As I’ve already mentioned, we’re going to be moving soon. We haven’t got a date yet, but I should imagine it’ll be in about 6 weeks. I love my study in the attic. This post, made possible with the excellent DoubleTake automatic photo-stitching software, captures what I love about it… 😀
Care to share your favourite study space?
Last week I launched a competition to win a Macvatar Macbook skin after the company sent me two skins for the price of one. The number of entrants was, well, underwhelming, but congratulations should nevertheless go to John Johnston, who wrote:
Hi Doug,
My macbook looks exactly like the 6 we have at school and I want to avoid a mixup. The scratch resistance will also be important to me, my macs last a long time, my new macbook (no scratches yet) replaces mt G4 which was born in the year 2000.
a skin also might prevent this problem from developing
John, let me know your postal address and the Macvatar skin will be winging its way to you in no time! 😀
Microsoft have proudly announced their Digital Literacy Curriculum. They’ve no doubt about what they mean by the term ‘digital literacy’ – the strapline to the bold title on their site being, ‘Helping you develop a fundamental understanding of computers.’
Oh. So, they’ll be teaching you about Mac OSX and Linux, then?
Right, so it’s Microsoft-only operating systems, yes? Well actually, in theory, no. They do say:
What if I don’t use Microsoft products, or have older versions installed?
…
The only software required to run either version of Digital Literacy is a minimum of Internet Explorer 6…
Oh, right then. So in practice, it’s Windows only. And what else do I see?
Aha! So after 3 introductory lessons, they get to what they would term the ‘good stuff’ – Microsoft propaganda. Hmmm… I wonder what programs they’ll be using for their introduction to word processors, spreadsheets, email program and IM clients? 😉
It’s just an adult version of what’s going on in most UK schools, really. And I think it’s shameful. I’m still not entirely sure how I’d define ‘digital literacy’ (it’s the subject of my Ed.D. thesis after all…) but it’s definitely not a souped-up idiot’s guide to using Microsoft products.
And to think, this has the backing (and presumably the funding) of the following:
What would your ‘digital literacy curriculum’ look like? Mine, for one, would look at digital literacies, and involve using a variety of operating systems and programs. That would get at something underneath the processes involved for specific operating system and programs and get a bit more to the fundamentals. 🙂
