Archive of ‘Library and information science’ category

Digital Literacy Initiatives

When Bringing Your Own Device Isn’t Enough: Identifying What Digital Literacy Initiatives Really Need

Authors: Published:  Columns:

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2019/4/when-bringing-your-own-device-isnt-enough-identifying-what-digital-literacy-initiatives-really-need

Device ownership alone doesn’t make people digitally literate; rather, digital literacy is about how and why they use devices to achieve particular goals and outcomes.

According to the 2018 EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 95% of undergraduate students own a smartphone and 91% own a laptop. This near-ubiquitous ownership of these devices might suggest that digital literacy is mainstream, but just because students own digital devices does not mean that they’ve developed digital literacy.

Definitions of digital literacy can include the ability to use and access digital devices, but studies from the past decade tend to deepen this definition. A commonly cited definition from Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel asserts that digital literacy is “shorthand for the myriad social practices and conceptions of engaging in meaning making mediated by texts that are produced, received, distributed, exchanged etc., via digital codification.”

More recently, scholars including Jennifer Sparrow have suggested even adopting the term digital fluency instead of literacy in order to capture how students may need the “ability to leverage technology to create new knowledge, new challenges, and new problems and to complement these with critical thinking, complex problem solving, and social intelligence to solve the new challenges.”

Digital Familiarity Implies Intrinsic Knowledge

two-thirds of faculty think that students are prepared to use software applications, but students themselves express discomfort with applying these tools for learning.

instructional designers are key players who could take a more visible role in higher education to support educators in bringing explicit instruction on digital literacy engagement into their classes. University staff in instructional design and educational/faculty development spaces consult with instructors, lead workshops, and develop support documentation on a regular basis. People in these roles could be more empowered to have conversations with the instructors they support around building in particular lessons

Douglas Belshaw can be a source of inspiration for understanding how his essential elements of digital literacy may contribute to the development of students’ digital fluencies. In particular, some practices may include:

  1. Integrating the use of different applications and platforms so that students obtain practice in navigating these spaces, learning how to locate relevant and reliable information. For example, guiding students to specific databases that provide articles, books, etc., for your discipline may improve information and digital literacy. This is critical because most students default to Google search and Wikipedia, which may not be where you want them to explore topics.
  2. Developing student’s ability to curate content and how to follow academic integrity guidelines for citations and references.
  3. Establishing the norms and purpose for effective communication in a digital academic space.

 

 

 

5G and urban areas

Millimeter-wave 5G will never scale beyond dense urban areas, T-Mobile says

T-Mobile CTO says 5G’s high-frequency spectrum won’t cover rural America.

synchronous vs asynchronous

My Note: synchronous vs asynchronous; Adobe Connect vs Zoom. Also Flipgrid for asynchronous videochats.

From: EDUCAUSE Listserv <BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> on behalf of Celine Greene <celine.greene@JHU.EDU>
Reply-To: EDUCAUSE Listserv <BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>
Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 2:38 PM
To: EDUCAUSE Listserv <BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>
Subject: [BLEND-ONLINE] Advice for Synchronous Online Classes Using Zoom Meetings?

Our school is transitioning from using Adobe Connect to using Zoom Meetings for synchronous online class sessions, of which most of our online courses schedule at least a few times each term. So after years of “controlling the user experience” with the Adobe Connect layouts and relying primarily on text chat, we are heading in the direction of screen sharing with the enhanced social and community-building experience of video “taking over” chat. Some people are very excited about this move, given the popularity and ease-of-use of the Zoom platforms. Other people are a little more wary – especially when it comes to large (e.g., 40 to 200+ students) classes.

Please share your thoughts and experiences on what faculty and students should be aware of when using Zoom Meetings (not the webinar) for a synchronous class session. Here’s some of the things I was curious about…

  • Do you have a set of “instructions” or recommendations for students — e.g. so they see the chat as it happens?
  • Are there any best practices in terms of meetings set-up that you recommend for your faculty? (Mute participants upon entry, always show meeting control bar, etc.)
  • Have there been some scenarios that have been fantastic or some that have been horrible for using Zoom?
  • Is there a class size where the number of participants starts negatively impacting the learning opportunity? (i.e., I realize Breakout rooms are an option but also not appropriate for all situations, such as having a guest speaker come in to have an interactive Q & A or having a software demonstration.)
  • Are there any major “fails” you’ve learned from or, alternately, success stories?
  • Are your students required to have Zoom accounts?
  • Do you have a method for tracking attendance?

Thanks for your input!  – celine  Celine Greene  Instructional Technologist  Center for Teaching and Learning, JHSPH http://ctl.jhsph.edu

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more on synchronous learning environments
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=synchronous

data interference

APRIL 21, 2019 Zeynep Tufekci

Think You’re Discreet Online? Think Again

Because of technological advances and the sheer amount of data now available about billions of other people, discretion no longer suffices to protect your privacy. Computer algorithms and network analyses can now infer, with a sufficiently high degree of accuracy, a wide range of things about you that you may have never disclosed, including your moods, your political beliefs, your sexual orientation and your health.

There is no longer such a thing as individually “opting out” of our privacy-compromised world.

In 2017, the newspaper The Australian published an article, based on a leaked document from Facebook, revealing that the company had told advertisers that it could predict when younger users, including teenagers, were feeling “insecure,” “worthless” or otherwise in need of a “confidence boost.” Facebook was apparently able to draw these inferences by monitoring photos, posts and other social media data.

In 2017, academic researchers, armed with data from more than 40,000 Instagram photos, used machine-learning tools to accurately identify signs of depression in a group of 166 Instagram users. Their computer models turned out to be better predictors of depression than humans who were asked to rate whether photos were happy or sad and so forth.

Computational inference can also be a tool of social control. The Chinese government, having gathered biometric data on its citizens, is trying to use big data and artificial intelligence to single out “threats” to Communist rule, including the country’s Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group.

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Zeynep Tufekci and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz: Privacy is over

https://www.centreforideas.com/article/zeynep-tufekci-and-seth-stephens-davidowitz-privacy-over

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Zeynep Tufekci writes about security and data privacy for NY Times, disinformation’s threat to democracy for WIRED

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more on privacy in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=privacy

Huawei funded by Chinese Military

CIA Offers Proof Huawei Has Been Funded By China’s Military And Intelligence

Zak Doffman Cybersecurity

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/20/cia-offers-proof-huawei-has-been-funded-by-chinas-military-and-intelligence/#4043c72b7208

the Times reported that such evidence exists, it has just not been openly published.

Joy Tan, Huawei’s chief global communicator, told methat “the assumption that the Chinese government can potentially interfere in Huawei’s business operation is completely not true. Huawei is a private company. The Chinese government does not have any ownership or any interference in our business operations.”

The CIA has now directly refuted this.

Tan insisted that “China does not have any law to force any company or business to install a back door. Premier Li Keqiang said that openly several weeks ago, the Chinese government would never do that, make any company spy.”

According to the Times source, “only the most senior U.K. officials are believed to have seen the intelligence, which the CIA awarded a strong but not cast-iron classification of certainty.” But the newspaper also reports a separate U.S. course as saying that there is a view within the U.S. intelligence community that “the Chinese ministry of state security — its principal security and espionage organization — had approved government funding for Huawei.”

change in the K12 sector

Twelve Years Later: What’s Really Changed in the K-12 Sector? (Part 1)

By Dave Stevenson     Apr 3, 2019

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-04-03-twelve-years-later-what-s-really-changed-in-the-k-12-sector-part-1

In fall 2007, Larry Berger, CEO of Wireless Generation (now Amplify) was invited to submit a paper to an “Entrepreneurship in Education”

As education entrepreneurs know, growth in K-12 comes hard. Sometimes very hard. We were living Marc Andreessen’s startup mantra: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror.”

The edtech boom of the past two decades promised efficacy and new instructional models. Many teachers instead experience it as “clutter.” But poorly integrated standards, curriculum, assessment, and intervention materials have always been a problem.

When it comes to instruction, the work consists of four segments: core curriculum, supplemental (intervention, test prep, little books) curriculum, assessment, and technology (hardware, infrastructure and connectivity). Each of these workstreams are run by separate teams, using independent funding streams, only rarely coordinating. Schools rely—as they always have—on the hero in the classroom, who has to somehow synthesize everything for a roomful of children, every single day.

Twelve Years Later: How the K-12 Industry and Investment Landscape Has Shifted (Part 2)

By Dave Stevenson     Apr 5, 2019

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-04-05-twelve-years-later-how-the-k-12-industry-and-investment-landscape-has-shifted-part-2

Twelve years ago, Amplify CEO Larry Berger and I wrote about the “pareto distribution” of companies in the K-12 sector.

The “oligopoly” was the natural outcome of a highly decentralized system and fragmented demand. To serve 15,000-plus districts and more than 100,000 school buildings, a company needed huge sales and service teams; to afford them, the company needed a bookbag full of products across content areas, grade ranges, and use cases. The structure of demand created the “Big Three”—McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Pearson.

Meanwhile, the number of small players—further right on the pareto distribution—has grown dramatically. Online distribution and freemium business models have enabled companies like Flocabulary, Newsela, Nearpod, and others

few alternative models to consider:
companies like Remind, ClassDojo, and Edmodo, who all adopted a “West Coast” approach: collect active users now, with plans to monetize later.

The second includes the “platform” players—Schoology, itslearning, Canvas, and other LMS-like platforms. They have set out to do something differently, only possible by means of technology—to be the search, storage and distribution platform for instructional content.  Google Classroom has instead emerged as the de facto standard platform, fueled by the runaway adoption of Chromebooks.

The third includes “policy responsive” players—companies like Panorama, Ellevation or Wireless Generation. hese companies help school systems meet a new policy requirement—social-emotional learning, English Language Learning, and reading assessment, respectively.

capital investment K12 US education

But we’re not “decluttering” our classrooms or in our schools. What would it take for the private and public sectors to work shoulder-to-shoulder?
a catch-22: so long as buying is fragmented, it’s hard to justify the integrated product investment; so long as products are fragmented, it’s hard for a district to create an integrated instructional model.

Competent, Literate, Fluent

Competent, Literate, Fluent: The What and Why of Digital Initiatives

 Published:

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2019/4/competent-literate-fluent-the-what-and-why-of-digital-initiatives

how should associated terms including literacycompetency, and fluency be distinguished

In the 2019 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) Key Issues in Teaching and Learning, digital and information literacy maintains a top-five position for the third consecutive year.

Is it significant that Bryn Mawr College has a framework for digital competencies, Virginia Tech is launching a program in digital literacy, and the University of Mary Washington has a curricular initiative for advanced digital fluency? And what does it mean that Penn State has shifted its focus from digital literacy to digital fluency?

Jennifer Sparrow and Clint Lalonde have argued that digital fluency is a distinct capacity above and beyond digital literacy.

digital frameworks … on three levels:

  • First, digital initiatives aim to enhance students’ success after graduation.
  • A second major objective is to develop “digital citizenship.”
  • At a third level, digital initiatives can promote deep reflection upon the distinctive nature and ethics of knowing and knowledge in the digital age.

European Data Sharing Space

“Towards a European Data Sharing Space” BDVA Position Paper

BDV Big Data Value Association

April, 2019. Position paper: http://www.bdva.eu/node/1277

This position paper is meant to i) support the dialog among European and national policy makers, industry, research, public sector and civic society in the definition of a common roadmap for the development and adoption of a pan-European Data Sharing Space, and ii) guide public and private investments in this area in the next Multiannual Financial Framework.

http://www.bdva.eu/sites/default/files/BDVA%20DataSharingSpace%20PositionPaper_April2019_V1.pdf

Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2018

Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2018

Table 1

ebooks

Table 2

ebooks among disciplines

Table 3
ebooks among age

Table 4

materials freely available online

Table 5
freely available version

Table 6

ebooks sharing information

Table 7

Figure 29: Are your research publications and/or products freely available online through your institution’s repository, a disciplinary repository (such as arXiv, SSRN, etc.), or available elsewhere online (such as your personal webpage)? For each type(s) of scholarly work(s) listed below, please select all hosting sources that apply. Of the respondents that make each of the following types of publications and/or products freely available online, the percent who indicated their research is hosted in each of the following.

freely available research publications

Table 8

Which of the following statements best describes your role in deciding what textbooks and other course materials will be used in the courses you teach? Percent of respondents who selected each item.

decisionmaker textbooks

Table 9

why OER

Table 10

why OER

Table 11

created vs used OER materials

Learning Analytics Tools

Table 12

learning analytical tools by majors/ disciplines

table 13
learning analytical tools by age

table 14
learning analytical tools by status

table 15

role of the library

1 74 75 76 77 78 220