Digital literacy: new challenges and trends

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Digital literacy new challenges and trends

• Professor Tapio Varis
• University of Tampere, Finland
• UNESCO Chair in Global e-Learning

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The Challenge

• Digital literacy is fundamental element of the
  knowledge society. Ensuring that everyone has the
  necessary skills, competences, experiences and
  attitudes to make effective use of ICT is
  probably the biggest challenge of all
• (eLeaning Conference, Brussels, May 2005)

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Ministerial Declaration 2006(supported by the
European digital technology industry)

• Countries will put in place, by 2008, digital
  literacy and competence actions
• Needs of groups at risk of exclusion
• Actions through partnerships with the private
  sector
• Media literacy, e-skills, life-long-learning
• Digital literacy a right for all

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Digital literacy is key to

• Learning to learn
• Learning to work
• Facilitating job opportunities
• Providing each citizen with skills and knowledge
  to live and work
• Providing the confident use of new tools for
  assessing and using knowledge

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Trends and Movements

• Media literacy movement
• E-Learning movement
• Convergence 2006? Media competence
• Open on-line media environment
• Multicultural world

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The Power of e-Learning

• Traditionally defined courseware is not an
  effective e-Learning strategy
• eLearningware is more related to pedagogy than an
  actual product
• It emphasizes computer mediated communication and
  is student-centred
• Discussion goups, chat, blogs, wikis, webinars
• Tools available through open source

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Digital literacy media literacy

• Media literacy is defined in terms of contents of
  which the skills in question are to allow a
  mastery (images, sounds, etc)
• Digital literacy is defined in terms of the
  technologies of which the skills are to follow
  mastery

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Skills

• Digital literacy instrumental and informational
  skills (hardware software), strategic skills
  (quality, relevance, usefulness, efficiency of
  information)
• Media literacy strategic skills

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New concepts

• Multiliteracies (digital literacy, technology
  literacy, information literacy)
• Multimediality (multiple intelligences)
• Multimodality

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Communication and Digital Literacy

• The most important skills of the future would be
  communication skills in a multicultural world
• E-learning in a narrow sense seems to have passed
  its peak and is on the decline. We are now moving
  towards a more societal or communitarian activity
  with social web, blogs, and wikipedia
• Digital literacy becomes a right to people

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Two scenarios

• Open Learning Environment
• - wikipedagogy
• - open contents
• - global/regional mobility
• Network pedagogy
• - individual content production
• - class/hour/term thinking

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Global, open learning environments

• UNESCO Open Educational Resources (OER),
  http//www.unevoc.unesco.org/forum/attachments/
• MIT Open CourseWare (OCW)
• www.elearningeuropa.info
• Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikieducator
• digital literacy way of thinking

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Social Web

• instead of linking documents, the social web will
  link people, organizations, and concepts
• social networking sites, wikis, communication
  tools
• online collaboration and sharing
• information and communication are becoming
  ubiquitous

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Visitors to MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)

• -educators 15
• -students 31
• -self-learners 48
• Some 84 os students say OCW has aided their
  learning
• 91 of all visitors say they have been succesful
  in achieving their goals

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On-Line Media Literacy

• Access, analyse and evaluate the power of images,
  sounds, and messages
• Communicate competently
• Social multicultural sensitivity
• Media criticism
• Capacity-building

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Wikipedia and Credibility

• Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia in which
  volunteers are able to add articles
• Created in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger
  complementary to Nupedia
• Nupedia was an online Encyclopedia project which
  contained strict peer review
• Open-access format allows non-professionals to
  edit and add articles

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Functions of bloggers

• Filter information daily appearing in cyberspace
  (pre-browse huge body of websites)
• Dispelling and explaining information offered by
  the Mass Media
• Blog readers become turn from observers to active
  participants

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Benefits and advantages

• An owner of a filter-style blog surfs Internet in
  order to find out information, reveals mistakes
  or inaccuracies, committed by media
  professionals, supplies with additional facts and
  makes comments
• A reader of a journal-style blog can get
  acquainted with someone elses thoughts,
  feelings, views, opinions start converstaion
• Draw audiences attention

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Weblog Ethics(Rebecca Blood 2000)

• Publish as fact only that which you believe to be
  true
• If material exists online, link to it if you
  reference it
• Publicly correct any misinformation
• Write each entry as if it could not be changed
  add to but not rewrite or delete, any entry
• Disclose any conflict of interest
• Note questionable or biased sources

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Debated issues

• Cheating assessments
• How cheating is curtailed online
• Plagiarism
• Use online sources ethically
• Dynamic nature of online documents
• File sharing with music and videos
• Software use and abuse

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New Renaissance Education

• The study of complexity has brought science
  closer than ever to art
• Knowledge has gone through a cycle from
  non-specialism to specialism, and now back to
  interdisciplinarity, even transdisciplinarity
• Art deals with the sensual world (media as the
  extension of senses) and the holistic concept of
  human being