Tonight I presented “Popular Issues in (Digital) Media Literacy” to my EC&I 831 students. The presentation covered various topics such as: offensive content (bad taste, sexuality), viral videos & memes, misinformation (satire, hoaxes, scams, phishing), safety & cyberbullying, hate (racism & violence), social networks & privacy. It was very much a survey approach to the topic in hopes that my students will understand the broad scope of related issues.
The slide deck is available below:
I have been busy with a number of things these days. Here are a few thoughts on the what is happening.
re: TLT08
I just came back from the TLT 2008 conference in Saskatoon. It was an excellent conference, and much better than last year. Highlights for me include the amazing keynotes by Rick Schwier and George Siemens, and excellent presentations by Brian Lamb and Dean Shareski. Unfortunately, I missed the keynote by Stephen Downes, although I heard it was amazing. Luckily, I was able to catch breakfast with Stephen and Dean the first day of the conference.
I was a part of three presentations at TLT. First, I presented with Kyle, Vi, Tiffany, and Ashley regarding our Digital Internship Project. Second, I co-presented with the Edtech Posse (Rick, Dean, Heather, Rob) on “The Posse Round Up 2.0“. Finally, I presented again with Rob regarding the Graduate course we recently co-taught, EC&I 831. I am currently researching the process and outcomes of this course, and Rob and I presented some of our initial observations. It was great to have met, former students of the course, Cindy, Dan, and Shaun at the conference as well.
I was also very lucky to have finally met some terrific people for the first time face-to-face. Jen, Cindy, Brian, D’Arcy, Kirk and Kelly … you are all amazing people. It was great to finally meet you all in person, and I really hope I get the chance again!
I would also like to congratulate those that won awards related to course design at the conference. We have so many terrific instructional designers, multimedia developers, and instructors in Saskatchewan, and it is great to see many of you recognized for your hard work. Also, congratulations to the organizing committee for putting together a truly excellent conference.
On a less congratulatory note, to the people that continuously asked the question “what about the cyberpredators?” at almost every presentation, take some to read this or this or contact me, and I can help you get over this fear.
I would also love to have a conversation with the gentleman who voiced concerns (and then walked out) regarding teachers using decentralized funding to buy non-standardized equipment (as mentioned in Dean’s session) and the implications for sustaining technical support. I believe your point was that the purchasing should follow the institutional/division priorities. Here are my thoughts on this.
Start with division priorities that are focused on student learning and supporting innovation throughout the system. Let us forget the term “technical support” and focus on “innovation support”. Let us make the first term a misnomer. If a school division cannot (for instance) get Macs to play nice with a Windows network, your technicians are not doing their job, or they need to go back to training. Technology implementation decisions that are based on technicians’ lack of knowledge or vendor biases are not likely sound decisions. Divisions are learning organizations, and continual learning should be the expectation for all members. And if economics is the stated excuse, why not partner with other school divisions to increase cost-savings? Locking in to single vendor agreements to save tiny margins on the bottom line is ripping off your students, and IMHO, is inexcusable whether it is with Apple, IBM or CocaCola.
There is where I usually rant about open source software and free tools … but I will leave that argument for today.
re: ECMP 355
I am very happy to be teaching a May/June course to undergraduate students related to the appropriate integration of technology in the classroom. My students have begun blogging, and are starting to get the feel for it. Feedback and comments on their posts would be greatly appreciated, and you can subscribe to the ECMP 355 megafeed here.
For course interactions, we are using Moodle again. And, I do not believe it has been officially announced by the University of Regina is making a full move to Moodle from WebCT by Fall of 2009. I am happy to be currently testing the latest U of R release. If anyone would like to see the course, let me know and I will get you the guest password.
re: St. Louis
I am very excited to have been asked by Elizabeth Helfant to present at MICDS in St. Louis near the end of May. I will be speaking to English and History teachers (my original areas of study) regarding personal learning networks and technology integration. I can’t wait!
re: ICICTE in Corfu
I also have had my paper accepted for ICICTE in Corfu in July. I try to get back to Greece every couple of years to revisit my roots. This conference has been an excellent in the past and the venue is always on a Greek island. I highly recommend the country, the people, and the conference.
re: Life
Life is busy these days. I am currently in North Battleford, and teaching in La Ronge tomorrow (yes, on the long weekend) with our Community Based Masters of Education program. I am happy to have my family along with me for the rest of the trip and I am hoping to take some nice photos (and a few deep breaths) along the way. Northern Saskatchewan has much beauty to see. Here’s a shot I took near Battleford today.
Yes, I am extremely busy with teaching, research, presentations, and family. However, life is good and as I reflected in my last post, I am a lucky, lucky man.
We were very fortunate to have Sue Waters as a guest for EC&I 831 last Wednesday (March 19/08). Sue had previously written a post related to the order for closure for Al Upton’s MiniLegends classroom blog. EC&I 831 was very interested in hearing more.
We used Skype to mediate the conversation, and the result was streamed via Ustream. I noticed over 30 participants at one point, and it is clear from many related blog posts that the issue has generated much interest over several continents.
Sue did an amazing job recording the details and summarizing this conversation, including many of the the major points brought up by course participants and other Ustream guests. Check out her post here.
Also, the mp3 version of the conversation is available here. There may be a couple of anomalies with the audio due to the way it had to be lifted from Ustream. Sorry, it was mostly unavoidable.
I would also like to take this opportunity to comment on a few ‘aha’ moments I had regarding this experience, not directly related to the issues discussed, but related to the networked affordances made available through this course. This a short list of things I really like about this particular experience in terms of pedagogy.
1) The idea of the session came from Cindy, one of the course participants. After it was suggested, there were several other classmates that were excited about the idea. It is great to have students bring direction to the course, and I wish I had made this more of a common thread throughout.
2) Through Twitter and the edublogosphere, I was able to quickly contact Sue. Sue and I had already been connected through various tools, but had never had the chance to collaborate. This goes to show the importance of the network, and highlights yet another example of the generosity apparent in so many people I have connected to. This is not only apparent in Sue’s participation on the conversation, but additionally in her thorough, voluntary summary of the session.
3) This issue, although global, has great relevance to the course content and to the practice of many of the participants in their roles as teachers and administrators.
4) The issue was timely. We were able to have this conversation within a week of its occurrence.
5) The conversation was global. The Ustream conversation included participants from 4 countries, and 3 continents.
These previous points are attributes shared with many online educational experiences. Al Upton’s Mini Legends initiative demonstrated some of these and other valuable characteristics. Thus, I believe it is important for all of us to share the positive attributes of online interactions and collaborations that cannot be duplicated using more traditional approaches to teaching and learning. The contrast of great advantages over limited risks is likely the best justification we have for emerging, digital pedagogies.
I don’t know how many times I have made almost exactly this point in my Media Literacy sessions, but it is great to hear it from NY Times’ Columnist David Pogue.
“Sure, there are dangers. But they’re hugely overhyped by the media. The tales of pedophiles luring children out of their homes are like plane crashes: they happen extremely rarely, but when they do, they make headlines everywhere. The Internet is just another facet of socialization for the new generation; as always, common sense and a level head are the best safeguards.â€
Big media sells news, usually sensationalized stories that do not represent realities of the context. Read the rest of the article here.
See also “I’m telling you for the last time“.
I recently wrote a piece titled Safety and Social Networking for TechLearning Magazine. Here’s the printable version.
Comments are always welcome.
The PEW/Internet report Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency was recently released. In the summary of findings, they divide online adults into four distinct categories based on their online privacy (footprint) concerns.
1) Confident Creatives are the smallest of the four groups, comprising 17% of online adults. They say they do not worry about the availability of their online data, and actively upload content, but still take steps to limit their personal information.
2) The Concerned and Careful fret about the personal information available about them online and take steps to proactively limit their own online data. One in five online adults (21%) fall into this category.
3) Despite being anxious about how much information is available about them, members of the Worried by the Wayside group do not actively limit their online information. This group contains 18% of online adults.
4) The Unfazed and Inactive group is the largest of the four groups—43% of online adults fall into this category. They neither worry about their personal information nor take steps to limit the amount of information that can be found out about them online.
So, where do you fit in?
Several workplace-safety videos have been released from Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). These videos are quite graphic and disturbing and some have been playing on Canadian television. I’ve included likely the most graphic below. This is not for the squeamish.
There are several videos in the series: Ladder, Forklift, Construction, High-Voltage Wires.
These videos originate from the WSIB site, prevent-it.ca. And if you follow youngworker.ca (I hate navigating Flash-based sites), you will see student submissions for a previous video contest, and details for the 2008 video contest.
