Tag Archives: digital literacy

Curation not Hoarding

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Ask a teenage student to show you their desktop, or for that matter, ask a teacher. Without doubt in most cases you will see an assortment of files, links and short cuts dumped on their home screens. Welcome to the age of digital hoarding. The art of curation is a necessity for everybody in a digital learning environment and teacher librarians are best placed to instructional lead their institutions in best practice (Valenza, 2012).

Content curation has always happened at schools, but the digital information overload and the rate it is happening at is leaving some washed in its wake. We are both consuming and producing information at a phenomenal rate, and no more so than in an educational setting, where emails and communications fly.  Think of the information we collect – emails, documents, music, videos, photos. How can students cope with this influx unless we teach them the valuable skills of curation? Curation is the art of not only collecting but organising and adding value to those resources (Wheeler & Gerver, 2015).

When I picture well curated resources, strangely I think of Marie Kondo and her method of decluttering spaces called KonMari (Kondo, 2015). The KonMari method gets its’ followers to work out what you want to keep first – Does it bring you joy?  The second step is to organise by grouping. Finally, it is the storing and labelling.

Curation takes a very similar path. Before we can teach both students and teachers how to curate, we need to teach them how to declutter and decide what is worth keeping or curating.  A good curator will also ask key questions – do I need it? And is it worth it? Only the individual curator can answer the first question, need is very subjective.  The second question of ‘worth’ is one of evaluating validity. The CRAP method is a popular choice for students’ evaluation of sources, possibly due to its crass mnemonic.

C – currency

R – reliability

A – Authority

P – Point of view or purpose.

(Charles Sturt University Library, 2019)

Once a resource has been deemed worthy of collection it is time to organise it.  Where will you store it? Is it worth sharing? How will you label it – so you can find it easily when needed or so it has relevance to those you share it with? This is where folders, playlists, and tagging come into their own.  By labelling resources with key terms that will group it with other similar resources we improve our workflow.  Today’s digital affordance allows us to group, sort and store in multiple places for multiple uses, maximising our curated resource exposure. Through adding tags and grouping items we are adding value to the resource, ensuring its usefulness.

There are two types of curation:

  1. Personal Curation – finding, organising and labelling resources for your personal use. Some examples are:
    • Storing of personal files
    • Cataloguing of emails
    • Using bookmarks on web browser with folders
    • Signing into Youtube and creating private playlists or channels
    • Spotify/Music Online – creating playlists.
    • Images into albums on your devices.
  2. Collective Curation – The ability to curate resources together and comment on others’ curations. Some examples are:
    • Website Curation tools like Diigo, Pinterest, Pearltrees, Elib…
    • Openly sharing resources through networks and social media.

Collective curation builds collaboration and enhances communication.  Teaching students the ability to curate, and then engaging them in projects which utilise collective curation has the potential to deepen learning and create higher order thinking (Gonzalez, April 15, 2017). Mobile Digital Curation allows for learning to happen anywhere, anytime and breaks the walls of the classroom. Mobile devices have opened our ability to find, select, organise, create and share resources.

Students need the digital literacy skills that will enable them to do this well, and in the process curate themselves a positive digital footprint.

 

Charles Sturt University Library (Producer). (2016). How to evaluate information. [Online Video] Retrieved from https://youtu.be/hp5xasNuHL8

Gonzalez, J. (April 15, 2017). To boost higher-order thinking.  Retrieved from https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/curation/

Kondo, M. (2015). The life-changing magic of tidying. London: Ebury Publishing.

Valenza, J. (2012). Curation! (Vol. 29).

Wheeler, S., & Gerver, R. (2015). Learning with ‘e’s : Educational theory and practice in the digital age. In. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csuau/detail.action?docID=1918927

 

 

21st Century Learning – keeping up with society

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The curriculum taught in schools can no longer be content driven in a society where there is rapid change occurring in all aspects of life.  Opportunities must be given to students to engage in authentic learning that is not based on static content, but is participatory and self-directed (Wheeler & Gerver, 2015). To do this, teachers need to engage in pedagogical practice that allows students to engage with content in ways that opens pathways for them to work collaboratively with both the teachers and other students. It is only through changing from teacher-led to self-directed learning that students will gain the competencies and skills required to succeed in the modern global society (Scott, Sept 2015).

Producing through interaction and creativity, rather than focusing on consuming builds active learners who are engaged and invested in their learning. Knowledge is deepened through allowing collaboration and critical thought processes involved in producing responses that allow for students to display creativity (Mills, February 19, 2019). As teachers, we must engage with our students, modelling best practise when it comes to using digital citizen skills.  Through exploring new forms of collaboration, communication and production, we not only expose our students to valuable skills and competencies that will take them into their future world, but we build our own capacities as 21st Century learners.

 

Mills, K. (February 19, 2019). Technology and learning in the classroom: six tips to get the balance right. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/technology-and-learning-in-the-classroom-six-tips-to-get-the-balance-right-111430

Scott, C. L. (Sept 2015). The futures of learning 1: Why must learning content and methods change in the 21st century? Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002348/234807E.pdf

Wheeler, S., & Gerver, R. (2015). Learning with ‘e’s: Educational theory and practice in the digital age. Retrieved from Proquest eBook Central

 

 

Digital Learning Environment – My thoughts

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A digital learning environment (DLE) is not just the technology – hardware and software, used in a school, but the intangible attitudes and skills of all users within the ecosystem of the school community in their utilisation of technology.  In our school community, as with any environment the ‘buy in’ varies. Some teachers use the DLE to effectively engage their students in learning experiences that are participatory and personalised through using OneNote Class Notebooks, STILE and Moodle.  They work collaboratively in teams to organise the department learning experiences and content. Others use technology primarily as a production tool, or dissemination tool, ignoring the collaborative, participatory and personalisation possibilities that the DLE has to offer.

As educators, we need to encourage our students to develop the digital citizen skills that will enable them to engage effectively in this rapidly changing digital environment.  They need to have the skills required to be safe, savvy and social (Ribble, 2018). Providing opportunities for students to utilise these skills within their education practises will help guide them to becoming responsible global digital citizens.  Networking within their class, their school, their State, their Country and globally, students have the potential to deepen and broaden their education beyond the static four walls that was once the classroom.  Teachers should also be using their networks and communities to build their educational practise to reflect the national and global nature of education in the 21st Century.

 

Ribble, M. (2018). The top 3 elements of student digital citizenship. EdTech. Retrieved from: https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2018/06/top-3-elements-student-digital-citizenshipMy

INF533 – Literature in the digital environment reflection

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Assignment 4 PART C: Critical Reflection  

Digital Literature is a term that is as broad as the digital environment it is part of.  It refuses to be contained and evolves at the same pace as the technologies used to create, share and view it.  I have come to realise through the subject of “Literature in the Digital Environment” not only the breadth of this term, but its importance to educators of students in the 21st Century (Fitzgerald, 2017).  To be digitally literate in today’s digital information overloaded world students need to be engaged with digital texts embedded into the curriculum in meaningful ways in both the consumption and production aspects of acquiring knowledge.

The use of the term ‘literature’ confused me at the beginning of this subject as I equated it with ‘fiction’ only.  Through completing the second assignment for this subject I discovered that digital literature, electronic literature, and e-literature are broad concept terms encompassing both fiction and non-fiction works, that make use of the digital world affordances which allow for manipulation, encouraging participation with the texts themselves, intertwining genres, media and platforms (Crowley, 2017).  This blurring of genres, media and platforms are mirrored in the blurring of the line between consumers and producers of digital literature, as the trend for participation in the production, through interactions, create a continual cycle where some digital literature forms continually evolve and adapt as viewers/users/players engage with the material.

In the discussion forum for trends in digital literature I asked “Where can I find digital literature” only to find out that it is everywhere!  Our students are familiar with many forms of digital literature, whether they recognise it or not.  They have produced digital stories, and participated in them through their access to social media forums.  Ask any teenager with a smartphone to show you their snapchat or Instagram story?  Walsh (2010) believes teachers who match students learning activities to the “digital communication practices used outside school” will help engage students to be active in the learning process (p. 226).  Walsh also believed that good digital literature displays a synergy between the technology and the quality of the literature (Walsh M. , 2013).  Incorporating digital literacy into the curriculum in ways that are meaningful and engage students is the challenge of education in the 21st century (Walker, Jameson, & Ryan, 2010, p. 221).  How can we utilise the communication practices students use outside school when many schools restrict access to social media and many other sites?  I am lucky enough to work in a school that employs a BYOD program with specific guidelines as to the capabilities of the device, many schools have no such guidelines or in many cases no devices used systematically across the school.  To implement digital literature into our school programs in meaningful ways that enhance student engagement requires time of professionals that are already time poor, a topic that was raised in the discussion forum for this subject (Fraser, 2017).  I believe that we need to find the time and harness the benefits of using digital literature, especially digital storytelling in our educational practice.

The curriculum is being pushed towards embracing inquiry learning and collaborative learning and digital literature facilitates this through embracing digital storytelling (Crowley L. , 2017).  Digital storytelling blends media with the written word to enhance it.  Using narrative and storytelling techniques digitally, we are seeing a return to the spoken and visual components of storytelling.  Neuroscientist have proven the benefits of engaging with narratives to increase involvement, memory and empathy, which is why advertising companies use them to such success (Schwertly, 2014).  We remember the advertisements.  We feel strongly about advertisements.  This is the power of storytelling – why wouldn’t we use it to help students remember, be involved and feel empathy about what they are learning in class?

Digital literature and digital storytelling empower the full array of diverse learners in our classrooms.  They can choose how involved they become with the material, to which depth they want to follow or even at what level they want to read.  They can choose the best way to access the material, manipulating the content to suit their needs.

The ease at which content can be added or used digitally makes fair use and copyright issues at the forefront of all digital literature producers’ minds.  Through engaging students academically in digital literature and digital storytelling we are ensuring that they are aware of not only their rights but the rights of all producers of material sourced electronically.  Knowing that the story you produce will be shared with the worldwide community ensures that you follow the copyright rules, such as seeking permission if an item is under copyright.  In compiling my digital story for this subject I had to do just that with the National Film and Sound Archive.

Humans are social beings, and literature allows us to socialise with people not only in our immediate circle.  Digital literature allows for instantaneous interactions to be occurring across the globe.  Personally, I have been exposed to some amazing digital literature through this course and now feel confident in helping others find all the benefits that digital literature has to offer. After all, “literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others:  because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness and sanity” (The School of Life, 2014).

(The School of Life, 2014)

Word Count: 817

References

Crowley, L. (2017, September 13). Digital storytelling is our future. Retrieved from https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/lenacrowley/2017/09/13/digital-storytelling-is-our-future/

Crowley, L. (2017, August 27). INF533 assignment 2 part b: Critical reflection of digital literature experience. Retrieved from https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/lenacrowley/2017/08/27/inf533-assignment-2-part-b-critical-reflection-of-digital-literature-experiences/

Fitzgerald, L. (2017). INF533 – Literature in Digital Environment. Wagga Wagga: Charles Sturt University. Retrieved from https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_26925_1&content_id=_1546313_1

Fraser, J. (2017, August 6). The importance of time. Retrieved from https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_26925_1&conf_id=_45305_1&forum_id=_95356_1&message_id=_1412607_1&nav=discussion_board_entry

Hall, T. (2012). Digital renaissance: The creative potential of narrative technology in education. Creative Education, 3(1), 96-100. Retrieved from http://file.scirp.org/Html/17301.html

Schwertly, S. (2014, October 22). The neuroscience of storytelling. Retrieved from https://www.ethos3.com/2014/10/the-neuroscience-of-storytelling/

The School of Life. (2014, September 18). What is literature for? Retrieved from https://youtu.be/4RCFLobfqcw cited in Fitzgerald, L. (2017). INF533 – Literature in Digital Environment. Wagga Wagga: Charles Sturt University. Retrieved from https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_26925_1&content_id=_1546313_1

Walker, S., Jameson, J., & Ryan, M. (2010). Skills and strategies for E-learning in a participatory culture. In R. Sharpe, H. Beetham, & F. S. De, Rethinking learning for a digital age: How learners are shaping their own experiences. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Walsh, M. (2010). Multimodal literacy: What does it mean for classroom practice? Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 33(3), 211-239. Retrieved from https://www.alea.edu.au/documents/item/63

Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment. In L. McDonald (Ed.), A literature companion for teachers (pp. 181-194). Marrickville, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETTA).

 

 

Blog Task #1 INF533

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My head is spinning from the world of digital literature.

I have been focussing on completing the readings contained in module 1 of this subject and the more I read, the more my questions and thoughts develop.  How are we preparing our students to live in this digitised world?  How do my own children display their digital literacy? What is digital literature?

Before starting this subject I thought of digital literature in terms of information found through the internet or on electronic devices.  My definition, I feel, compares favourably with Lamb (2011) and her five electronic reading environments: e-books; Interactive story books; reference databases; hypertexts and interactive fiction; and transmedia storytelling.  I must say that interactive fiction and transmedia storytelling were a complete mystery to me.   E-books I have used, but like many others I prefer the smell and feel of the real thing.  Reference databases are my day to day, and the constant battle of trying to get students to use the amazing collection of valid information they contain rather than simply ‘googling’ and taking the top result.  I was familiar with hypertexts in non-fiction, however, had never seen it in fiction, probably because I like my fiction in the physical form.

Reading, writing, and comprehension has always been linked together and share skill sets, however the pace that our digital world is evolving has made these three skill sets intrinsically linked as literacy has become deictic,  or continuously changing contextually (Leu, 2011, p. 6).  Rettberg (2012) clearly outlined in his article how literacy has evolved as technology has allowed for not only the externalisation of thoughts, but the broadcast and collaboration of our thought processes with ease.  This, as I explain to both my children and students, can be their greatest advantage and their biggest regret if engaged in without careful thought and full comprehension of what you are reading and writing, just ask Stephanie Rice.    Learning how to read and write online requires a complex layering of skills and therefore we need to not only evaluate the use of digital literature in our classrooms, but also develop our students’ skill in the areas of locating; evaluating sources; judging the accuracy and bias (Leu, Forzani, Timbrell & Maykel, 2015, p.140).  There is an assumption that our students are ‘digital natives’, when I feel the reality is that our children and students are constantly lost in the world of the ‘hyperlink’ where they a falling through the rabbit hole of the digital information world (Coombs, 2009).

We cannot predict what future technological developments will happen, nor how people will use them, yet we need to prepare our students and children to live in this constant, rapidly evolving world.  With this rapid evolution, it is hard to know what technology will stand the test of time,  leading to a much of our digital literature no longer able to be accessed due to formats, companies or devices used to view no longer in operation (Sadokierski, 2013).   I feel  that as teachers we need to focus on the skills behind the technology, rather than the technology itself.  What makes a story ‘good’ will be similar whether it is given digitally or physically.  Comprehending the mood, the devices, the literary elements that lead us to our feelings when we read, view or hear something is what is going to make our students and children able to ride the wave that is digital literature.

 

 

Coombes, B. (2009) Generation Y: Are they really digital natives or more like digital refugees? [online]. Synergy; v. 7 n. 1 p. 31-40; 2009. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/fullText;dn=178236;res=AEIPT> ISSN: 1448-5176.

Lamb, A. (2011). Reading redefined for a transmedia universe. Learning and Leading with Technology, 39 (3), 12-17. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=67371172&site=ehost-live

Leu, D.J. et al (2011). The new literacies of online reading comprehension: Expanding the literacy and learning curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55 (1)5-14. Doi: 10.1598/JAAL.55.1.1

Leu, D.J, Forzani, E.,Timbrell, N. et al (2015) Seeing the forest, not the trees: Essential technologies for literacy in the primary-grade and upper elementary-grade classroom. Reading Teacher, 69(2) 139-145

Rettberg, J.W. (2012). Electronic literature seen from a distance: the beginnings of a field. Retrieved from http://www.dichtung-digital.org/2012/41/walker-rettberg.htm

Sadokierski, Z. (2013, November 12). What is a book in the digital age? [Web log post]. Retrived from http://theconversation.com/what-is-a-book-in-the-digital-age-19071