Group items tagged

"Many learners enter further and higher education lacking the skills needed to apply digital technologies to education. As 90% of new jobs will require excellent digital skills, improving digital literacy is an essential component of developing employable graduates. Courses that embed core digital skills, as well as subject specific use of technology, enable students to gain the skills and confidence they need to use digital technology not only to support their learning but also in the workplace. We're working with colleges and universities to embed core digital skills into the curriculum. By digital literacy we mean those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society: for example, the skills to use digital tools to undertake academic research, writing and critical thinking; as part of personal development planning; and as a way of showcasing achievements. "

"". .. from your perspective what are the institutional enablers and blockers when it comes to growing the digital capability of an organisation?" asked James Clay in a recent post on this blog. I rather flippantly posted a comment to James's post saying "Culture is a big issue, but I think over reliance (or expectations) that technology alone will somehow wave some magical digital fairy dust and everyone and ergo the institution will be "digital" and digitally literate." This post is my attempt to elaborate that comment."

"This systematic literature review was undertaken primarily to examine the role that print and digitally mediums play in text comprehension. Overall, results suggest that medium plays an influential role under certain text or task conditions or for certain readers. Additional goals were to identify how researchers defined and measured comprehension, and the various trends that have emerged over the past 25 years, since Dillon's review. Analysis showed that relatively few researchers defined either reading or digital reading, and that the majority of studies relied on researcher-developed measures. Three types of trends were identified in this body of work: incremental (significant increase; e.g., number of studies conducted, variety of digital devices used), stationary (relative stability; e.g., research setting, chose of participants), and iterative (wide fluctuation; e.g., text length, text manipulations). The review concludes by considering the significance of these findings for future empirical research on reading in print or digital mediums."

Josie Fraser has put up a wiki to help organize attendees, resources, schedule and outputs from the Digital Literacy debate that will be taking place online, in Elluminate, on Friday 27 March 2009, at 1pm GMT.

There have been many attempts to define the generation of students who emerged with the Web and new digital technologies in the early 1990s. The term "digital native" refers to the generation born after 1980, which has grown up in a world where digital te

Interesting site mentioned during a session on Digital Literacies

"The future of digital culture ― yours, mine, and ours ― depends on how well we learn to use the media that have infiltrated, amplified, distracted, enriched, and complicated our lives."

"I have always liked David White's ideas about digital visitors and residents. And in the training sessions we run we find an increasing individual differentiation in people;s confidence and competence in using digital technologies. In this video David White (@daveowhite, http://twitter.com/daveowhite) of the University of Oxford explains how the Visitors and Residents model provides a framework to understand individuals' engagement with the Web based on motivation and context. In part 1 of this series, he argues that the metaphors of 'place' and 'tool' best represent the use of technology in contemporary society and allow us to better adapt to the challenges of new forms of academic practice."

Open textbook produced by JISC funded DFTE project and introduced during activity week at JISC e-Learning Conference 2012.

I asked for suggestions for a replacement for Netskills TONIC and Chris Hall (@chris_hall) passed on this recommendation from one of his students: BBC WebWise. This is a beginner's course aimed at adults who are new to computers and the internet. It has a very wide brief which seems to be the closest to TONIC in it's range of topics. Very high-quality resources as well as you'd expect from the BBC. Although not a direct replacement, WebWise was the best alternative that I have come across so far, and is the one I will be using with my EG-152 class this year (I will be linking to the Internet Detective and OU Safari too).

Do policies to bridge the digital divide, such as the One Laptop per Child programme, work? This column analyses a scheme offering vouchers for home computers to low-income families in Romania. It finds that while children's computer skills and cognitive

"Based on interviews with deans from a range of UK universities, this report produced by LSE Enterprise for the HEA, provides a snapshot of different conceptions of what constitutes good teaching practice at discipline level and exemplifies the challenges facing the architects of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and reviews the current literature base."

I asked for suggestions for a replacement for Netskills TONIC and Sam Oakley (@rscsam) suggested the Internet Detective (developed by the University of Bristol and Manchester Metropolitan University from an original tutorial by Marianne Peereboom. Though launched in 2006 it doesn't appear to have been updated since 2009. TONIC was about the internet generally though, not just research.

I asked for suggestions for a replacement for Netskills TONIC and Sam Oakley (@rscsam) also suggested SAFARI "a guided expedition through the information world." This resource was developed by the Open University (OU) and looks like a comprehensive tutorial on accessing, finding and reviewing information  -- and not just from the Internet. The recommended time to work through the examples is 10-13.5 hours. TONIC was much more of a beginners guide to the internet but Safari looks an excellent resource for students embarking on a research project.