Creating creative digital literacy or creating digital dependency?

howsheilaseesIT

Jisc Digital Capabilities Framework

Digital literacy and in turn digital capability is something that I care a great deal about.

Part of my working life involves supporting and exploring  the development of digital capabilities. The work that Helen Beetham, Sarah Knight and many others at Jisc have done around developing definitions that have evolved into a digital capabilities framework is an essential part of my “digital toolkit.”  I’m always on the look out for other resources that I can add to said toolkit.

Earlier this week  I spotted via twitter  that the NMC had produced a Strategic Brief on Digital Literacy .  Full of expectations my heart sank when I read this:

“Digital Literacy: An NMC Horizon Project Strategic Brief was commissioned by Adobe Systems to explore an increasingly pressing challenge for United States higher education institutions: advancing digital literacy among students and faculty. Unfortunately, lack of agreement on what…

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‘Farm-to-School-to-Market’ … Cross-Generational Rural Synthesis

A must read for Mountainair NM and Yuma CO. Are you paying attention?

A couple of days ago I was having a Twitter discussion with Sandra, from Nebraska. Sandra is hard-core in the ‘farm-to-school’ movement. Actually it really shouldn’t even be called a movement since it’s just common sense. She posted an article from NPR discussing the fact that revenue from farmers markets nationwide have more or less peaked and in some locals even declined. There are areas that are still seeing increases, but overall the trend is not what you’d expect considering all the publicity of the last few years.

The article detailed several of possible causes. According to Sarah Low, a USDA economist and lead author on the report; “Farmers are increasingly using middlemen to sell to restaurants, grocery stores and distributors. With an increasing share of their produce, dairy or meat going to those channels, some farmers may choose to forgo the farmers market.” Simply put, the farmers market phenomenon may just be…

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Walking the Highline in NYC

NYC and #walking the #city

Teaching for Life

Having recently written about some of the physical challenges I am beginning to have with walking, it seems odd, even to me, that today’s post is about walking. But this is not about walking just anywhere; its about being on the amazing High Line in the heart of the Meatpacking District of Manhattan.

The Highline is an amazing architectural accomplishment that you can read about online. It was created by two New Yorkers who had a vision for this abandoned, 30-feet-above-ground train track that once served as transport for the products of the meatpacking industry in mid-Manhattan.

For me, the Highline ranks right up there with the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and Ellis Island as a destination for those seeking the “best” of NY experiences. Created for the public, it now serves millions of visitors annually as it has become one of the most popular attractions in…

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Yuma County, CO Now Live on RealWare!

re-blogged for the Yuma County Colorado sunset

CCI Software

Matt Smyrl, CCI Project Manager, announced last week that the Yuma County, CO Assessor’s office is now live on RealWare!

Thank you to Yuma County for choosing CCI and for your efforts during the converstion.

Special thanks to the CCI RW team (Jennifer, Chip, James and Maya)!

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Imagining the future of museums: winners from the AAM contest

Bryan Alexander

What will museums become in the future?
To explore this question the Center for the Future of Museums sponsored a story competition.  Creators had to imagine what the future of education could look like, with museums playing a leading role: “Tell us a story…about a future of education in which museums play a starring role.”

(Full disclosure: I helped judge the contest)

The resulting narratives imagined diverse futures, including multiple generations using virtual reality, autonomous historical characters, a megadatabase, augmented reality gallery installation tests, a new form of robotic displays,   One peered into an inbox 25 years from now.  Click here to see the winners, along with all of the other creative submissions.  That’s a lot of imagination and innovation at work – go explore!

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Non-conformists as change agents

Minding the Workplace

ProPublica, the non-profit public interest news organization, recently did a neat little feature on Dr. Adam Grant’s (U.Penn/Wharton) new book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (2016). Here’s the lede by Cynthia Gordy:

In his new book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant examines the circumstances that give rise to truly original thinkers and groundbreaking ideas. Throughout Originals, the Wharton School of Business professor shares stories from the fields of business, politics and sports, and his chapter exploring the psychology of speaking truth to power – whether it be federal whistleblowers, or a middle-level employee with an innovative idea – holds several lessons for investigative journalists and the people on which they report.

The feature includes a podcast with Dr. Grant interviewed by ProPublica reporter David Epstein. Here are some of the highlights:

• On lower-level workers facing backlash for making suggestions: “People often confuse power and…

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This week’s Forum features Jim Groom and radical digital learning

Bryan Alexander

This Thursday on the Forum we have the one and only… Jim Groom.

If you don’t know Jim, he’s one of the first and longest-running edubloggers, having written at Bavatuesdays for more than a decade.  There you can find his thoughts on the intersection of education and technology, with a strong helping of culture high and low. At the University of Mary Washington Jim inspired the edupunk movement, and then invented and taught the famous digital storytelling counter-MOOC DS106.  He also kicked off the Domain of One’s Own movement.  And now he’s moved to Italy, where he helps run the innovative and excellent Reclaim Hosting company.  A brilliant man, a ferocious innovator, a generous collaborator, and a good friend.

I plan on asking him about the Domain of One’s Own idea and practice, which should lead to a discussion of Reclaim Hosting, and from that point on to…

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Threat to openness: managing access to public archives

Thoughts on management

Portrait of Henri Bergson by J.E. Blanche 1891 to illustrate Henri Bergson article. Uploaded from http://www.marcelproust.it/gallery/bergson.htm (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In November 2015, I attended the Threats to Openness conference held at Northumbria University. The conference had a specific aim “discuss the growing threats to citizens’ rights to access public archives across the digital world.” Although we did not discuss what was meant by openness, it was understood mainly to be defined by the right of access or the right to access public archives. However, this provides only a limited sense of how openness was used during the conference. Participants and speakers regularly referred to difference between access and openness noting that they were often confused. One does not always imply the other. As openness can be understood differently, the threats to it will vary with responses that can potentially conflict with efforts to help with access. What was missing…

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Beware Educational Alphabet: ADHD, RSD, ASD, OSD, EAA

radical eyes for equity

What do a medical diagnosis and education reform have in common?

Two things: (1) complex matters reduced to a few letters, and (2) failing children.

First, consider ADHD. Below are some readings to help interrogate how this diagnosis has many significant problems, misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis among them, some of which are related to the high-stakes accountability movement in education:

• Medicating ADHD in the Brave New World of High-Stakes Accountability
• Don’t Rush to Saddle Children With the A.D.H.D. Label, Donna Ford
• Worrying Disparities in Diagnosis of Black and White Children, Keith B. Wilson
• Failure to Conform Accounts for Most A.D.H.D. Diagnoses, Susan Hawthorne

Next, a growing list of alphabet (toxic) soup is assaulting our schools and students under the umbrella of “state takeover” approaches, targeting mostly high-poverty and racial minority schools.

RSD, ASD, OSD, and EAA—among others—have gained political momentum built on propaganda and not results. Below is a reader addressing the failures…

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Digital vs. Information Literacy

Designer Librarian

Have you ever wondered just what the difference is between digital and information literacy? Or how they are connected to each other? Those are important questions because for librarians, the conversation is almost always about information literacy, and digital literacy sometimes takes a backseat to that. In this post, I’m going to talk about the integral relationship between the two and how we can’t even think of teaching information literacy without also recognizing digital literacy (along with all the other ‘literacies of information’).

First, I think it helps to understand the concept of literacy in general. Digital and information literacy (and all the other literacies) are rooted in the sociocultural view of literacy as a set of social practices. If you want to learn more about that, I recommend reading The New London Group’s A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures, an article that appeared in the Harvard Educational Review…

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