Critical literacies course
Exploring the cognitive dimension
Gráinne Conole, The Open University, UK
4th June 2010

Outline
 Definitions
 Characteristics of new technologies
 Mapping to pedagogy
 Jenkin’s digital skills/literacies
 Daring to think differently

Definitions
 Literacy
 Originally ability to read and write,
 Ability to communicate and interpret ideas
 Gee
 Language is always used from a perspective and occurs within
a context
 ‘Little d’ – language in use, ‘big D’ – language combined with
other social practices
 New literacies:
 21st Century literacies, internet literacies, digital literacies, new
media literacies, multiliteracies, information literacy, ICT
literacies, and computer literacy.

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0
Shift from:
Web 1.0 – content repository& static information
Web 2.0 – user generated content/social mediation
Media sharing
Web 2.0
characteristics
Blogs & wikis Peer critiquing
User generated content
Social networking Collective aggregation
Community formation
Digital personas
Virtual worlds
Trends
Shift from content to social mediation
New practices of creation and sharing
Evidence of scaling up/network effects

A typology of Web 2.0
technologies
Technology Examples
Media sharing Flckr, YouTube, Slideshare, Sketchfu
Media manipulation and mash ups Geotagged photos on maps,
Voicethread
Instant messaging, chat, web 2.0 MSN, Paltalk, Arguementum
forums
Online games and virtual worlds WorldofWarcraft, SecondLife
Social networking Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Elgg,
Ning
Blogging Wordpress, Edublog, Twitter
Social bookmarking Del.icio.us, Citeulike, Zotero
Recommender systems Digg, LastFm, Stumbleupon
Wikis and collaborative editing tools Wikipedia, GoogleDocs, Bubbl.us
(Conole and Alevizou, 2010), Review of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education
Syndication/RSS feeds Bloglines, Podcast, GoogleReader
http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/1895

Inquiry-based Exploratory
User-generated content
Peer critiquing
Open
Affordances (Gibson)
All "action possibilities" latent in anenvironment
but always in relation to the actor and therefore
dependent on their capabilities.
For instance, a tall tree offers the affordances of
food for a Giraffe but not a sheep.
Social collective
Networked Personalised
Participatory
Co-relationship and co-evolution
of tools and users

Co-evolution of tools and
practice
Representation Preferences
Communication Interests
Evolving
practices
Connection Skills
Interactivity Context
Affordances of Characteristics
technologies of users

A Tweet is simply 140 characters
Examples of
use Issues
Posting queries Your ‘a-ha’ moment
Commenting The right network
Backchannel Your digital voice
Crowdsourcing Inappropriateness
Gathering opinions Personal/private
Sharing Too much!
events/ideas Use with other tools
Brainstorming A passing fad?
Social presence

Redefining ICT…
Communication
Virtual worlds
Video
Online games
conferencing
Social
Audio networking
conferencing sites
Google
wave
Forums
Wikis
Instant
messaging Blogs
Twitter
Email
Web Social File sharing Mash
pages bookmarking sites ups
Interactivity

Mapping to pedagogy
Use of RSS feeds and
Personalised learning
mash ups
Situated, experiential, pr Location aware
oblem-based devices, Virtual
learning, role play worlds, online games
Google, media sharing
Inquiry or resource-
repositories, user-
based learning
generated content
Blogs and e-
Reflective and dialogic
portfolios, wikis, social
learning
networks

Digital skills (Jenkins, et al., 2008)
Play
Visualisation Performance
Negotiation Appropriation
Simulation Multi-tasking
Networking
Distributed cognition
Transmedia navigation Collective intelligence
Judgment

Mapping to Downes’ framework
 Play
 Purposeful play as a means of interacting/understanding of digital spaces
 Performance
 Performance as a declaration of preferred digital persona/identity
 Simulation
 Develop of own mental modelsto understand interactions in digital space
 Appropriation
 Interpretation and appropriation of digital media for individual interests
 Distributed cognition
 Effective use of tools to achieved desired objectives
 Collective intelligence
 To be part of, as well as harnessing the CI

Mapping to Downes’ framework
 Judgment
 To critical assess information and be able to make inferred decisions in terms of its
relevance to the users own interests
 Transmedia navigation
 To have an understanding of paths through digital spaces
 Networking
 Targeted and effective finding and use of information for specific purposes
 Negotiation
 Understanding of the nuances within digital environments (cultural, discipline-
specific, personal, etc)
 Multi-tasking
 Effective mixing of tools and tasks
 Visualisation
 Interpretation of different visual presentations of information and mechanisms for
presenting connections across digital space

Developing literacy skills
 Adopting a reflective, design-based approach
 Development of ‘formal’ representations of learning and teaching
process
 Can be used to guide design, enable sharing and discussion, offer
a guided learning path
 Learning with/through others
 Use of Web 2.0 tools to encourage more interaction and sharing of
practice
 Visualisation
 Using different Visualisation techniques to represent information
and show connections
 Metaphors of meaning
 Exploration of new metaphors to describe interactions in digital
environments beyond space and time

A design-based approach
Shift from belief-based, implicit approaches
to design-based, explicit approaches
A design-based approach to
creation and support of courses
Encourages reflective, scholarly practices
Promotes sharing and discussion
15

Consists of…. Cloudworks
Course
views
Theoretical
Collaboration
perspectives
Visualisation
Resources
Excel template
CompendiumLD

Dimensions
view
 Breaks down
nature of course
against the 4
higher level
categories

Learning through/with others

Prompted by a tweet
and post by
@mattlingard, I've set
up this cloud.

The power of visualisation

Metaphors and meaning making
Space
Ecological perspectives
Organism perspectives
Time Network
Systems perspective
Function
Political perspectives
Geo-spatial perspectives
Mathematical perspectives

Conclusion
 New technologies require new literacy skills
 In what ways can these new skills be developed?
 We need new ways to thinking about and describe
interactions in digital spaces
 How can we avoid an ever increasing digital divide?
 What are likely to be the implications in education? –
for learners, for teachers, for institutions?