“Digital literacies are those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society.” (online source)
Defining a particular set of capabilities as a ‘literacy’ means that:
- they are a pre-requisite or foundation for other capabilities;
- they are critical to an individual’s life chances;
- they are essential to the making and sharing of culturally significant meanings;
- as a result, there is or should be a society-wide entitlement to these capabilities at some level.
(from The Design Studio / definition of digital literacies)
I find this a bit theoretical because I now would like to jump into the tools right away instead of reflecting what is digital literacy. Although this is interesting as it splits the different types of digital literacies:
ICT/computer literacy: the ability to adopt and use digital devices, applications and services in pursuit of goals, especially scholarly and educational goals
information literacy: the ability to find, interpret, evaluate, manipulate, share and record information, especially scholarly and educational information, for example dealing with issues of authority, reliability, provenance, citation and relevance in digitised scholarly resources
media literacy, including for example visual literacy, multimedia literacy: the ability to critically read and creatively produce academic and professional communications in a range of media
communication and collaboration: the ability to participate in digital networks of knowledge, scholarship, research and learning, and in working groups supported by digital forms of communication
digital scholarship: the ability to participate in emerging academic, professional and research practices that depend on digital systems, for example use of digital content (including digitised collections of primary and secondary material as well as open content) in teaching, learning and research, use of virtual learning and research environments, use of emergent technologies in research contexts, open publication and the awareness of issues around content discovery, authority, reliability, provenance, licence restrictions, adaption/repurposing and assessment of sources.
learning or study skills: the ability to study and learn effectively in technology-rich environments, formal and informal, including: use of digital tools to support critical thinking, academic writing, note taking, reference management, time and task management; being assessed and attending to feedback in digital/digitised formats; independent study using digital resources and learning materials
life-planning: the ability to make informed decisions and achieve long-term goals, supported by digital tools and media, including for example reflection, personal and professional development planning, CV building, identity and reputation management, showcasing achievement; also time and task management
(from The Design Studio / definition of digital literacies)
I have been thinking about how to do institutional transformation for sustainability and how I get tools for workshops that even if planned for digital transformation can for sure be used for other purposes: http://wiki.ulster.ac.uk/display/VPR/Workshop%2BToolkit and http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/29473453/Viewpoints%20Workshop%20Toolkit
We are used to use vocabulary of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” which View of Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement | First Monday criticizes. Sometimes we need new vocabulary to see things differently and that way make changes. The new vocabulary is “residents” and “visitors” which captures better the multifaceted nature of how individuals navigate in digital world. So we made maps of our own navigation and while doing my own (below) I realized that what is digital has different perspectives. Like, I never thought that email would be digital and then I started to realize that maybe even digital news paper Helsingin Sanomat would be and that I could map it to my digital world.
Visitors define “a goal or task and go into the shed to select an appropriate tool which they use to attain their goal. Task over, the tool is returned to the shed” and residents on the other hand “see the Web as a place, perhaps like a park or a building in which there are clusters of friends and colleagues whom they can approach and with whom they can share information about their life and work.“ Interestingly this is divided into private and institutional and different digital tools are used in the combination of these spaces.
During our PBL meeting I started to think that one would need to start digitalization journey by asking: why do I or my students or my institution need digital tools? After reflecting about the why I realized that indeed one would need to start thinking other way: what kind of operations I have now that are not inspiring but time consuming and routine and something that I do not enjoy doing. Then I could go and find out what kind of tools, digital or not, there are to easy me out from my uninspiring tasks.
In our PBL group I learned the following when choosing a tool:
- Reflection: will a tool slow down a student to think
- What will the pedagogical value be, i.e. will a tool enhance learning?
- Does a tool engage to take part, i.e. what is participation and inclusion (will a tool exclude some and include others)?
- Does the tool encourage collaboration, interaction, and shared work?
- How accessible a tool is?
TOPIC 2: Reflections by Pia
The webinar with Terese MacKinnon (24.3.2026) was slightly confusing as in the beginning I was enthusiastic about sharing teaching material. So I started to plan how to share mine and at the end of the webinar learning that most of the places where Terese had shared hers were now behind paywall. However, some ideas can be taken:
- Opensharing
- Slideshare
- Padlet (also in the other course)
- Creative Commons lisences
- There is a book about Enshittification where open sharing is scrutinized where most places like FB, Amazon, iphone and X (former Twitter) first are good to users, then good to business customers and finally none of that but not useful
- Mastodon (what was that)?
- From the chat by Isabel Duarte: https://github.com/instructr and https://instructr.github.io/rnaseq.counts2bio/
Webinar tips for us: 1) use your personal email but I am wondering how safe is that since gmail, microsoft outlook etc are all US based, not EU based), 2) always keep your own copies (do not only store in open space), 3) MAKE KINDNESS AND GENEROSITY central (I so love this), 4) Do not tolerate trolls, and 5) be aware of risks.