You will now focus your study on literacies and pedagogy in a digital society. Continue to use the same document/note from the previous activity to capture your ideas and understanding about the key elements of digital literacies and digital pedagogy – the challenges to the transformation of your teaching.
Digital literacies
Watch this TED Talk by Dr Doug Belshaw (a Researcher/Analyst at JISC Advance at the time where he researched and advised on issues around open education and innovation) The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. A summary of the eight elements follows the video.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78]
Video: The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies (17:29)
Belshaw said: "Every time you're given a new tool it gives you a new method of impacting on the world". Think about the 8 elements of digital literacies he introduces and what new methods the tools used in these elements would encourage.
Join the group discussion for this lesson called "Changing Landscape". Share your ideas about what "new" tools and changing methods could be employed in educating for digital literacies. Do you think that the eight elements provide a comprehensive framework for digital literacies?
Transforming Learning
Watch University of South California media professor Henry Jenkins (part of the The Digital Generation Project) describe the role of digital media in the cultural transformation of learning. What would you be willing to explore to bring real value to learning in your classroom?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tpLIlxaPMM]
Video: Big Thinkers: Henry Jenkins on New Media and Implications for Learning and Teaching (9:29)
To be digitally literate is to have access to a broad range of practices and cultural resources that you are able to apply to digital tools. It is the ability to make, represent and share meaning in different modes and formats; to create, collaborate and communicate effectively and to understand how and when digital technologies can best be used to support these processes.
Digital Pedagogy
Prof Marion Milton of La Trobe University, Australia writes about digital pedagogy as follows:
"Digital pedagogy includes several axiomatic changes to traditional pedagogy and has more in common with a constructivist approach, in which students construct their own knowledge in a social context. However, digital pedagogy goes beyond that to include teaching about and for digital technology for learning. Central to digital pedagogy is the co-construction of knowledge. A digital pedagogy includes planning for learning which is less content than problem-solving based. It can present knowledge as problematic rather than as fixed. As such it promotes higher-order thinking skills and students move from remembering content to gaining a deep understanding of concepts (Kent & Holdway, 2009). It develops critical analysis, metacognition and reflection, often through creation, editing and publishing online (Luckin et al, 2009). Further, digital pedagogies can include Web 2.0 technology for social networking, with the use of blogs, wikis, i-phones and i-pads for learning. In this way digital pedagogies help to promote connectedness to the wider world. (Kent & Holdway, 2009).
In order to embrace digital pedagogies teachers may find they are no longer the experts and that they need to change from being users of technology, such as when they find and print off activities for students, or information for themselves to use in teaching, to becoming co-creators (Poore, 2011)."
Source: Milton, M. Digital literacy and digital pedagogies for teaching literacy: Pre-service teachers’ experience on teaching rounds, Journal of Literacy and Technology 77 Volume 14, Number 1: March 2013
Read the TeachThought blog article called As Digital Influence Changes, Let Students Create The New Internet. If you are short of time skip the slideshare and just focus on the five ideas listed. How does this compare with how you view the Internet with your students? As a learning professional, do you think you are given sufficient opportunities such as this?
- Return to the group discussion for this lesson called "Changing Landscape". To what extent do you agree with the definition of digital pedagogy? What is your view about what digital pedagogy should be?
