My latest post for DMLcentral is now live. Entitled Web Literacies: What is the ‘Web’ Anyway? I take a step back to examine something we now take for granted every day:
Over two billion people now use the web on a regular basis. For many people, like me, the web is a fundamental part of how they communicate — and, therefore, how they are. We create and sustain relationships through the web. We watch videos that provoke joy, laughter, sadness, and anger. We exchange artifacts and multimedia such as photos, memes, and audio files. The web is an inherently social technology.
You can view the archive of my posts for DMLcentral here. I also participated in a recent DML Connected Learning webinar with colleagues Mark Surman and Carla Casilli entitled Mozilla Webmaker: Digital Literacy Through Making and Sharing
Image CC BY saintbob
I was delighted to be asked to participate in a DML Central Connected Learning Google+ hangout about Open Badges yesterday. The recording should be embedded above, but if not try clicking here.
The session featured a presentation by Erin Knight, Senior Director of Learning at the Mozilla Foundation, and was facilitated by Howard Rheingold.
If you like this, you’ll also be interested in the webinar Erin and her colleague Michelle Levesque ran for the JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme last Friday. In that session, they discussed Mozilla’s work around web literacies.
Check that webinar out here, along with Erin’s write-up.
If you’re an educator, if you’re a student, if you’re a parent – in fact, if you’re someone who walks around with their eyes open, you’ll have noticed something. Educational experiences in school and educational experiences outside of school are very different.
So far, so obvious. But what can we do about it?
I’m currently in San Francisco at the MacArthur-funded Digital Media and Learning initiative’s annual conference, #DML2012. As regular readers will know, I blog for DMLcentral and am a big fan of DML’s work.
Today, DML launched an ‘interest-powered, peer-supported, and academically-oriented’ model of learning called Connected Learning. Having been privy to some of the development behind this, I’m excited by the possibilities it affords.
Connected Learning is based upon open networks with a shared purpose to help learners produce things. It’s focused on answering the following questions:
- What would it mean to think of education as a responsibility of a distributed network of people and institutions, including schools, libraries, museums and online communities?
- What would it mean to think of education as a process of guiding youths’ active participation in public life that includes civic engagement, and intellectual, social, recreational, and career-relevant pursuits?
- How can we take advantage of the new kinds of intergenerational configurations that have formed in which youth and adults come together to work, mobilize, share, learn, and achieve together?
- What would it mean to enlist in this effort a diverse set of stakeholders that are broader than what we traditionally think of as educational and civic institutions?
This is a great time to get involved, if you’re interested. Go here for more information: http://connectedlearning.tv
Not only is it a great model, but educational legends such as Mimi Ito and Mitch Resnick are behind it – and will be participating in weekly webinars!
(for more on my involvement in the DML Conference, head over to my conference blog and/or follow #DML2012 and @dajbconf on Twitter)
