Online participation & digital literacies. Be open. Try new things. Reflect.

Q5: How can you improve your own digital literacies? What are your digital literacy goals?A5: Be open. Try new things. Accept that you can’t know everything. Participate in interesting networks and learn from them. Reflect. #ONL192

In my profession I work with ITC, helping teachers to find digital tools for learning and collaboration. My team also try to provide ideas for pedagogical development and help to support teachers digital knowledge. It is a constant challenge to keep up with the everlasting stream of content and technical news that are presented every day. After being off work for a few years due to parental leave, I feel a need to investigate and reflect on the digital literacies that are meaningful to me.

“Digital literacies are those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society. Digital literacy looks beyond functional IT skills to describe a richer set of digital behaviours, practices and identities. What it means to be digitally literate changes over time and across contexts, so digital literacies are essentially a set of academic and professional situated practices supported by diverse and changing technologies.” Developing digital literacies Jisc infonet

Digital literacies encompasses a range of other capabilities represented here in a seven elements model:

Seven element of digital literacies Developing digital literacies Jisc infonet

Coming back into a professional context from a more private one can be a bit overwhelming. The amount of input you can get is never ending and if you have lost your networks or they have become outdated, you quickly need to find new ones to dive into the stream of information. What I came to realise is that elegant lurking is a very efficient way to catch up.

“This [elegant lurker] involves learners following key people in their disciplines (fellow students, ‘thought leaders’ practitioners, academics etc.) within Social Media to tune into the discourses within the subject. Often this is an effective way to discover interesting and valuable sources of information on a topic, especially those in formats which aren’t formally curated anywhere such as blog posts.”. Elegant Lurking David White

I think that Twitter is a great way to monitor professional areas, and it turns out I’m a typical elegant lurker in the sense that I don’t interact with people on Twitter, but use it more for monitoring.

When I started to work with distance education in 2008, a lot of the pedagogical literature around described traditional face to face teaching. Being new to the online learning, I was challenged to find ways to interpret my own beliefs in how to provide meaningful education into a digital world. Or quite digital, I would say. In Sweden few people had smartphones and no one discussed the latest apps or how much screen time they had last week. It is a big digital leap that we have taken in the past ten years, and the conditions for digital learning have changed radically. If I lacked theoretical framework in 2008, it today seems the opposite. When I start searching for input for this course, there is so much information. Due to the amount of users, I think that the theoretical framework has become more interesting. Data and behaviour can be analysed, and new theoretical framework develops to describe new phenomenon linked to the new technique. Information also seems easier to access now that there is a broader set of media to choose between.

What are the downside of this? Well, I would say security and privacy has become more important. “The data is no longer about you, it is you.” Tech journalist Madhumita Murgia describes in her TED Talk How personal data and behaviour has become big business (77 billions dollars in 2017). “If you think you don’t care about being unmasked, you may want to reconsider”, she says, warning about the impact that data have had for elections with Cambridge Analytica or that companies could start making decisions on your behalf.

In Europe the enactment of General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR came into force in May 2018. “The General Data Protection Regulation exists to protect individuals’ fundamental rights and freedoms, in particular their right to protection of their personal data.” However the content of GDPR is not all new. In Sweden we had similar rules applied in the Personal Data Act. However, when GDPR came into force, everyone had to accept new privacy policies and I think that this fact at least made people more aware of that their personal data could be used by someone else.

The DigCompEdu is a self-assessment tool based on the European Digital Competence Framework for Educators. The test sets out 22 competences organised in six Areas. The tool aims to allow you to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses in using digital technologies in education.

It was interesting to see which areas that are considered to be a part of general digital competence. Two of the statements in the test made me think of things I would like to work more with in my organisation.

I teach students how to behave safely and responsibly online.
I set up assignments which require students to create digital content e.g. videos, audios, photos, digital presentations, blogs, wikis…

The security aspect is one area that I think we need to talk about more, not only with teachers but also when teaching students. What impact does your digital footprint have? Collaboration and students as producers of digital content is another that I would like to work more with. Again, the amount of tools you can use to express your ideas has exploded. The question is whether the tools that are formally supported in my work environment, for example the closed LMS in our university, can meet and embrace the new possibilities.

When analysing my own digital behaviour using the Visitor and Resident-theory, I soon realised that my online behaviour has changed over time. If I had drawn “my map” ten or even five years ago, it would have looked different. The model also made me reflect on different behaviour in private/workrelated spaces. Sometimes the tools are completely different, but sometimes I use the same tool, like Twitter for example, in both areas but in very different ways. (Elegant lurking in private and actually participating more when acting under a public work related account).

Question number 5 in the ONL192 Tweetchat from last week, was about our digital literacies, how to improve them and what goals we have. I replied Be open. Try new things. Accept that you can’t know everything. Participate in interesting networks and learn from them. Reflect. I expect the ONL course to give me a new set of ways to think and analyse learning in a digital age. I am very impressed about how much new input I have already received, a few week in to the course. It is quite challenging to find time to work with the content, but also very rewarding and satisfying to take at step away from the normal everyday tasks and reflect on mine and others digital behaviours in a bigger context.

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