As this post goes live I’ll be delivering my talk at TEDx Warwick. <gulp!>

I wanted to take the opportunity to point towards the stuff that I didn’t managed to cram into my 17 minutes.

So here goes:

• My doctoral thesis is online at neverendingthesis.com
• My TEDx presentation is (or soon will be) online at my Slideshare account
• I’ve got a blog at literaci.es where I talk about new and digital literacies-related stuff

And last, but not least, I’m writing an e-book about digital literacies with the same title as my TEDx talk: The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. You can find out more about this at http://dougbelshaw.com/ebooks/digilit

If you’ve seen my talk and have some feedback, I’d love to hear it in the comments below!

“A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it.” (Father Strickland)

Working in the open comes naturally to me. I’ve never jealously guarded ‘my’ work and really cannot comprehend a person who would rather work in a closed and restricted environment.

Both this blog and my doctoral thesis are CC0 licensed, which means that I’ve donated them to the public domain. If you want to take my work, copy it word-for-word and pass it off as your own or sell it, that’s fine. Seriously. Do what you like. I’m flattered you like it.

I found out today that the minor rewrites I submitted after my thesis defence have now been accepted. I now go onto the ‘Pass list’ at Durham University meaning that I can call myself Dr. Belshaw. This makes me happy.

Another piece of news I received today was via Twitter from Joe Wilson attending the NAACE conference 2012 (#naace12). NAACE is a membership organization for those involved with ICT education in the UK and beyond.

Doug Belshaw's work on digital literacy being referenced at #naace12 as basis for new national standards well done @dbelshaw

— Joe Wilson (@joecar) March 9, 2012

(Note: Joe made a typo in his haste – I’m actually @dajbelshaw)

This came as a bit of a surprise. Whilst I’m aware of people referencing my work, I didn’t realize that NAACE as a body knew of/was using it. Certainly their press release (if that’s the right one) doesn’t mention anything. But to insist on acknowledgement (see discussion here), I feel, is a form of ownership. And no-one owns ideas.

The most important value of working in the open for me? Impact.

I write about things that interest me and ideas that I hold to be good in the way of belief. As a consequence, and like most other people, I think the ideas expressed in my work may be of use to others. If ‘impact’ is getting others discussing, debating and accepting your ideas then, yes, I want to impact other people.

Academics in UK universities will soon have to demonstrate their ‘impact’ under the terms of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). I can’t help but think that one of the best ways for academics to achieve this is to dramatically improve the accessibility of their work. The easiest method? Release it under the least restrictive license you can. This seems so obvious to me as to be a no-brainer.

There are some caveats, of course: less restrictive licensing may be problematic for commercially-sensitive areas and huge fields.

Let me explain.

There are two main reasons why I can ‘afford’ to give my work away without asking for attribution or compensation:

1. I know that most people will, actually, reference it (and there’s a large chance that those who don’t will be called out by others in such a relatively small field)

2. I have a salaried occupation that does not depend upon me attracting funding to commercialise my ‘Intellectual Property’.

Perhaps I’m young and naive but I can’t help think that, if you can, you should give away your work. For free. Without copyright.

That’s how ideas gain traction.

This week is Open Education week. There’s lots of stuff on the JISC website about it.

The e-book is going to be called The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies and I shall be employing the OpenBeta publishing model I pioneered a couple of years ago with #uppingyourgame: a practical guide to personal productivity.

 

Invest now for £1 and get each chapter as it is completed FREE!

Can’t see anything above? Click here!

What are ‘digital literacies’? Why are they important? How can I develop them both personally and in other people? These are some of the questions that ‘The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies by Doug Belshaw seeks to address. Informed by his doctoral thesis and experience as an educator, ‘The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies’ Doug is producing a timely resource for those who are interested in both the theory and the practice of digital literacies!

FAQ:

When are you going to finish this?

It depends on many things, but here’s my proposed timescale:

• v0.2 – April 2012
• v0.4 – June 2012
• v0.6 – August 2012
• v0.8 – October 2012
• v1.0 – December 2012

I’m erring on the conservative side here. I’d rather under-promise and over-deliver!

In what formats will the book be available?

The OpenBeta version will be available in iPad-friendly (and reasonably Kindle-friendly) PDF format. The finished version will be available in the following forms:

• PDF
• Kindle
• ePub
• (Paperback/Hardback depending on demand)

How much will the final version be?

£10 – around $15/16 at the current exchange rate

(this is subject to change without notice)

I still don’t understand the OpenBeta process?

More here, but this should help:

How long will the book be altogether?

I’m envisaging each chapter being about 1,000 words, so about 11,000 in total. This is subject to change when I start writing but it will be at least 10,000 words.

Are there any refunds? How do I know you will complete it?

No refunds, but I have managed to write several e-books before and have much more free time now I have completed my thesis! You can always wait until it’s finished, but that will cost more…

Image in book cover CC BY { pranav }

Got a different question? Ask it in the comments below!

My first draft of these revisions is now available (along with the rest of my doctoral thesis) at neverendingthesis.com.

I have until April 9th to submit these revisions, then I should graduate in the summer!

I’m pleased to announce that I successfully defended my doctoral thesis at my viva voce on 12th December 2011. As expected, the examiners gave me minor rewrites but I managed to submit these to my supervisor before Christmas.

Whilst I can’t officially call myself ‘Doctor Belshaw’ until I’m on Durham University’s pass list (and even then I’m probably not your go-to person for emergency tracheotomies) I’m delighted with the culmination of six years’ work into digital and new literacies.

It’s great to be back on social networks such as Twitter and Google+ and press ‘delete’ on hundreds of emails (well, I did warn people…)

Image CC BY-NC-SA Johan Prawiro

In this, my third blog post quoting Zygmunt Bauman (from a recent interview with Simon Dawes, editor of Theory, Culture & Society), I want to consider briefly the ways in which the whole edifice of the peer-review system is flawed. It’s not just about the binary distinction between whether a journal is ‘open’ or ‘closed’.

Simon Dawes: One final question, TCS is committed to the process of peer-review, and many of our (both rejected and accepted) contributors are grateful for the feedback given by our editors and anonymous reviewers, and for the subsequent strengthening of their articles, but you are critical of peer-review and no longer act as a referee for us. Could you tell us why?

Zygmunt Bauman: There are, by the most conservative counting, two grave and deeply regrettable collateral victims of the peer-review gruesome strategem: one is the daring of thought (wished-washed to the lowest common denominator), and the other is the individuality, as well as the responsibility of editors (those seeking shelter behind the anonymity of ‘peers’, but in fact dissolved in it, in many cases without a trace).

…

Last but not least, I would single out yet another collateral damage: the multitude of the trails blazed and heterogeneity of inspirations. I suspect that the peer-review system carriers a good part of blame for the fact that something like 60 percent or more of journal articles are never quoted (which means leaving no trace on our joint scholarly pursuits), and (in my reception at any rate) the ‘learned journals’… ooze monumental boredom. To find a new enlightening and inspiring idea (as distinct from finding a recipe for getting safely through the peer-built barricade), browsing through thousands of journal pages is all too often called for. With my tongue in one cheek only, I’d suggest that were our Palaeolithic ancestors to discover the peer-review dredger, we would still be sitting in caves…

That’s a fairly damning verdict from an Emeritus Professor of Sociology, don’t you think? I haven’t met anyone who thinks that the REF (Research Excellence Framework) is a good idea and does the job it’s intended to do. The ‘peer-built barricade’ that Bauman mentions evolved in a world before real-time communication between academics; although it feels obvious to say so, the internet changes everything. As proved with my thesis (see Appendix 3) the amount and quality of feedback does not depend either upon journals or anonymity. We can, and should, build a better (more democratic, fairer, transparent) system.

Image CC BY-SA Gideon Burton

Today’s a big day in my life. This afternoon I’m heading to Durham to hand in what I’ve been calling on Twitter the #neverendingthesis. That hashtag, of course, is more-than-slightly disingenuous given that I’m submitting it almost two years early. At first, the #neverendingthesis thing was just a bit of fun. However, as I came closer and closer to submitting it I realised that I was feeling what George Lucas must have been feeling when he said, “A movie is never finished, only abandoned”. Making my thesis available online in a wiki format will allow me to tinker in the months and years to come.

Up to this point, and ever since I started writing it, my thesis has been available at dougbelshaw.com/thesis. That now redirects to neverendingthesis.com where you can download a Word or PDF version of my thesis in the form I will be submitting today. I don’t believe that anyone ‘owns’ ideas and, as such, am waiving all claims to copyright. Just like this blog, my thesis: What is ‘digital literacy’? A Pragmatic investigation is available under a CC0 license.

I won’t use this space to thank people as I do that in the thesis itself. If you’re interested in the journey I’ve taken over the last four years whilst I’ve been working on my thesis, I’d encourage you to check out the Preface and Appendix 3. Re-reading the Preface in particular made me well up a little last night…

What am I going to do with my spare time now? I’ve been in formal education for 26 years!

In the spirit of owning my own data and keeping everyone up-to-date with when stuff is published elsewhere, this is a heads-up that Andy Stewart, co-kickstarter of Purpos/ed and I were interviewed by the Ed Tech Crew recently. We covered everything from Purpos/ed itself to my doctoral thesis and productivity.

Give it a listen! (Running time: 1 hour 25 mins. Size: 61.9 MB)

I’ve got a backup copy saved locally and have uploaded another to the Internet Archive for safekeeping (in case the link above goes down).

In 2006 George Siemens asked a bunch of people (including me) to proofread his book, Knowing Knowledge which he – innovatively for the time – released as a book, PDF and wiki. I happily did so and was credited along with many others who had been following George’s work in progress.

I know that many people reading this blog have followed my doctoral studies which has lasted about the same time as I’ve been blogging – six years. I’m delighted to say that yesterday I sent a complete draft of my Ed.D. thesis to my supervisor at Durham University. It may be a bit rough around the edges and there’ll be some inconsistencies, but it’s a huge relief to me.

Whilst my thesis – entitled What is digital literacy? A Pragmatic investigation – has been online since I started writing it in 2007, I thought I’d take this milestone as an opportunity to point people towards it and ask for some feedback. The major new update is Chapter 9 where I propose an ‘essential core’ of eight elements which make up an overlapping matrix of digital literacies.

I’ve had some great input and made connections with people all across the world during the last few years as a result of sharing my work. It’s a bit like pregnancy: the expectation during gestation is very different from the reality of delivering it. But now’s not a time to become coy and overly-protective about something I’ve been nurturing for so long; it’s time to, as with all my work, share it for the good of mankind. Ideas should be free.

And hopefully, just like a baby, people will admire and smile at it.

The bibliography relating to the referenced literature can be found at http://dougbelshaw.com/thesis (I’ve blogged more about my thesis at http://dougbelshaw.com/blog)

Critical Theory is a complex fusion of two different schools of thought. Although based upon a critique of society and culture, Critical Theory remains an umbrella term within which are found Marxist theory and the ideas of the ‘Frankfurt School’. Whilst the former has a normative dimension (there is a way that the world ‘ought’ to be) the latter is more of a hermeneutic approach (gaining knowledge through interpretation of ‘texts’).

These two distinct streams are merged by Postmodern Critical Theorists such as Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard in the sense that everything is considered to be a ‘text’ and therefore open to multiple (and potentially infinite) interpretations. In addition, a ‘linguistic turn’ in the social sciences from the 1960s onwards led to theorists such as Saussure, Derrida, Chomsky and Barthes redefining the social sciences as dealing with symbolic representations of the world. The fusion of the two streams became complete when, from the 1980s onwards, Habermas redefined Critical Theory as a theory of communication.

In the 1990s, Horkheimer defined a ‘critical theory’ as adequate only if it is simultaneously explanatory, practical and normative. “That is, it must explain what is wrong with current social reality, identify the actors to change it, and provide both clear norms for criticism and achievable practical goals for social transformation” (Bohman, 2010). Critical Theory undoubtedly fulfils the third of the criteria set out as necessary for a methodology underpinning Digital Literacies. If Critical Theory were successful, society would be transformed. However, as Bohman goes on to elaborate, Critical Theory is “rife with tensions” because of its ambition to transform capitalism into ‘real democracy’ (Bohman, 2010).

The failure of Critical Theory to revolutionise society is a result, claim Blake & Masschelein (2010), of “the failure to overlook the most serious motive behind Critical Theory, its negative aspect and messianic impulse” (in Blake, et al., 2003, p.55). To respond to this negative aspect, continue the authors, “is to accept as valid the cry, “I don’t know what, but not this!” – and thus to repudiate the fatalism of a seemingly compulsory acceptance of the present” (ibid.).

A second phase of Critical Theory, led by one of the leading intellectuals of our time (in the shape of Jürgen Habermas), seeks to transform it into “the mode of inquiry that participants may adopt in their social relations to others” (Bohman, 2010). Habermas combines the transcendental idealism evident in the first phase of Critical Theory with a selection of ideas from the American Pragmatist tradition (Shalin, 1992, p.253). The latter is evident in Habermas’ claim that universal consensus is the ultimate goal of communicative action – with anything short of this evidence of our commitment to the process. As Shalin points out, this differs (as we shall see) with Pragmatism as, in the latter, a dissenting attitude is “imminently rational in that it points to conflicting potentialities of being,” alerting us to the “risks and uncertainties inherent in alternative lines of action” (Shalin, 1992, p.258).

Through the work of Habermas, Critical Theory (as defined in its second phase) is a recognised and respected methodology. It is an established and active research area with journals, professorships and many books dedicated to debates and developments. In this sense, Critical Theory not only meets the third of the aims of a methodology, but also the first (being recognised and respected as sound). It is only with the second criterion that issues emerge: Critical Theory’s suitability to the research area of Digital and New Literacies.

There are three main issues with Critical Theory that I shall outline here that make it unsuitable as a methodology within the area of Digital and New Literacies. First, there is the difficulty of a theory which is general and universal in outlook, but which depends upon subjective experiences. It leaves the individual in an epistemological dilemma: either their choice of approach seems arbitrary, or the Critical Theorist has a ‘special ability’ to make correct choices. Neither is satisfactory. The way out of this dilemma explained by Bohman (2010) – to treat the subjects of inquiry as ‘knowledgeable social agents’ and to focus on the goal of “initiat[ing] public processes of self-reflection” – seems to beg the question when it comes to fostering digital literacies. One cannot assume competencies and behaviours that one is hoping to instil.

Secondly, Critical Theorists conceptualise praxis (the enactment of a theory) almost solely in terms of work. Whilst Critical Theorists set their targets against the ’scientification’ and ‘technologization’ of society, they often fall back onto instrumentalist thinking. Even Habermas, claim Blake & Masschelein (2010), strips individuals of the ‘humanness’ of their interaction, conceptualising communication in terms of “the economic and rational logic of performance and counterperformance” (Blake & Masschelein, 2010, p.54). A methodology suitable for understanding and putting into practice work around Digital and New Literacies should not be continually reduced (or necessarily even reducible) to purely economic considerations.

Thirdly, and briefly, there is no genuine direct connection between Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy in the English-speaking world. This, allied with the concerns about the instrumental understanding of communication, concerns Blake & Masschelein (2010, p.50-1). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a methodology should help make clear the path from theory to practice for a research area. Critical Theory does the opposite of this, adding a layer of complexity to an already confusing and contested field. Using Critical Theory as a methodology for research into Digital and New Literacies would be to multiply uncertainty and confusion.

Blake, N., Smeyers, P., Smith, R. & Standish, P. (eds.) (2003) The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education (Oxford)

Bohman, J. (2010) ‘Critical Theory’ (in Zalta, E.N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Shalin, D.N. (1992) ‘Introduction: Habermas, Pragmatism, Interactionism’ (Symbolic Interaction – Special Feature: Habermas, Pragmatism and Critical Theory, Vol.15(3), 1992)