Great video #JISCEL11 (via @jamesclay)

A really inspiring video which echoes much of what I end up saying (wonder if I could sneak this into my Soc Med for Scared courses… makes a chance from ‘Guess the date of the quote’ – which usually sounds like something people say about social media, but was about e.g. the printing press or the telephone!):

#JISCEL11: David Puttnam: Towards a Digital Pedagogy

Here’s my ‘live notes’ from David Puttnam’s opening keynote for the JISC Online Conference:

Old fashioned concept of ‘wisdom’ has disappeared., as e.g. we have ‘professional’ politicians, who’ve experienced nothing else.

Creative advisor in China re digital industries. Started with 5000 years of Chinese history used to set the context for the next 10 days, in order to ensure that the mistakes of history were not repeated.

We’re becoming too complacent, as Chinese not just producing low cost goods, but large numbers of cultural outputs. Renewed investment in ICT and Education are core to ensuring that remain relevant to modern society.

Creativity – builds on history, experience, social needs of the society.

We’ve been looking to the West for inspiration for too long, whereas we should have been looking to the East, whereas those of us thinking we can ignore it living in a fantasy world.

Oxford Economics Report (6 weeks ago) for most stats.

Digital developments. 1911 – a lesson then would be entirely recognizable today – as technology has not been allowed to make changes to pedagogy that it should.

Mind, Brain and Education – studies on absorption, retention & application of knowledge. We wouldn’t go to visit a Dr who we didn’t think was up to date with the latest developments, but within education, few are prepared to engage with the digital world in the way that many (younger) have already experienced – hence why we have lost trust of the 16 year olds, etc.

Debate – digital natives, etc…

Dangerous to think that formal learning is the only way – why are making such heavy weather of technology, when most carry them everyday in their pocket.

robbiepixelman: Students are not just learners but collaborators and facilitators of their own learning, and can often learn at a faster / more effective manner than ‘traditional’ teaching can provide. I think we need to recognise and develop the ‘learner’ as the central focus and contributor to peer learning.

David Kernohan: Not sure we need a digital pedagogy so much as a pedagogy. If we properly understood how and why learning happens we could use technology in a thoughtful way to enhance this.

Education needs proper investment, with staff given PAID time every year to develop appropriate skills (pedagogy/technology).

We need a world class education system to inform world class NHS, pensions, etc – the reverse can’t be possible. Where are the leaders in modern day education? The issues that students are protesting about are not just student issues, but e.g. the irrelevance of much of modern day education.

Digital – ability to use entire suite of assets (video, audio, text, etc.) – the ability to use each tool for the right issue… Students do much informal learning, how do we help them make the most of this?

HelenBeetham: ‘Digital pedagogy’ is perhaps the range of pedagogies we need in a digital age – not a special approach.

Younger generation – the notion of being articulate is not necessarily ‘mainstream’.

Lindsay Jordan: Practice what we preach as educational developers – stop trying to ‘tell’ people what to do. Show them. Conceal the message in the medium.

Sally Graham: Yes we’re often simply using technology to tell and to test!!

Sarah Ashley: Slowly and surely wins the race, I think you have to ease teachers/learner into change, don’t go in full throttle throwing your weight around. Perhaps suggest one small change, and facilitate this, help them as much as possible, then other things will come. What we also forget is teachers are very busy and so it has to be small steps, which are less timely.

HelenBeetham: @MaryAnn yes but when to teaching staff have time to reflect in a scholarly way on their own ideological/pedagogical position Sometimes technology can help with that self-recognition by giving new ways of thinking/seeing

David Baume: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Clare Killen: Learners don’t necessarily want to be called customers or consumers – some feel this denies their role as co-developers/collaborators in their own learning is expensive, try ignorance.”

Huge problem of changing the notion of students from ‘collaborators in learning’ to ‘customers’ with ‘rights’. Also an issue with the government thinking that a current elite group of universities will be enough to get the British to sail into the future.

Your job is to provide compelling content, and scream if don’t have the tools to complete the job.

Looking forward to @AaronPorter talk tomorrow re value of higher education.

http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/jiscel11

What do students want from employers? #Employability

http://edudemic.com/2011/11/student-workplace/

Read more here.

Trending Topics

Fascinating to watch a bit of a battle going on in the trending topics:

“Only fat people” was trending for a while, although most of the comments had become similar to the below:

And this kind of tweet has caused ‘everybody is beautiful’ to start to appear higher up the trending topics:

Work’s Intimacy, a review in @timeshighered

Here’s another on the wishlist!!

In a lively and compellWork's Intimacy book Covering read, Melissa Gregg examines the impact of technologies on the work and lifestyles of employees in the knowledge economy. This book covers a lot of ground in a relatively slim volume, and considers mobile working; part-time and contract working; online team interactions; the use of social networking; online branding; and the implications of work being done in the home environment.

Times Higher Education readers may see parallels with their own working lives in the examples cited, and Gregg’s observations about how we relate to work may cause readers to reflect on how information and communication technologies have impacted on their own responses to, for example, being able to work remotely and pressures to be ever connected and available.

Gregg draws on a study of 26 professionals working for large organisations in education, government, broadcasting and telecommunications who were interviewed annually over a three-year period. Their experiences of, and responses to, remote working and the use of online technologies are traced in detail throughout. Overall, a picture of expanding work boundaries is presented, but responses to this shift are mixed.

Read full story or buy the book.

A truly postmodern moment?

Advertised on the maker’s site as:

““Lemme tell ya, these ain’t no ordinary finches we’re talkin’ about. These here are the Angry Birds, the ones that’s gonna kick you in the ‘nads. And they’re the ones on your side. They must be from Galapadapados, or sumptin’.” – Col. Angus, Bird Expert.

The survival of the Angry Birds is at stake. Dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds’ eggs. Use the unique destructive powers of the Angry Birds to lay waste to the pigs’ fortified castles.

Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, and lots of replay value. Each of the 120 levels requires logic, skill, and brute force to crush the enemy.

Protect wildlife or play Angry Birds!”

I’m not a great online game-player, but I enjoy a bit of Angry Birds (fills in a few stops on the Tube), so I had seen enough of it to really enjoy the following video, where cartoon is produced back in “real”-life:

Don’t T-Mobile produce some great ads?

‘Learn to discern’ says @timeshighered

A generation ago in universities, talk was of “computer literacy”; nowadays it’s “media literacy” – if we can’t handle Web 2.0, then we are failing our students. Having built a career around initiatives to meet this purported challenge, I offer some cautionary advice.

First, lay off the “literacy” metaphor. The ability to read and write needs to be achieved in childhood in order for cognitive development to proceed. Learning about information and communication technologies is much less vital. It is also asserted that digital technologies are so fundamental that someone ill at ease with them will be for ever disadvantaged. But hey, food is essential to everyday life, yet I don’t hear calls that we become “food literate”, even if lack of knowledge has demonstrably horrible consequences.

Media literacy is typically about technical skills, but the reasoning behind this prioritisation is flawed. There appears to be a belief that if students don’t learn about the new technologies, they might cede power to experts who are technically able. But it can’t be said loud enough that technical skills do not translate into power. The fact is that we live in an era when we are all dependent on expertise of one sort or another. We can’t acquaint ourselves with every expertise going. We have to trust those experts who in their turn must rely on others. It is hard to see anything exceptional about ICTs in this regard. These technologies are indispensable, but as Max Weber observed about slavery, we ought not to confuse indispensability with power.

The fact is that how to use digital technologies is much less important than what the information accessed is for and what might be done with it. For this, one needs information skills – the sort provided by librarians and teachers. Here, educationalists might warn of risks with regard to lack of attentiveness, especially among the “digitally native”. There is good evidence that most are superficial “skimmers”, clicking hyperlinks and changing pages after a perfunctory glance. A few enthuse about this as a novel, non-linear practice, but most are concerned about the risks to logic and reasoning that can accompany a trend that succours facile and immediate gratification. As one student said about YouTube: “You can get a whole story in six minutes. A book takes so long.”

Read full story.

Stylist Magazine: What did we do with out time before the web?

See online here!

Facebook for Father’s Day (19th June)

This seems like a nice idea, although my Dad will probably never see it, as he’s a “digital alien”! I saw a few people had changed their pictures to pictures of their Dad… thought it would be nice to have one with my Dad… was looking for a more up to date one, but then thought I quite like this one… Are you going to change yours?

Digital Cultures Milad Doueihi

A student is reading a book. A message beeps from an iPhone. Eyes flick to the screen in curiosity. During the glance from paper to screen, an iPod continues to shuffle a soundtrack.

From screen to sound, from paper to pixels, digital cultures accompany, replace and cannibalise earlier platforms and meaning systems. In Digital Cultures, Milad Doueihi probes these accelerated movements, migrations and manifestations. First published in French in 2008 as La Grand Conversion Numérique, the book’s English-language version has not been updated. As a result, social networking is underplayed.

But while it may seem unwise to leave the text unchanged considering the rapidity of software and hardware transformation, Doueihi’s argument remains revelatory and important. He presents the diversity of digital practices and the importance of digital literacy in an increasingly complex textual environment. Moving beyond basic functional literacy, Doueihi asks how digitisation configures a meta-literacy, “of what it means to be literate”.

The book’s four sections – “Digital divides and the emerging digital literacy”, “Blogging the city”, “Software tolerance in the land of dissidence” and “Archiving the future” – align to investigate new relationships between the production and communication of knowledge and the transformations of past modes of reading and thinking.

The innovative concept created and developed throughout the book is “anthology”. Doueihi defines this as “constituted by assembling various pieces of material under a unifying cover, and for the use of an individual or a group brought together by a common interest”. Such a mode of reading is comparative, collaborative and decontextualised. A wiki-enabled form of bricolage, the “new sociability” through social networks gathers references into an innovative anthology.

Read full article.