Redefining Digital Literacies

Sue Watling / / digital literacies

HEA have updated Pedagogy for Employability, first published in 2006. The report distinguishes employment as a graduate outcome from pedagogy for employability, where the knowledge, skills and attributes which support continued learning and career development are embedded in the teaching and learning curriculum.

There is no mention in this report of the word digital (as in digital literacies, digital graduate attributes)  and only one single mention of Internet which occurs in a list of employers employability skills namely the application of information technology which contains the following:  basic IT skills, including familiarity with word processing, spreadsheets, file management and use of internet search engines.

Considering the social impact of the Internet and the prevalence of digital ways of working, it could be suggested this is a low level set of expectations with  no mention of the critical evaluation of online content, boundaries between public and personal online identity or behaviour, professional standards with email or the principles of data protection. Employers must prefer employees to demonstrate digital graduate attributes such as these but where are they supposed to develop them?

The JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme recognises the need for embedding them in the curriculum for all staff and students in UK further and higher education, saying ‘many learners enter further and higher education lacking the skills needed to apply digital technologies to education’. Where 90% of new jobs require excellent digital skills, improving digital literacy has become an essential component of developing employable graduates so it’s disappointing to see a 2012 document looking at Pedagogy for Employability where the only digital literacies mentioned are those listed above.

While the soapbox is out, this seems an appropriate point to mention the new Admissions Guidelines for social work students. At a time when the Social Work Reform Board have been reviewing social work education, and the existing QAA Subject Benchmarks for social work offer the best model across the sector for ensuring digital graduate attributes, a new set of competencies have been devised. Future applicants will have to demonstrate they are in possession of the appropriate information technology skills prior to the start of their programme  namely they have the ability to use basic IT facilities, including word processing, internet browsing and use of email. 

At some point the phrase basic IT skills needs to be redefined to include the commonly used definition of digital literacies namely’ those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society’. These are far more than file management, email and the use of internet search engines.

Google and me? We’re in it for the duration.

Sue Watling / / social impact of the Internet

Google’s privacy laws affect all users of google accounts. It’s impossible not to be a user if you have an android phone or tablet or been invited to work collaboratively by a colleague via google docs. Inspite of recent media claims the new information sharing systems break European law on data protection,  Google has gone ahead with plans to target concentrated advertising based on individual interests and search history. No matter how small the garage or spare room you start out in, most people buy out to capitalism in the end and advertising is how Google makes money. From 1st March – – more than ever before – we’re all products to be bought and sold –with our worth based on information given away online. Random advertising is one thing but this is getting personal. We’re all now being followed with adverts for places we’ve been to online. As soon as we enter the google domain we are recognised – only of course it isn’’t us, – its our digital transactions the google sharing machine is interested in and how best it can persuade us to spend spend spend.

If you read the new privacy regulations  you’’ll have seen the rationale that google wants to understand what you’re searching for and get those results to you faster. Carry on aggregating information like this and google will know your visible life better than you know yourself. Once more there are echoes of Orwell’s insightful vision of the years beyond 1984 – where ‘thoughtcrime’ might be the only privacy we have left.

It’’s too late to turn back but why would you want to? Isn’’t Google actually making your life easier? Can you imagine no longer having instant information in seconds? No longer accessing the affordances of the Internet without leaving your home? Digital connections are addictive and, if digital footprints are the price we pay to google for enabling this, then I think I can accept that. Nothing has really changed. We were always tracked and recorded and it’’s naïve to think it is something new, it’’s just become more intense through increased linkups between programmes in the google family.

Information is power and it works both ways. Check out your relationship with google. Log into your google account and go to the latest information on data sharing, visit the dashboard to review the places where you and google have connections and check your default account settings; many of these can be turned off. If you really don’t want to stay with google there are still alternative ways to reconstruct your online life such as bing, mozilla, safari ect – if you can be bothered to start all over again.

Personally I accept I’’m tied into google. I like the convenience of my online life. Google and me? It’s a long term relationship and we’re in it for the duration.

RNIB Hackathon

Sue Watling / / digital inclusion, visual impairment

In February 2012 the RNIB held a Hackathon event. Android, iOS and HTML5 developers came together to find out more about the importance of accessible apps and to talk to blind and partially sighted users to find out what really matters to them when it comes to mobile apps. The developers worked through the night to collaboratively build programmes and applications that could make a difference in the app market. Watch this video to see some of the outcomes. As Steve Jones from the RNIB Innovation Team says – for people with visual impairment the outcomes of events like these are life transforming.

Creative Commons Licensing

Sue Watling / / Embedding OER Practice

Part of the Team Six Workshop, OER, Copyright and Licencing, looked at Creative Commons licences. Creative Commons is the infrastructure built to allow content creators legal controls over the copyright of the their work. More information about Creative Commons can be found on the Creative Commons site and the Lincoln Academic Commons site at http://commons.lincoln.ac.uk/creative-commons There are six different Creative Commons licences, each one giving the conditions under which the content can be shared, re-designed and re-licenced either commerically or non-commercially. Each licence can be identified with a relevant logo.

CC logo CC BY

Attribution. CC BY. This licence means other people can use and reuse the OER, including commercially, as long as the original author is credited. This licence is recommended for ensuring content is most widely shared.

CC logo CC BY SA

Attribution ShareAlike. CC BY SA. This license includes the same criteria as Attribution but anyone re-purposing it must license the new materials under identical terms.

CC Logo CC BY ND

Attribution-NoDerivs. CC BY ND. This license allows for commercial and non-commercial redistribution but it cannot be changed and the original author is credited.

CC Logo CC BY NC

Attribution-NonCommercial. CC BY-NC. This license is for non-commercial use. It allows others to re-use and re-purpose content. The original author must be cited but the new work does not have to be licenced under identical terms.

CC Logo CC BY NC SA

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. CC BY-NC-SA. This license is for non-commercial use. It allows others to re-use and re-purpose content. The original author must be cited and the new work must be licenced under identical terms.

CC Logo BY NC ND

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs. CC BY-NC-ND. This is the most restrictive license. Work can be downloaded and shared, the original author must be credited but not changes can be made and the work must not be used commercially.

The Creative Commons site contains more information about background and development of these licence and also has a licence choosing tool designed to help you select the right licence for your own work.

Because the creator has the control over the copyright, sharing and distribution of their work, this is sometimes referred to copyleft.

Team Six OER Workshop Team Six OER Workshop

Taking a risk with copyright

Sue Watling / / digital literacies, Embedding OER Practice

OER Copyright and Licenses was the first Embedding OER Practice  workshop run by Paul Stainthorp, Julian Beckton and Joss Winn. The session introduced the complexities of copyright legislation. In a world where the internet has become the first destination of choice when it comes to creating teaching and learning content, it offers an infinite source of materials and there are many common myths about their usage  

  • “It’s OK if it’s in a closed environment like Blackboard.”
  • “If people put things (e.g. images) on the WWW, they can’t mind me using them.”
  • “No-one’s going to sue the University over it.”

All of these are incorrect. It’s worth bearing in mind that in the copyright world everything belongs to someone. So although taking and reusing online content is easy, there are a complex set of rules and regulations to be aware of. Unfortunately there is also no single answer as to what can or cannot be taken but some guidelines are more fixed than others. For example you can reuse content if:

  • You are the originator therefore you have the copyright
  • You have the permission from the originator to reuse their materials
  • The materials have a creative commons licence stating they are freely available
  • The content is covered by a university licence to be used
  • The content copyright has expired (usually a 70 year time span)
  • The amount copied is not considered substantial
  • You can claim a defence of fair dealing

The last two are where the complexity begins. Substantial is undefined. For example a square taken from the face of the Mona Lisa would be more substantial than the same sized square taken from the bottom right of the picture. The face would be more recognisable than her dark clothes so has a different significance in terms of copyright legislation. The defence of fair dealing is also an arbitrary ruling. While the work of others can be copied for criticism or review – e.g. teaching and learning – we can’t rely on this as a defence in law that the action was justified. There is no exception to copyright for education purposes in the UK as there is in other countries and the concept of fair dealing is less applicable in law than is often realised. When we take content there is always a risk and individuals have to consider the level of that risk.

Everything belongs to someone. A colleague gave the useful example of wanting to use the London Underground tube map in a book and having the publishers request permission. London Transport agreed but with restrictions on the artwork and a fee of £300. This applies to logos and trademarks and was relevant to me – when I talk about the digital divide I use the slide below.

illustration of the digital divide

How illegal is this? What is the risk level of stealing all these logos for educational purposes? Scary stuff if only because this illustrates how easy it is to do this without thinking through the potential consequences.

What all this does do is reinforce the value of Creative Commons licences which will be looked at next.

Mental illness diagnosis widened to include ‘uncertainty over gender’

Sue Watling / / Uncategorized

The celebration of diversity and difference continues to be erased from social history. The new edition of the DSM-5, Psychiatry’s behaviour classification manual, suggests the parameters of social control are continuing to remove responsibility for behaviour from the individual to the state. The DSM has always been controversial, not least because of the relationship between naming behaviours as symptomatic of mental illness and drug production; ADHD and Ritalin being a prime example.  New labels in the DSM-5 (due out in May 2012) include shyness in children, loneliness, grief and serial rape. Each one of these deserves attention, not least because of their un-holistic nature, but the one which horrifies me the most is the possibility that uncertainty over gender could be labelled a mental illness.

Sex and gender identity is still informed by a cursory glance towards the genitals at birth. There is no routine testing for chemical imbalances such as complete or partial androgen insensitivity syndrome in spite of hormones being the key triggers of foetal development from female to male. Intersex is an established medical condition and any search on ‘Gender Dysphoria’ will evidence the medical acceptance that individual ‘uncertainty over gender’ deserves scientific attention not any drug induced ‘normalisation’ process.

The movement towards acceptance of transgender identity, e.g. the lobbying group Press for Change, has empowered transgendered individuals to live authentic lives. This is how it should be. Identity is a fundamental component of our lives and history is full of horror when this clashes with social imperatives for order and control. The disjuncture between internal and external gender perception needs support. The worry is labeling gender dysphoria as a mental rather than a physical condition will mean it becomes a process of ‘normalisation’ rather than one which addresses its physiological roots.

Psychologists fear US manual will widen mental illness diagnosis. Mental disorders listed in publication that should not exists, warn UK experts.

RNIB sues BMIBaby for its inaccessible website

Sue Watling / / equality and diversity, visual impairment

The Web Access and Inclusion for Disabled People A Formal Investigation was conducted by the Disability Rights Commission in 2004.  Amongst its findings were 81% of sites failed to satisfy the most basic Web Accessibility Initiative category and website designers had an inadequate understanding of the needs of disabled users and how to create accessible websites. Many websites had characteristics that made it difficult, if not impossible, for people with certain impairments, especially those who are blind, to make use of the services provided.

Not much has changed. Working with people with sight loss I would say all the websites we try to access are, if not fully inaccessible (like iTunes) have sections (such as payment pages) which remain inaccessible to screen readers.  In 2005 the RNIB issued this statement

“A disabled person can make a claim against you if your website makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult to access information and services. If you have not made reasonable adjustments and cannot show that this failure is justified, then you may be liable under the Act, and may have to pay compensation and be ordered by a court to change your site.”

The Act they were referring to was the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (now superceded by the Equality Act 2010). To date there have been two cases of website inaccessibility which the RNIB have taken to court – each one settled out of court and the names of the companies not revealed.

Last week the RNIB launched a case against Bmi-baby for their inaccessible website. It’s unusual for the company to be identified in this way – but it’s what needs to happen.  Until there is a test case and inaccessible websites are shown to be illegal then people will carry on with bad practices and users of assistive technology will continue to be digitally excluded.

Change Academy Start-up Meeting

Sue Watling / / digital literacies, Embedding OER Practice

Today is the start of a HEA Change Academy programme. This is part of the Embedding OER Practice in Institutions project here at the University of Lincoln. The project is looking at the philosophy and practice of open education and the use and reuse of OER and embedding that practice across the whole institution. The Change Academy is about supporting institutional change by working with staff and students to create those conditions most conducive to change. Engagement with OER is part of a much wider picture of the use of technology for learning which includes VLEs, Web 2.0 style tools and social media –as well as familiarity with the open education movement in general and open educational resources in particular. Even higher and wider to this is the individual need for confidence and competence working within digital environments and understanding what makes effective digital learning experiences. All of this involves change – in particular the adoption of digital literacies – those skills and understandings which are essential to teaching, learning and professional practice in a digital age. The Change Academy will help ensure individual project outcomes can be sustainable and identify ways for  embedding them  at departmental and Faculty level while overall project guidance to OER practice within teaching and learning aims to bring in all other academic and professional support staff from across the university. Watch this space for further developments…

SOPA and PIPA; be aware and be prepared to fight…

Sue Watling / / social impact of the Internet

If you haven’t heard of SOPA today is a good time to look it up. Try Wikipedia today (18 January) and you will be directed to information about  SOPA and PIPA  instead.

Wikipedia blacked out in protest against SOPA and PIPA

Briefly the 24 hour blackout by Wikipedia and a number of other web presences is in response to proposals by the US Congress  –  the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)  and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) – which are designed to control user generated content. This is allegedly about infringement of copyright. Instead of reviewing existing copyright legislation in the light of an Internet age, the media giants have chosen to reinforce their monopolies with a cast iron boot approach. This directly opposes  the original ‘openness’ of the Internet while hiding behind claims of piracy and thievery aimed at users who are refusing to be customers. Google, Twitter and EBay are also allegedly opposing this legislation although not with Blackouts – maybe they should – but at least two of the three carry advertising.

The fear is the US will have the power to control information and close any websites which contain disputed copyrighted materials. Should it come about I suspect DRM will inevitably be extended as commercial companies use this as an opportunity to protect their brands and products. Capitalism is fighting back and the only surprise is that it has taken this long. There are two issues; firstly the debate over copyright itself and secondly the exposure of the frailty of our digital connections. We take them for granted but they are more vulnerable to attack than we realise. Once the ways and means of imposing controls begins then the Internet will become just another commodity and all its potential for democratic access will be lost. These attempts to control the Internet should be opposed.

For more information see See Stop SOPA Now! by Dan Gilmour and Wikipedia Blackout Looms b  Mark Sweeny.

2012 is going to be an exciting year…

Sue Watling / / digital literacies, Embedding OER Practice

See my post on Embedding OER Practice for more details about the HEA/JISC funded project to look at the use of  open educational resources for teaching and learning. Here are some more reasons why this is going to be an exciting opportunity to put the spotlight on virtual  teaching and learning experiences. Embedding OER Practice will draw attention to the role of online learning  across the university as well as highlighting the effective use of digital resources.  The project will promote the advantages of the open education movement and support staff in becoming more familiar with terms like Creative Commons,  Lincoln Academic Commons,  public copyright licences,  Shuttleworth Foundation,  Capetown Open Educational Declaration and the  accessing and contributing to repositories of learning content

As well as offering experience with finding, evaluating, using, repurposing and replacing open educational resources, the project is an ideal opportunity for addressing the wider issues around supporting the digital literacies of staff and students.The term digital literacies is popular at the moment. The JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme is currently funding a number of projects across the sector, all aimed at promoting digital literacies strategies and approaches. This is a necessary step forward. For too long those with technical competence have made assumptions about those without. The result is a widening digital divide, exacerbated by a determinist view of technology having transformative potential, not only for access to learning environments which cross barriers of time and distance, but to cut costs and increase efficiency. All this underpins investment in the digital teaching and learning platforms promoted across the sector as a means for institutions to achieve key strategic aims (HEFCE 2005, 2009*). The missing element from these grand schemes has always been the human one; how best to scaffold support for the necessary changes in attitudes, behaviours and practice. Promoting digital literacies is an ideal way to address these issues full on.

The term digital literacies is defined as ‘the confident and critical use of ICT for work, leisure, learning and communication‘ or  ‘the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and analyze information using digital technology’.  Focusing on the embedding OER practice offers multiple opportunities to ensure digital literacies is on the agenda – and from there it is a small step to include awareness of exclusive and inclusive practices  with digital environments and critical reflection on the boundary lines between private/personal and public/professional online identities and behaviours.

Oh yes, 2012 is going to be a very exciting year!

Follow the OER project blog here  http://oer.dev.lincoln.ac.uk 

 

* Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (2OO9) Enhancing learning and teaching through the use of technology. A revised approach to HEFCE’s strategy for e-learning.
* Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (2OO5) Enhancing learning and teaching through the use of technology.