How to promote digital literacies among faculty

In the recently published NMC Horizon Project Regional Analysis, Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education 2013-18, it stated (p.3) that (shock, horror) there is a need for more faculty training to improve digital media literacy ‘before being asked to teach, and for more professional development opportunities once in the profession’. More significantly, though, the report points out that:

While a lack of adequate training opportunities is a part of the challenge, ultimately a change in the mind sets of disciplines and individual faculty will be required, along with cultural shifts within institutions, before emerging tools and technologies are routinely adopted and implemented as a matter of course.

One way of changing mindsets is for academics to to find some intrinsic motivation to leverage these emerging technologies. As Belshaw argues (slide 28), the trick is to identify an area where important issues overlap with personal interest. In other words, academics will upskill because they want to rather than because they have to. In these circumstances, the efficacy of preservice training/ professional development is likely to be enhanced.

Only after faculty have become au fait with the digital literacies (slides 24-27) and what they bring to their own personal learning environment (PLE), will they be able to respond to the increasing demand for personalised learning from their students. As the Horizon report notes (p.4):

More than ever, students are using ICT and new always-connected mobiles outside of the classroom to explore subjects that personally interest them. Institutions need to leverage and promote these informal learning experiences while integrating them with on-campus learning.

This is why it is important for institutional learning management systems (LMSs) to become more open and accommodate the PLEs of learners (slide 61).

 

It’s the pedagogy, stupid!

Image source: adi-news.com

There was a nice piece on digital schools in the NYT the other day that extols the virtues of differentiated learning, or what might be described as the personalised curriculum.

The key message is that using laptops and tablet computers in class is less about technology and more about effective pedagogy. In the industrial age we had no alternative to ‘factory-style’ education, delivering programmes en masse, invariably catering to the lowest common denominator. Under this model, students with learning difficulties are left behind and able students aren’t stretched, leaving educators with the issue of student disengagement, and the attendant problems of unruly students, truancy, drop-outs, and so on.

In the digital age, with easy access to information and communication technologies (ICTs), there is no reason to continue with this outdated mode of delivery. Yes, it will take time to make the transition, as professional development of educators is imperative, and — as the NYT article makes clear — there will be pitfalls along the way, but this is not a reason for delay.

The next generation digital book

Now here is a clever young bloke. Mike Matas — through his company Push Pop Press — has just launched a full-length interactive book for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch that includes swipeable video and graphics and some of the best data visualisations imaginable. The book is Our Choice, Al Gore’s sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.

Did You Know 4.0 and the implications for education

The Did You Know video received an official update in October 2009 (there are impostors) and, once again, it includes some mind boggling facts and figures on converging technologies and the changing media landscape. There is no direct reference made to education, it is difficult to imagine how educational institutions can remain immune from these influences.

Professor apologises for failure of system

Nice ad from Kaplan University. There is another equally powerful message here. This is a true sign that online learning is coming of age. For too long, online institutions have been apologising for not being the ‘real thing’. For digital natives, what Kaplan is offering is the real thing.