Digital literacy across the curriculum

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Judy O'Connell

Digital Literacy across the Curriculum (pdf), from FutureLab, UK, is a 63-page handbook aimed at educational practitioners and school leaders in both primary and secondary schools who are interested in creative and critical uses of technology in the classroom. The handbook is supported by case studies (pdf) of digital literacy in practice and video case studies.

The handbook aims to introduce educational practitioners to the concepts and contexts of digital literacy and to support them in developing their own practice aimed at fostering the components of digital literacy in classroom subject teaching and in real school settings.

Developing digital literacy is important because it supports young people to be confident and competent in their use of technology in a way that will enable them to develop their subject knowledge by encouraging their curiosity, supporting their creativity, giving them a critical framing for their emerging understandings and allowing them to make discerning use of the increasing number of digital resources available to them. p.10

Developing digital literacy in the classroom can allow students to apply their existing knowledge of creating with digital technology to learning in school and in the process be supported to think more critically and creatively about what it is they are doing. p.24

Fostering creativity in the classroom involves applying elements of creativity to subject knowledge. This can be done in all subjects across the school curriculum. p.25

This is an outstanding document that can be used as an information primer for helping schools develop a whole-school approach – particularly relevant in the current 1:1 laptop scenario in Australia.

Opera mini worth singing about

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Judy O'Connell

Wow! I have to say, the claims about Opera Mini – are – pretty genuine! At last, I can browse/jump around websites as fast on my iPhone as I do on my main computer. Plus it has lots of extra features and nice navigation options! Should be very cool on the iPad.

I have added Opera to my bottom navigation bar – bye bye Safari!

If you haven’t already downloaded the App – race on over to the App store and grab your new browser experience.

Horizon Report K-12 – future think!

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Judy O'Connell

What a buzz! I helped with the Horizon Report K-12, which has been officially released.

This volume, the 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition, examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative expression within the environment of pre-college education.

Make sure you read it and circulate it to the leadership team in your school or institution.

Thanks to Larry Johnson and Alan Levine of NMC for inviting me to join the 2010 K-12 Horizon Project Advisory Board as an Australian school representative.

The future of digital diversity

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Judy O'Connell

Think digital – it’s a ‘doing’ technology. Trends from PewInternet Research Centre indicate that teens are digital denizens.

While the research is not Australia, it points the way to the behaviours or our own teens, and signals a need for some major shifts in thinking about learning and teaching contexts. The interactivity of the web allows students to move very quickly from one application to another – remixing, remaking and montaging ‘content’. Learning is promoted most effectively when students are making, creating, building, simulating, hypothesizing – all desirable higher-order thinking activities.

So, give these figures some thought!

Did you know what’s happening to the Internet?

Posted on February 28, 2010 by Judy O'Connell

This is another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new September 2009 version includes facts and statistics focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.

Thanks to Wes Fryer for the tip-off in his post Can you Imagine So Much Global Sharing? My answer is – I never could, even though I’m an avid reader of SciFi. Dreaming and doing are quite different things!

Also in the same post – a peek at the state of the Internet.

2010 is one amazing year!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “JESS3 / The State of The Internet“, posted with vodpod

Flat Classroom Project: Fresh start in a new world

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Judy O'Connell

The brilliant work by Julie Lindsay (Beijing, China) and Vicki Davis (Westwood Schools, Georgia, USA) continues in The Flat Classroom Project 2010-1 which is now is well under way for 2010.

The Flat Classroom™ Project is a global collaborative project that joins together middle and senior high school students. This project is part of the emerging tend in internationally-aware schools to embrace a holistic and constructivist educational approach to work collaboratively with others around the world.

One of the main goals of the project is to ‘flatten’ or lower the classroom walls so that instead of each class working isolated and alone, 2 or more classes are joined virtually to become one large classroom. This is done through the Internet using Web 2.0 tools such as Wikispaces and Ning.

The Project uses Web 2.0 tools to make communication and interaction between students and teachers from all participating classrooms easier. The topics studied and discussed are real-world scenarios based on ‘The World is Flat‘ by Thomas Friedman.

I was honoured to be invited to present the Keynote, ‘Pandora’s Box: Fresh Start in a New World’ for FCP10-1. This time there are over 200 students from 10 classrooms across 6 different countries.

Here are some guiding questions to get them thinking about how to respond and start a discussion or foster an existing discussion:

Is global collaboration using emerging technologies a pandora’s box? Why?
How can we best prepare the ’17 year old Internet/connected world’ to mature and grow into ‘adulthood’?
How has the flat world impacted on you as a teenager? as a teacher?
What place do immersive worlds and virtual realities have in education?

Safe online – fact or fantasy

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Judy O'Connell

I came across two things this week that can help teachers with supporting good use of online spaces. For some teachers effective understanding of online spaces and places in terms of good information practice is still a bit of a fantasy tale – like finding Platform 9 3/4 for Hogwarts!

So the following guide is well worthwhile distributing to your school community.

Net Cetera: Chatting With Kids About Being Online, gives adults practical tips to help kids navigate the online world. Net Cetera covers what parents and teachers need to know, and issues to raise with kids about living their lives online.

What about the big student magnet – Google?

Google published its five privacy principles for International Data Privacy Day on the 28th January. OK, I admit that this is the other side of the coin.

However, it is important to understand exactly what our major online tools consider as important to their product – driven by business forces – as the fact that online tools are extensions of our kids brains means educators have a responsibility to keep in touch and activate the right options for online spaces and places.

Google’s Privacy Principles are:

Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services. Search history informs personalized search, but users can opt-out.
Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices. For example, you can chat on Google Talk “off the record” so the conversation isn’t saved.
Make the collection of personal information transparent. Last year, the Google Dashboard was launched to show you what info Google is collecting on you.
Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy. You can report privacy issues related to Street View. Google often blurs faces, for example.
Be a responsible steward of the information we hold. Google doesn’t sell data to other companies.

You can view the published web document on Google’s privacy principles here.

(via Google Search Engine Watch)

Timelines: Sources from history

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Judy O'Connell

A new interactive history timeline developed by British Library allows students and teachers to explore collection items chronologically for the first time. www.bl.uk/timeline

Comparing the Peasants’ Revolt with the Punk Revolution or medieval astrology with the Apollo moon landings might appear unconnected at first, but the British Library’s new interactive timeline will allow students to get a sense of change, continuity and chronology when studying historical events.

Bringing together material from the Library’s vast collections and using cutting-edge technology, users will now be able to discover historical connections and create links in an exciting multimedia experience.

(via British Library)

Understanding games education – an open (re)source

Posted on January 23, 2010 by Judy O'Connell

ETC Press is a publishing imprint with a twist, being interested in the participatory future of content creation across multiple media.

Great credibility and open source adds up to a great way to transform learning!

ETC Press is an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in partnership with Lulu.com. ETC Press has an affiliation with the Institute for the Future of the Book and MediaCommons, sharing in the exploration of the evolution of discourse.

ETC Press also has an agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to place ETC Press publications in the ACM Digital Portal, and another with Feedbooks to place ETC Press texts in their e-reading platform. Also, ETC Press publications will be in the ThoughtMesh.

ETC Press publications focus on issues revolving around entertainment technologies as they are applied across a variety of fields.

Thanks to a tweet from @lernys I’ve now happily downloaded a copy of Ludoliteracy: Defining, Understanding, and Supporting Games Education, by José P. Zagal.

[cover thumbnail] This is free and looks like a very worthwhile read. Grab yourself a copy.

Book Description:

It seems like teaching about games should be easy. After all, students enjoy engaging with course content and have extensive experience with videogames. However, games education can be surprisingly complex.

This book explores ludoliteracy, or the question of what it means to understand games, by looking at the challenges and problems faced by students taking games-related classes. In response to these challenges, this book then describes how online learning environments can be used to support learning about games by helping students get more from their experiences with games, and helping students use what they know to establish deeper understanding.

Based on the findings from a series of research studies, Ludoliteracy examines the broader implications for supporting games education.

Check out more Current Titles on games, media, design, communications and social networks.