Keeping up isn’t easy but the best way to start is by participating. Personal use is a pre-condition for any kind of comprehension or competency with educational technology.
Try a new digital tool
Play with it
Read about it
Talk about it
Watch it being done
‘Show and Tell” it with peers
You don’t need to go out and implement fresh strategy every time you read a new blog post or editorial, but just integrate yourself into the conversation. You don’t need to read the whole instruction manual (unless you are a type A personality). Well designed and programed technology is user friendly and easy to pick up… the digital generation demands it. You know this generation; they have a strong tendency to just jump right in as if they were a kid jumping into water. Maybe we should approach this digital stuff like a kid.
Just this past week, I was playing soccer with my 5 yr old nephew. He has great skills on the ball but he has never taken a shot from a pass. So I gave him a pass to kick into the net. He missed the ball and landed on his butt. He bounced right back up and tried again. On only his second try he put it in the net with perfect form. Watch the little ones learn with eyes and minds wide open. The little ones make mistakes all the time without fear and learn from them. Their first step is to participate.
I personally have resisted cell phones. I find them very disruptive but… the smartphones has become the Swiss Army knives of the digital age thanks in large part to the iPhone, introduced in 2007, and the App Store, which opened its doors last year. With 90,000 apps available and a lot of them free or a small fee, how can you not participate and stay connected.
I am also working on a paper on Digital Literacy for Higher Education Educators. I am using this public arena to get my thoughts together and hopefully get some feed back.
Web 2.0 is a new era where, unlike web1.0 where we only took in information, we now have a 2-way system:
take in
push out
(also known as communication)
We take in, transform, remix, remodel, refine from our point of view (our cultural point of view) and then push out to social media like blogs, wikis, 2nd life ect.
In this new era, we need a digital grammar and syntax of media -> mechanics of using media as well as the critical eye.
Defining Digital Literacy:
Tabatha Newman defines Digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social awareness
Josie Fraser defines Digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement
Howard Rheingold defines Digital literacy = attention + participation + collaboration + network savy + critical assumption (dealing with the crap)
Howard feels it is no longer a question of ‘growing up digital’ or the ‘digital divide’ but it is now the ‘can’ and ‘cannots’. We currently make assumptions about the students that aren’t necessarily true. Since they grow up digital, then they must already know the ‘how to use tech” and must be helped with the critical thinking. But that is not always the truth.
I have come a cross many college students that don’t know how to sign up for google online apps like google docs or why you would use it. I only know of a hand full that know about wikis of blogs. Using a simple online tool like gliffy.com stumps them.
We need to teach
how to use tech tools effectively with teaching and learning
how to transfer the skills learned in one tool to another – teach user interface transferable skills
how to build learning communities with these tools
how to participate
how to recognize authenticity (no crap please)
how to use knowledge to define the new ways of working
Howard Rheingold
Digital divide is no longer have and have not but can and cannot
