Month: June 2011

Read the first complete draft of my doctoral thesis on digital literacies.

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Doug Belshaw

Update: I’ve now submitted my thesis and it’s available at neverendingthesis.com!

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.

Why I’m starting to blog at DMLcentral

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Doug Belshaw

In two weeks’ time I’ll be in Dubai with my Dad and sister for a final celebration of his time in the UAE working for the SSAT. It should also, all things being equal, be a celebration of my having finished my doctoral thesis, having started my studies over six years ago.

The thesis is on the subject of digital literacies and, I believe, not only is a useful overview of the development of the digital and new literacies arena, but contributes a model of how to develop digital literacies which should be pragmatically useful. Since 2007 I’ve been updating dougbelshaw.com/thesis as I have written and updated each chapter. Recently, I also started a new blog at literaci.es.

One blog that came at some speed onto my radar in the last couple of years is DMLcentral, a project funded by the McArthur Foundation in the US:

DML Central is the online presence for the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the systemwide University of California Humanities Research Institute and hosted at the UC Irvine campus. Digital media practices are fundamentally reshaping society in far-reaching ways, especially in how people all around the world are learning and connecting with one another.

Across the globe, an ever-expanding number of researchers, policy-makers, practitioners, industry, scholars and youth are exploring the boundaries and possibilities of digital media and the networked world of the twenty-first century.

At DML Central, we want to do all we can to fuel that exploration – to enable break-through collaborations and evoke illuminating conversations that lead to innovations in learning and public participation.

There’s some well-known individuals in the field of new literacies and media who blog for DMLcentral – you may have heard of danah boyd, Howard Rheingold, and Aleks Krotoski for example. The About page also demonstrates the partnership between DMLcentral and Futurelab, and organization with whom I’ve worked before.

Seeing a synergy between my own research and DMLcentral, I sent a speculative email to the team expressing a desire to contribute to the blog. I’m delighted to say that they were enthusiastic about the idea and after some discussions I’ll be contributing my first post next month.

I’ll still be blogging here and the other various places online I mentioned in this previous post (which also details an easy way to keep up with all of my writing and research!)

My new work blog and other RSS goodies.

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Doug Belshaw

Spurred by several things including our most recent JISC infoNet planning meeting and Will Richardson’s decision to quit long-form blogging at Weblogg-ed and move to Tumblr, I’ve set up a work blog at http://dajbelshaw.tumblr.com

The theme hopefully reflects how I want to use it – as a visual snapshot of my research. Rest assured that, unlike Will, I’ll still be blogging here as well. I love writing. My work blog is more for clipping and quickly commenting on stuff relating to Open Educational Resources, Mobile Learning and Digital Literacies (my 3 main research areas).

As a reminder, you can also find other posts by me at:

I’ve collated the RSS feeds for my research and original writing in two separate über-feeds (which you can also subscribe to via email if you click through):

Doug’s Writing Feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougsWritingFeed)

Doug’s Research Feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougsResearchFeed)

I’ve updated the sidebar at dougbelshaw.com/blog to make these quick and easy to find. For those people wanting to do something similar, RSSmix seemed to be lot easier and hassle-free than fiddling with Yahoo! Pipes…