Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Ismael Peña-López has locked down Digital Literacy for me Digital Framework for Literacy
Ismael Peña-López has locked down Digital Literacy for me
http://ictlogy.net/20090317-towards-a-comprehensive-definition-of-digital-skills/
http://ictlogy.net/20090317-towards-a-comprehensive-definition-of-digital-skills/
Digital Framework for Literacy
Ismael Peña-López has locked down Digital Literacy for me
http://ictlogy.net/20090317-towards-a-comprehensive-definition-of-digital-skills/
Free Culture
Flash Movie of why all content should be free (Lawrence Lessig)
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Technological Inertia
I agree with Andrea. In my Technology courses, and the ELA courses to which I have lent assistance with implementing this kind of solution, the learning curve for using the software effectively and creatively ends up being the project; the curricular outcomes coming in as secondary to just finishing the video task. I find this to be the main reason that the Language Arts and Social Sciences departments are loathe to incorporate the ICT and technology intensive elements; they can accomplish their objectives more efficaciously without the unnecessary and costly time commitment to learn the technological tools.
As I have recently learned in my Yearbook advisory role, the technology and creative expectations of a task can be a huge impediment to the student actually engaging in a task. The students expectations are to do the best possible technical and creative job which most times does not correlate with the individuals skills set and thus they are at a standstill until teacher intervention occurs.One or both of these areas are not as developed as the student might expect so they do nothing rather than face embarrassment or failure. Once the technical/creative expectations hurdle is overcome ( by outside independent learning or by simplicity of use[ as per the Web 2.0] ) then the students can then achieve the required goals quite well.
As I have recently learned in my Yearbook advisory role, the technology and creative expectations of a task can be a huge impediment to the student actually engaging in a task. The students expectations are to do the best possible technical and creative job which most times does not correlate with the individuals skills set and thus they are at a standstill until teacher intervention occurs.One or both of these areas are not as developed as the student might expect so they do nothing rather than face embarrassment or failure. Once the technical/creative expectations hurdle is overcome ( by outside independent learning or by simplicity of use[ as per the Web 2.0] ) then the students can then achieve the required goals quite well.
Monday, June 1, 2009
A question about being self-referential in Networks of learning
This is a question I posed to George Siemens on May 13th.
Have you any references to scholarly work that would address the question of isolationism and self-referentialism in communities of learning.
I have looked at Dave's edtech talk (lurking only) and a a few others and there seem to be very few voices of descent. I was just wondering if persons of dissenting opinions would be ignored, banished, or quit the communities of their own volition and how new or radical thoughts would enter the discourse if everyone is in general agreement all the time. From what I know of the scientific field it is the imaginative and oft-time radical ideas that truly make a difference in changing ideas and mind-sets.
I have found very little information on this topic to date. Anyone have a link to some ( text based) resources?
Friday, May 29, 2009
A discussion in our digital literacy course
My colleague Asif Devji and I are doing the Digital Literacy course at the University of Manitoba and I thought this interchange might be worth posting
To give some context:
We were asked to read several online papers on Information Literacy and suggest ways we might include this in our classrooms. That lead to Asif Devji's response and our discussions below
Asif
As an exercise on information literacy, I might ask my students to visit the following web site: http://www.nytimes-se.com/After they checked it out, we'd have a discussion about what they found there and about the reliability of newspapers as sources of information.I'd then inform them of the source of that site:From democracynow.org (Nov. 13, 2008):
“Yes Men” Spoof NYT, Denounce Iraq War in Latest Hoax
And the Yes Men have struck again. On Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of copies of a fake edition of the New York Times were handed out in New York and Los Angeles. The front-page headline declares an end to the Iraq war and an admission from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction. Other fake stories report the congressional passage of universal healthcare, the public ownership of oil giant ExxonMobil and the use of evangelical churches to house Iraqi refugees. The paper is said to come from the Yes Men, a group responsible for several hoaxes meant to highlight corporate and government complicity in unpunished crimes. One previous prank had a Yes Men member posing as a Dow Chemical spokesperson to announce responsibility for the Bhopal chemical disaster, forcing the company to remind the world it had done anything but. The Yes Men say the hoax resulted from a collaboration of many people, including a few New York Times staffers. Activist Jordan White was among those handing out copies of the fake newspaper in New York’s Times Square.
Jordan White: “Well, see, the thing about this is, is that, you know, we just got a new president elected. It’s a very big year, and it’s a big promotion for change and stuff like that. And, you know, it’s just the sort of thing of like, I don’t know, maybe that—could we achieve it? Maybe it’s so, maybe not. But it’s something to kind of look forward to.”The paper also pokes fun at the New York Times editors, who apologize in a fake editorial for echoing the Bush administration’s faulty claims on Iraqi WMDs in the lead-up to the Iraq war. It also contains a fake resignation letter from columnist Thomas Friedman, who says he has no business to ever write again after vocally backing the US invasion of Iraq. The prank edition of the New York Times is available online at nytimes-se.com.This could open up an interesting discussion on the hoaxters, their motivations, and the hoaxes they were hoaxing It would also lead to some (re)consideration of available authoritative information sources...and their vested interests.
“Yes Men” Spoof NYT, Denounce Iraq War in Latest Hoax
And the Yes Men have struck again. On Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of copies of a fake edition of the New York Times were handed out in New York and Los Angeles. The front-page headline declares an end to the Iraq war and an admission from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction. Other fake stories report the congressional passage of universal healthcare, the public ownership of oil giant ExxonMobil and the use of evangelical churches to house Iraqi refugees. The paper is said to come from the Yes Men, a group responsible for several hoaxes meant to highlight corporate and government complicity in unpunished crimes. One previous prank had a Yes Men member posing as a Dow Chemical spokesperson to announce responsibility for the Bhopal chemical disaster, forcing the company to remind the world it had done anything but. The Yes Men say the hoax resulted from a collaboration of many people, including a few New York Times staffers. Activist Jordan White was among those handing out copies of the fake newspaper in New York’s Times Square.
Jordan White: “Well, see, the thing about this is, is that, you know, we just got a new president elected. It’s a very big year, and it’s a big promotion for change and stuff like that. And, you know, it’s just the sort of thing of like, I don’t know, maybe that—could we achieve it? Maybe it’s so, maybe not. But it’s something to kind of look forward to.”The paper also pokes fun at the New York Times editors, who apologize in a fake editorial for echoing the Bush administration’s faulty claims on Iraqi WMDs in the lead-up to the Iraq war. It also contains a fake resignation letter from columnist Thomas Friedman, who says he has no business to ever write again after vocally backing the US invasion of Iraq. The prank edition of the New York Times is available online at nytimes-se.com.This could open up an interesting discussion on the hoaxters, their motivations, and the hoaxes they were hoaxing It would also lead to some (re)consideration of available authoritative information sources...and their vested interests.
RationalBob
Asif:The reason this spoof is so humorous is because, lkke in all great comedy, the kernel of truth that rears it's head and makes you sit somewhere between gut-wrenching laughthe and head-pounding sobbing. Lennie Bruce and George Carlin (among others ) were masters of this visionary style of comedy. The glimmer of hope in some of the 'fake' headlines is what draws people in, only to realize much to their chagrin that it's not ( as they were hoping) true. There is something really sad and disconcerting about this breif glimmer of hope that things could be as in this paper. Alas it is not to be so and we trudge back to reality and the "REAL" news headlines which never seem to change or enligthen. I think this is a great jumping off point then for students to analyze newspapers as complicit in the status quo instead of being a critical and informative medium , a watch dog for society which is shamefully inadequate today.In my optional tech classes I had to drop my media literacy unit as too many kids were dropping the course due to the "ELA" component, a death knell for my courses if I continued. Sad!
Asif
Hi Robert,That "brief glimmer of hope," which momentarily allows us to 'believe' something we know is not true, is scary.It says something about our current technologies of simulation, and how easy it is to create a 'reality' or a 'truth'.It is also encouraging, because it shows that we are able to 'see' things from alternative and even contradictory perspectives -- Another world is possible and Yes we can describe politics of change based on conscious articulations of alternative visions of reality/truth and the future.
RationalBob
Asif; I love your optimism. I truly hope that it will be, as Siddharaj Dhadda says in the movie FLOW:For the Love of Water,"the century of the common man" since our current unsustainable and undemocratic systems create a demand for something different if homo sapiens are to survive. Yes another world is possible, but it will come I fear, as history tends to keep repeating itself, at a tremendous cost to the least fortunate in the world: those without the money or the infrastructure of 'knowledge-based' economies. This is implicit in every document I read from the UNESCO or UN but no one seems to addressing it.It's a case of "treat the symptom's not find a cure." The current power/control structures in the world represent to me an enormous hurdle which almost makes discussions about Open Source and Online or distributed education moot. Not that we can't strive toward these ideals, but I think a very critical eye must be focused on those who exert the control or who dictate knowledge to the uncritical minds of the world. Remember "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild, 1790 As always, nice chattingCheers!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)