these different aspects in our work?

20 cognitive biases in a chart that could keep you from making a bad decision.

Peter Baumann suggests that our biases can get a bad rap, but that they're essential. He sees them as unconscious inclinations that we've developed over time, and most of the time, they reflect actual knowledge we've acquired about how the world works. They set the frameworks within which we live our lives. Our bias toward feeling safe, for example, keeps us (mostly) out of trouble, while a bias towards certain flavors sets us parameters for selecting the dish we'd like to eat at a restaurant. Of course, our biases are only as intelligent as we are, so occasionally they're pretty stupid.

New NMC Report Provides a Rich Look at Digital Literacy Models, Exemplars, and Explorations Within Higher Education

I spent a good deal of time with this excellent report this weekend, exploring the models, examples, and expert commentary on a subject that near and dear to me. The New Media Consortium first explored Digital Literacy in their 2016 report which ultimately provided some simple definitions of Digital Literacy (shown in graphic below).

If we could build a new framework to show how learners and leaders can thrive in the future, what would it look like?

I spent a good deal of time with this excellent report this weekend, exploring the models, examples, and expert commentary on a subject that near and dear to me. The New Media Consortium first explored Digital Literacy in their 2016 report which ultimately provided some simple definitions of Digital Literacy (shown in graphic below).

This report introduces each of the six stages as a self- contained phase, offering a narrative and a checklist to guide your journey. While presented in a linear format, our research shows that companies may span multiple stages at once depending on their goals, resources, and overlapping initiatives. Use this framework to validate, benchmark, and map your company’s progress toward digital literacy and leadership, but know that you may find yourself revisiting and overlapping stages throughout program and strategy deployment.

The Higher Education Digital Capability framework identifies four core dimensions along the learner lifecycle: Demand & Discovery (DD), Learning Design (LD), Learner Experience (LX) and Work & Lifelong Learning (WL). Within these are sixteen capability groups or ‘domains’, with more than 70 capability blocks adding a further level of detail. Overall, the framework is designed to allow flexibility and interpretation in context; some institutions will find almost every capability block relevant to their organisational structure, activities and aspirations, whilst others will focus on a more specific set of capabilities applicable to their individual context.

In this guest post blog, Greg Walters discusses a new digital/information literacy framework and interactive learning object he has been a part of developing at the University of Glasgow (UofG). Greg is the Learning Technologist based at the UofG Library. He has been involved in the e-learning sector since 2005 and developed a range of under- and postgraduate online courses for the Higher Education and commercial sectors. Part of Greg’s role at UofG has involved developing and communicating rights management policies and procedures to support online learning development at UofG, specifically relating to Blended and Online Learning Development (BOLD) initiatives and MOOCs. He is part of the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) Copyright & Legal Issues steering group which formed in November 2018.

Technology is definitely a game changer in today’s classroom. Its pervasive widespread in educational settings speaks volumes about the growing importance we come to place in it. However, while many teachers have already domesticated some of this technology into their daily workflow (e.g, preparing handouts and docs, creating lesson plans, communicating with students and parents…etc) a pragmatic leverage of this technology for instructional purposes remains barely noticeable. By pragmatic leverage we mean the use of technology to enhance key cognitive skills such as higher order thinking skills, critical thinking skills, and problem solving to mention a few.Technology integration in this sense is not an end in and by itself by a means, a roadmap to facilitate teaching and learning.

The Essential Fluencies are a solid foundation for effective modern learning. They cover all the bases of the skills students need for success beyond school. Developing these Fluencies in our students is a critical thinking journey in itself. That’s why you’ll find good questions at the heart of Essential Fluencies development.

Every stage of every Fluency asks us to think deeply and critically, and their embedded skills and abilities are about stretching thought and imagination. By asking good exploratory questions, students learn the essence of each Fluency and its phases. That’s what the following lists are meant to give you and your students.

This paper offers a newly conceptualized modular framework for digital literacy that defines this concept as a task-driven ‘‘social constructivist digital literacy,’’ comprising 6 practice domains grounded in Constructionism and social constructivism: Create, Manage, Publish, Socialize, Research, Surf. The framework articulates possible instructional design and research operationalizations for the concept, based upon a coordinated set of activities centering on student game design. The paper then reports on results of an implementation study involving game design drawing upon the framework, addressing ways in which the practice domains inter-operate when the specified instruction is offered as a coordinated intervention.