Online participation and digital literacy
I really enjoy the topic for this first two weeks of the ONL course, Online participation and digital literacy.
It is great to work together with the members of my group and to learn more from and together with them. I’m really looking forward to our journey through this course.
I have had to do with online participation and digital literacy for the past 10 years.
In 2010 working as a principal at a secondary school, I had the opportunity to be one of the schools in Luleå who got computers to every student. We were pilots and no one really knew what challenges we were going to struggle so there were a lot of learning by doing. This journey made me very aware of how important digital literacy are for everyone and that it is important to learn the difference between personal and private on the internet.
Who am I as an individual in the digital age? What about my own digital literacy and my identity on the web?
As an individual in the digital age, I´m always curious on knowing more about new technology on the market and I try to be updated on new digital tools and functions. I don´t want to be a consumer of internet and instead I try to be a creator of my own digital environment. It is important for me to understand what are behind the screen and how people can use coding for their own purpose. It is also important for me to know how to create things in an easy way, using different sort of digital tools.
When having knowledge on how to create and control with code, I believe my digital literacy is good, and the knowledge gives me confidence about my digital footsteps and with who I want to share my private thoughts.
I don´t mind being personal at all and share things from my life, and I know my line between personal and private.
There are areas where I have chosen to share private data with companies and that is my position, my DNA, and my health matrices.
Why? I think that my data can make a difference both for me and for others around the world.
As an example, sharing my position on Google gives me opportunities to know how the traffic situation are and to navigate to new places and knowing exactly how long it will take me to get there. My DNA has given me information about my history and the possibility to find relatives around the world. My DNA also gives me information about medical issues related to my genes.
While I´m exercises a lot and care about my health and condition, I enjoy following my health and to see how my body reacts on different sort of activities and food. If this data is used in a good way, it can help learning more about the human body.
In my ONL-group we chosen to concentrate on online participation, and I dug into the question, how to help people from different background and skill levels feel comfortable in a digital classroom/learning environment?
Here at Luleå university of technology I found an interesting research project, "Walk about", where a 3D environment is designed to be a learning environment. The students and the teacher represent themselves as avatars and can express themselves with animations, movement, text, and voice chat.
During the pandemic, when using a video conference system as the main classroom for the students, many teachers have said that it is hard to get the students to put on the camera and to get them to be engaged in the lecture and ongoing learning activities. I think that if students got the opportunity to have the same lecture in a 3D-environment that works more like the real world, their engagement in the lecture and the learning would increase.
Why? Because first, they don´t have to look at them self all day and when getting into this type of environment, you must leave other distractions out and focus on what is happening in the environment.
Second you can express yourself by selecting avatar and use animations, movement, text, or voice.
Third, this environment erase students’ backgrounds and different difficulties and it is possible for students to participate equally.
Each one i our group had to make a short video, using biteable.com to our group presentation and here is my result:
Developing digital literacies http://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/
White, D. & Le
Cornu, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement.
First Monday, 16(9).
Parnes, P., Backman, Y. & Gardelli, V. (2021) Game Technologies to Assist Learning of Communication Skills in Dialogic Settings for Persons with Aphasia http://ltu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1509268/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Parnes, P., Backman, Y. & Gardelli, V. (2021) Walk about - A net-based interactive multiuser 3D-environment for enhanced and engaging learning.
Tomorrow it is time for our next topic Open Learning – Sharing and Openness, a fun and interesting topic.
See you soon!
Thank you for a very nice reading! Glad you also enjoy the ONL course and the PBL group! I am curious about what you see have changed or are the same with introducing technology years ago and today? - given your big experience on it?
SvaraRaderaThank you for inspiring me with your question. Here is a short answer, but you will have a longer answer in my blog later this week. :)
RaderaOne big change is the awareness of our privacy on the net and the knowledge of the threats on the internet. In 2010 almost no one thought about what digital footsteps they left.
We forgot to talk about how to act properly on internet and maybe this led to a more black and white world.
I would say that we formed the students (and everyone else) to be non critical consumers of the net.
Another big change is that today when we have workshops in coding or creating with new technology at our Makerspace we have participants in all ages. The software for creating with digital technology has become much more user friendly.
Something that has not change is the level of knowledge of how a computer works. The students know how to use their phone, but they actually don´t know that much of why.
/Agneta
Den här kommentaren har tagits bort av skribenten.
SvaraRaderaThank you for sharing! I found your distinction between being a "consumer" and "creator" of the digital world really interesting and important. It is what I am hoping to do myself. And when one is creating, it is inevitable to include the personal in creations so I agree with you that distinguishing between the personal and private is more relevant. From Cheah, PBL Group 5.
SvaraRaderaThanks Chea!
RaderaIt is really important to learn how to be a creator in the digital world. The feeling of knowing how things work gives you both confident and the feeling of power. :)
/Agneta
Hi Agneta,
SvaraRaderaThanks for personal and interesting reflections. You seem to have a high digital literacy based on your experiences of working with online education and ICt-tools for many years. Hence, it's much interesting to read your thoughts and views on the possibilities with digitization and online learning experiences. Regarding the latter, I think it's most important to think about the ILOs and the learning process when taking advantage of different IT-tools and -platforms. For example, in the Walk-about-project.
Dear Agneta,
SvaraRaderaIt was really fun reading your blog and your comments on digital literacy and what it means to you.
I have also struggled with this question myself and thanks to ONL212, I feel like I have a more complete interpretation of digital literacy.
The questions that I grapple with are the following:
1. Is Digital Literacy about the mastery over numerous apps over the internet, or is it the ability to use the most appropriate one for the problem at hand. My favorite analogy for this, is thinking about all the apps as being the tools inside a carpenter's toolbox. There are many types of screwdrivers available, is it necessary to have all of these in the toolbox? Is not the carpenter's skills associated with the type of problems that he can tackle, rather than the type of tools he can use?
2. You mentioned about your experience with the 3D simulation environment. I am sure I will agree with you that the whole experience would have been entertaining and the students must really love it. My question regarding experiences such as these are if we are mistaking learning for entertainment. How do we measure learning quantitatively so that we can design "levers" that we can adjust to maximize learning?
3. I read another blog where the writer had discussed the issue of cultural differences in the class and the learning that it affects. It may be interesting to explore cultural differences and perhaps even differences in socioeconomic status in the effectiveness of digital tools.
Please excuse me with pouring these many questions at you. I sincerely believe that the quality of any article can be measured by the number of questions that it generates. By this count, I think your blog is of very high quality. Thank you for providing me an opportunity to read it.