LIDA101 Digital literacies and why they're important for you

Courses Learning in a digital age
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@angelicamartinez great tips. Have I now mastered the quote feature? :joy:

Blockquote

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@CitizenModerna you are almost a notable quoter ;-). The use case is to highlight and select a sentence or phrase from a previous post and then type your comment or response rather than quoting the entire post. If youā€™re responding to the whole post - quoting is not necessary - just hit reply :wink:.

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1.Over the course of my time as a librarian, I have had to learn a number of digital literacies. Cataloging with a new ILS, navigating our discovery layer and databases, and being able to utilize advanced features of Microsoft and Google products to product reports and communication among my libraries staff and stakeholders. I consider this literacy in that it I am able to also demonstrate, train, and share how to do these tasks with others.
2. Quite honestly, I have a long lists of things that I would like to acquire digital literacy in. Blogging, becoming a more of a social media influencer versus a superuser, and even improving upon my coding literacy as the conversation surrounding alternatives to Marc picks up increasing steam. It is important that I not only have my own comfort level within these areas - but that I can impart that I can share that ability with others.
3. I think the main difference I notice with literacies that I gain in the workplace versus my personal life, is that of impetus to learn. it is easier to learn things for my personal interest and gain versus the stress that goes with learning things for work. Work is more of a sink or swim need generally - I HAVE TO learn and apply versus being able to take my time and organically learn things. The catch being that I learn things faster when there is a personal interest versus a forced one.

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@angelicamartinez
This is one of my favorite tricks for tearing apart headlines these days. Our culture, state side, is one of instant gratification and not reading past a sensational headline or picture misappropriated to fulfill the intent of the story. .

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In an ideal world learning should be fun - but not always the case :frowning_face:.

I have a keen interest in leveraging OER to make learning more interesting. One option is the pedagogy of discovery - with the growing inventory of open access materials, courses can be designed in ways that enable learners to find resources in pursuit of their own interests. (LiDA101 attempts to do this to some extent where learners can focus on researching a topic of interest while improving their digital literacies using the tools of their choice.)

The other challenge time available for learning. In the work situation, there are time pressures associated with ā€œgetting up to speedā€ with new technologies. Using an open learning model - learners can take as long as they like balancing real world demands on time. For us at OERu - access to course materials must remain open to ensure and support learners who want to take extra time. That said, course offerings with a published start date facilitate better interaction. Lots of variables to juggle.

Insightful post - thanks for sharing.

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So I am one now right?

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You sure are! Now you can quote away with confidence on forums.oeru.org :grin:

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Since I began using technology to accomplish tasks that I used to do via analog means, I have begun to understand the need to be digitally literate.

For example, I have become much more aware that when I text someone on my phone (a digital skill with many levels) I expect the same kinds of response times that Iā€™m accustomed to in person. In turn, I sometimes assume that when I talk to someone in person, they will be able to access the same kind of expressive or emotive capacities available to them online or through a smartphone. Of course, this is all a massive contradiction in terms, but in practice I think many people tend to expect the same thing:

The conversational constraints we have seem to have been overrun by those digital capacities we now take for granted. Are we becoming more like our computers or are our computers becoming more like us?

I also want to be able to understand how the shifts in information management affects my skills and use of specific tools. While I really like the wealth of information available to me when I need to learn how to do something, I want to understand how this massive swath of information affects my ability to be wiser rather than just more capable of moving information from one place to another.

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Excellent point @alinport . Another related facet not immediately obvious is how communication practices differ across cultural contexts - particularly relevant in courses like this where participants come from +52 different countries. Cross-cultural communication in a digital world is another important skill.

Thanks for sharing!

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You make a great point about assumptions, which I think wraps into pre-technology issues of conscious bias, institutional racism, and unfair advantage which we are also often unable to see from within our bubbles.

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@nashman Iā€™m loving these learning goals and your enthusiasm. My list is also very long and sometimes I need to try to focus on what is really important to meā€” itā€™s hard when you just want to learn everything :joy: I am hoping to get a clearer idea of how I will build and maintain my digital literacies through taking this course.

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32

Waving hi to a fellow librarian.

Curious to read the sink or swim learning, and how time pressure to get up to speed asap can legitimately sap the joy of learning from a new digital skill! I have found that often times, I find it easier to tinker in my spare time to build my understanding of different tools I use for work, and sometimes this frustrates me and other times, I just accept that it is part of how I learn - needing time & space to explore at my own pace rather than learning at a hectic pace.

You have given me some things to reflect on about my own learning style, and how this may impact my workplace learning. Thank you.

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It is fascinating to witness the increasing shift from analog to digital to achieve a whole range of things, and how everyone is moving at different speeds to do this.

In my current workplace role in a public library, we still run classes on basic keyboard & mouse skills, as well as setting up your new tablet, how to set up an email account, all the way through to classes on web design. For many people, they are still taking their first steps into the digital world that many of us have already shifted into & continue to move further into.

It is a good reminder for me that navigating email for the first time is a still huge step for many in my community.

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Very valid point - much of my work experience has been in ICTs for development which mirrors your experience in helping learners with the basics or stepping stones to engage digitally. This is why I think the synergies among learning circles, public libraries, open online courses and higher education (for learners that want formal certification) are very powerful.

Now to make these futures happen :-).

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In the interest of learning time. it helps if OERs include less text about the core elements of the material and include more links to background or additional information. Then the learner can decide when and what to follow-up on. When learners can get the basics without being overwhelmed by lengthy text, the learning is easier, more self-directed, and more engaging.

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I agree - in this course, we promote a pedagogy of discovery where learners go out to find resources in pursuit of their own interests and finding resources to support their learning. Itā€™s a difficult balance - by providing links the developers would be taking decisions on behalf of the learners rather than the learners going out and finding their own resources. On the other hand - its valuable to provide some scaffolding to develop the skills for learners to find relevant information.

In this course, we encourage participants to share links to resources they find useful using bookmarks.oeru,org rather than the course materials predetermining the links to additional information.

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  1. One literacy that is important for me is collaboration. It is a frequent part of problem solving in my work role as well as knowledge creation. My work involves supporting users of educational technologies across a range of needs and often this can require multiple people to work together to develop solutions for users. Collaboration shades across cooperation and always includes communication and in my context this typically happens through a mix of face to face and digital channels. Relevant skills include the ability to use email, telephone, messaging, video, screen sharing, collaborative documents and whiteboarding. The literacies come from an understanding of when and how to use these skills to achieve the desired ends.

  2. I would like to be more graphically literate. I can manipulate images online but often find that I need to keep referring back to help files to achieve what I want. Images are useful ways to convey information so being able to do this well and efficiently would be helpful for me.

  3. Yes, most definitely. That doesnā€™t mean that we donā€™t use literacies from one context in another but the situational change imbues difference in them. In some of the work we have done examining the literacies of staff, we discovered that people could find it difficult (or be blind) to applying literacies from one domain to another. They may contact grandchildren every week through Skype but struggle to use the concepts and design paradigms in a work web conferencing situation.

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Couldnā€™t agree more. Collaboration and cooperation in the academy involves a cultural change - itā€™s not easy.

The chasm we need to cross in OER is the shift from: sharing to learn ā†’ learning to share.

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  1. A digital literacy that I use regularly in my work context as a learning developer is communications and collaboration. People in my immediate work team have strong digital skills , but my wider work environment includes some colleagues who are much less confident with digital devices and applications. For me literacy in this area means that I donā€™t simply know how to use a range of communication tools such as email, skype, Teams etc. but that I can reflectively choose one that (a) is most appropriate to the goal to be achieved and (b) makes the person I am communicating with feel comfortable.
  2. I would like to improve my literacy in career and identity management. Because of worries about privacy, I am hesitant about engaging in online forums etc. However, I am increasingly seeing the value of being part of a global online learning community. Improved literacy in this area would help me feel more confident about my online presence.
  3. I have a different experience from @nashman:

For me, most of my acquisition of digital skills and literacies has come through work and I then carry them through to my personal life. This is partly because tasks at work are more complex and and I am exposed to more technologies, but it is mostly due to the generosity of colleagues throughout my working life who have let me learn from them when I see them doing something interesting/useful.

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@mackiwg Hi Iā€™m new to the Lida101 course and Iā€™m not sure if this thread is still running. Digital literacy is important to me to help me learn about navigating and communicating in a different environment. It is a great skill to move forward with the digital world.

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