The first topic in ONL course is about the digital world. I found a good definition to Digital Literacy by Paul Gilster who defined it as “the ability to both understand and use digitised information” (1997). This can be considered as an old definition but think how valid it still is. I started to think when I first used digital means, that was back in the 90´s with email, mobile phone and then slowly also the wonderful world of Internet (called World Wide Web at that time). My digital competence developed when I tried to keep up with the fast moving digital world. The transforming process has been slow in my case although I consider myself a native in a digital world. I started using Facebook around 15 years ago and I am aware that it is “old fashioned” but I still find it a good way of knowing how my friends are doing, especially during the pandemic. I have very mixed feeling regarding “likes” in social media platforms, this applies also to Instagram which I also use but do not like that much. I also have some concerns regarding sharing my personal life in social media, very uncomfortable actually. In my professional role I use LinkedIn and find it very useful in keeping track of what our students are doing. Like many others, I shop online, buy tickets online, read articles and other learning documents online. We used to teach our student to check their “digital footprint” by doing a google search on their name. It is a good way of making sure nothing unusual appears. I sometimes test that too.

I found David Whites presentation on visitors and residents very helpful. The mapping of digital presence gave good insights of mapping my own presence. Based on his model I am resident in many tools which I probably natural these days. I am a visitor when I try some new tools such as Miro or MindMeister mindmapping or Jamboard. But I guess the more I use them the more resident I will became.

The pandemic has shown how important it is to have an education system that works in today’s digital age. We, at Arcada UAS where I work, did a huge digital leap in just few days in March 2020. There was a need for greater digital capacity in the field of education, but it also led to a number of existing challenges and inequalities being reinforced between those who have access to digital technologies and those who do not, such as people from disadvantaged backgrounds. We still have many students suffering. It also feels like the pandemic has revealed a number of challenges for education and training systems dealing with the digital capabilities of educational institutions as well as teachers’ education and overall digital skills. How can we quickly educate teachers to become more competent? And how do teach the student for critical thinking especially now when there is so much false information?

I also liked the example Mark Liedermans article (2019) on going digital by knowing digital how Keuka College is going a bit more deeper by teaching their students in coding, digital storytelling and learning the basics of analytics. This is something we might be implementing as well.

Sources:

David White Youtube and webinar (2022)

Gilster Paul (1997)

Liebermann Mark (2019) https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/03/13/colleges-want-students-think-critically-about-digital-tools

#ONL221, Topic 1: Online participation and digital literacies