By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 16 July 2007
Main categories: Digital Literacy, e-Readiness, Meetings
Other tags: sdp2007
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With over a million young people “born digital,” now is the time to examine the emerging trends of how these digital natives construct identity, learn, create, and socialize in an ever-changing “always on” landscape. How do we give digital natives the tools (in terms of know-how, technology, social norms, or other means) to navigate safely in the emerging digital social space? How can copyright holders work with digital creators to understand their needs and practices in a way that doesn’t stifle their creativity? As a global society, can we come to understand what’s happening with a generation online, to embrace a digital present, and to shape, in constructive ways, a more digital future?
Working papers on Digital Divide, the Spread of the Internet and Political Institutions
What does it mean to be a Digital Native?
- Digital Identity: Identity was something I could control… can I control my Digital Identity? Or, on the contrary: online identity can be shaped, created absolutely the way I want it to be
- Multitasking: Distraction or multitasking?
- Digital Media: Flickr, Google Print, YouTube…
- Digital Creativity: Consumers in the past… what now? Quite a switch. Can we relate it with… Democracy?
Technologies that enable/empower the digital native
- RSS feeds, of course, that link together (free) web 2.0 applications.
- Lightweight collaboration: Wikipedia?
- New contexts, new meanings
- Tagging
- International scope: shrinking the world
Issues:
- Security
- Privacy: unintended audience; how to remove information about me on the Internet, information that can be massively processed (i.e. image recognition); identity theft, erosion
- Intellectual property: copyright, trademark
- Credibility: specially relevant in the academic business
- Information overload: we move from an environment of high quality information — because it is produced professionally — towards an amateur created information environment. Related: quality mechanics, reputation, etc. How many RSS feed subscriptions or e-mails a day can you tolerate?
Opportunities
- Media literacy skills
- expression/identity
- empowering creators
- information sharing
- maintaining connections
- semiotic democracy
- access to information
My reflections
Readings
More info
SDP 2007 related posts (2007)
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 27 June 2007
Main categories: Digital Divide, Digital Literacy, ICT4D
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The results of the Project Internet Catalonia, directed by , were presented yesterday at the Open University of Catalonia headquarters. Actually, it was just a formal presentation, as the [reports] are to be made public and available to everyone […] between October 2007 to January 2008.
Nevertheless, professors Castells and Imma Tubella, directors of the project, gave some highlights of their (40 researchers were involved) main findings.
Under my point of view — and own interests, of course — there are two important statements that would explain both successes and failures in the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development, digital (il)literacy, and digital content and services use:
The study shows that the more independent and capable people are in developing projects, the more they will use the internet. And the more they use the internet, the more autonomy they can achieve.
- The Internet
[…]requires some educational level
, because we live in an uninformed Information Society, and this will not be solved by the Internet
. The Internet deepens a historical divide: the educational
: It is not just a matter of access, but to receive the appropriate education to know what for and how to use the Internet
Put short: ICTs are catalysts and multipliers. Capable people — and developed countries — will find an amazing tool to boost their abilities and the reach and scope of their energies. Illiterate will enter new — digital — illiteracies that will make them opt out of something they don’t understand or find useful at all, widening the gap of their illiteracy, unpowering — impoverishing — them.
Hence, the role of education is more important than ever — let aside health and economic development, of course — and the teaching staff is the key element in the incorporation of the internet into school education
, but the scenario is quite sad:
the presence of internet in the classroom is very low in comparison to the use made of it by teachers and students outside of school
the majority of computers with an internet connection were to be found in the computer studies classrooms to which students had much less access than they did to their own classroom
until very recently teachers tend to use the internet to maintain the traditional teaching patterns, rather than trying to use it to innovate
a good number of school directors do not prioritise the integration of ICT and the internet for educational ends
This is something I wrote about in my post Nativos Digitales [Digital Natives — post in Spanish] at the Educación y Cultura [Education and Culture] blog, were I stated that:
It’s likely that one of the steps we have to make, as teachers — but also as parents, as education begins (or should begin) at home —, is accelerating our “nationalization” in the digital world: we’ll always have the accent of our mother tongue, but only by speaking in the same language understanding will become possible. And, let’s face it, digital natives will not learn a dead language, ours, the one of letters and mail, phone calls, or incunable facsimile editions with yellowish pages.
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 06 June 2007
Main categories: Digital Literacy, Meetings, Writings
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During next 19, 20, 21 & 22, June 2007, will take place the II Jornadas Internacionales de Innovación Educativa de la Escuela Politécnica Superior de Zamora [II International Conference on Educational Innovation at the Engineering School of Zamora, Spain].
On Wednesday 20th morning I’ll be presenting my paper Capacitación digital en la UOC: la alfabetización tecnológica vs. la competencia informacional y funcional [Digital capacity building at UOC: technological literacy vs. informational and functional literacy].
The same day, during the afternoon, my colleague Teresa Sancho will also be presenting a paper of hers about teaching Maths and Physics in Engineering degrees.
Here follows the abstract to my communication. The full text can be downloaded in Spanish and Catalan only.
Digital capacity building at UOC: technological literacy vs. informational and functional literacy
If the goal of competences training in the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is adapting to new times, it is evident that a correct digital literacy is an essential basis to work in the informational society. There is, nevertheless, a sort of bias in the definition of the term “digital literacy”, a bias that tends to shift towards the most technological side of the concept. Notwithstanding, beyond the knowledge of technology, there is a new world to discover concerning its use, what it is usually called informational literacy – the efficient and effective use of Information and Communication Technologies – and that, along with technology, requires a functional digital capacitation in the use of ICTs.
At the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) the student has at his arm’s reach a collection of services that will help him out through his way over (a possible) technological illiteracy and, above all, he is taught – implicitly and explicitly – in the use of these technologies through the interaction in the virtual campus, in the following of specific subjects and in exercises and practices solving.
This paper tracks the path of the evolution of the different capacities that form, as a whole, the total development of what we could call functional digital competence, and presents the moments or experiences in which the student acquires these capacities by studying in a virtual campus.
Update:The presentation can now be downloaded
here (only in Spanish)
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 09 May 2007
Main categories: Digital Literacy, Education & e-Learning, Knowledge Management, Meetings, Open Access, Participation, Engagement, Use, Activism
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John Palfrey, Executive Director Berkman Center of Internet and Society, presents his seminar Born Digital at UOC headquarters, organized by the University’s UNESCO Chair in e-Learning.
John introduces his speech as a trip through some reflections that arise from the fact that some people (i.e. born in the middle eighties and on) have always lived with the Internet and digital technologies. Those people live/interact on digital landscapes that do have some specific characteristics.
John Palfrey
Digital landscape
Digital identities, in two senses. One is be present on the Internet. Second, to be able to shape one’s identity at one’s will, as the Internet allow one to.
Multi-tasking: lots of windows open and things being done at the same time
Digital media: all your stuff is created in digital form (you might never ever print it) and it can be mixed, edited, changed… mashed up, and it will stand this way, digitally. And, indeed, is not only digital media, but digital platforms. And even if they are at a very early stage, there is already now a new layer above traditional http that is working as a new means of digital communication. This layer is shaped by devices like Second Life, Flickr, RSS or the Wikipedia.
From consumers to creators: Of course, this mashing up involves changes in cultures, intellectual property problems… new challenges arcane for digital immigrants, not to say analogue citizens.
New technologies/features: Google Docs, AJAX, tagging, hackability, wikis, social networks, RSS. RSS surely made Web 2.0 go from just a cool idea to a big change in the state of things.
Lightweight collaboration: multiple users on distributed workgroups where people collaborate as long and as intensively as they want to. In Yochai Benkler’s words, is a democratising innovation.
An international perspective: New contexts and new meanings. People like (and also expect) commenting others’ reflections. Tagging and geotaggin provide, again, new contexts for content. And those contexts are most of them relying on a new concept of trust, which enables strong networks… and business models.
Addressing perceived threats
Security and safety: cyberbulling
Privacy: everything on the Internet is public… anyone lost a job offer because of sensible photos on the net? unintended audience, replicability, persistence, searchability, unintentional contributions.
- Tier 1: our own profile. You got control over what you post, and you can configure your own privacy settings.
- Tier 2: your friend’s profile. Friends upload a photo of yours and you untag it, removing any liaison to you.
- Tier 3: Blogs, Flickr, social networks. Friends upload a photo and you have to ask for them to remove it.
- Tier 4: facial recognition systems. Friends upload a photo of you and tehc tags it for them with face recognition (Riya). How to undo this?
Intellectual property: people creating new things from old things is increasing (as it is increasingly easy) and the perspective is that intellectual property rights issues (i.e. lawsuits) are going to be a big issue in the nearest future (present!).
Information expectations:
- credibility: “hidden influences”, grazing, misinformation… are common on wikis and blogs
- information overload
Positive outlook
So, what’s the agenda from now on?
media literacy skills, expression/identity, empowering creators, information sharing, maintaining connections
Opportunities: creativity, media literacy, social production, semiotic democracy
Blogs and Wikis: knowledge creating, equity/democratic, participatory, empowering individuals, autonomy, cross-cultural and community building
Opportunities: Information creation, semiotic democracy, participatory, empowering individuals, access to information
John Palfrey
To end, John briefly presents digitalnative.org:
An academic research team — joining people from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland — is hosting and working on the core of this wiki, which illustrates the beginning stages of a larger research project on Digital Natives.
“Digital Natives” are those people for whom the internet and related technologies are givens, whereas “Digital Immigrants” migrated to these technologies later in life (Prensky, 2001). Digital Immigrants know how life existed in the pre-networked society, whereas Digital Natives take networked communication as the foundation of their lives.
The focus of this research is on exploring the impacts of this generational demarcation. By learning as much as we can about Digital Natives, their way of life, and their way of thinking, we can address the issues their digital practices raise, and shape our legal, educational, and social institutions in a way that supports and protects natives, while harnessing the exciting possibilities their digital fluency presents.
Questions
Challenging question by Max Senges: is it possible to live with several identities at the same time? John thinks that no and, in the end, identities seem to converge on your real one, and your blog or whatever sooner or later reflects who you really are.
An interesting circle is being created: technologists create technology based on expected market users, but the users reshape this technology by using it, and again, technologists re-reshape the technology and so on. How can this be controlled, managed, etc.
César Córcoles: digital identity (on intensive live online) will become something normal, but now it is seen as (a) geekery (b) a bad thing to do (lost of time), so what should we, as academics, do? John answers that, actually, the problem is that academics are also digital immigrants, and thus they first have to learn. Open Access might be a good way to legitimate new means of distributing content and from an academic basis or point of view. (Academic) blogging is still not very popular, but how to foster it?
Ana Zúñiga: about information overload, the problem sometimes is that there is a strong lack of digital literacy, specially informational literacy, so you know where to go to in order to get high quality information.
Cristina Girona and John (and many others) engage in a debate about not using technolgy by itself, but for final purposes, such as educational purposes. But there is a need not only to think about technology in classrooms, but also to think about teaching itself.
Emma Kiselyova excellently points the fact that digital immigrants will disappear with time and digital natives will, sooner or later, rule the world. In the meanwhile, in the impasse, what should be done? How can educational institutions make the bridge, lead the rupture that digital technologies are causing.
I point, following Emma’s line, that all in all is a matter of e-awareness, of knowing what this digital paradigm means for everyone of us. On one side we’ve got digital immigrants (DIs; I here also include digital outsiders), that as mature people as they are, they have some degree of awareness of things (of what means living, how society works, what is moral and what is ethics, etc.) but have poor knowledge of “e-” things. On the other side, there’re digital natives (DNs), that fully master the “e-” part but they need education (remember: they’re still young and “inexpert”) and a place to go (i.e. the University) in order to get some awareness. But nobody is actually crossing the line to make ends meet: DIs do not approach digital landscapes and DNs, actually, pass over traditional knowledge that brings awareness (the example of intellectual property rights infringement is crystal clear).
Silvia Bravo argues that an approach is really happening, that the academy is blogging and writing on wikis. In my opinion, even if this was true (which I honestly believe it is not, at least not with a critical mass), the problem is that individuals are not the ones who transmit values, but institutions. And, at the institutional level, the state of things is definitely distressing.
See also:
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 27 March 2007
Main categories: Digital Divide, Digital Literacy, ICT4D
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In the last days we’ve been having an interesting debate whether personal computers should be subsidized or not, and if PC costs where the reason behind having no access to the Internet at home. A first article about this issue can be found here and a sort of revision here.
As if aware of this, Parks Associates have released the results of a survey where they state, without hesitation, that offline Americans see Internet of little value
. The charts speak for themselves:
As seen in the first chart, just 14% already have access at work and are not willing to be connected 24×7 (I know some of these people and I think it’s a growing trend due, in part, to the intrusiveness of some mobile devices powered with permanent connexion). The ones willing to be connected but still offline sum up just 25%. The remaining 61% simply don’t want to be online because it’s useless. This is one of the strong points that Ben Compaine made in his book and, again, some days ago.
But the question is: why don’t they find any use in the Internet? is it because they identify it as an entertainment device and not an educational or work device? I remember talking to Bill Dutton and Rebecca Eynon about what they called digital choice, being my question if it was really a matter of rational choice or just a new variant of digital illiteracy or lack of e-awareness. It might well be that cyberoptimists are overselling the web, but I somehow believe that it is just a matter of understanding the economic benefits of the Information Technology Revolution.
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 06 February 2007
Main categories: Digital Divide, Digital Literacy, ICT4D
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Disheartening analysis that Jakob Nielsen does in his November 2006 Alertbox Digital Divide: The Three Stages. He there defines the Digital Divide in three stages:
- Stage 1: Economic Divide
- Stage 2: Usability Divide
- Stage 3: Empowerment Divide
I can understand — we all do this — that he tries to bend the term Digital Divide and reshape it under a usability light — Nielsen’s field of expertise. But I think this “reshapening” goes way too far. I fully agree with the Economic Divide stage. I would call it Access to Infrastructures (hard, soft and connectivity), but it’s the same thing with a different name.
My first objection is in splitting his so-called Usability Divide from the Empowerment Divide. Actually, this is all about Digital Literacy, which can be defined in several levels, as many as you’d like to: technological literacy, informational literacy… functional literacy. But it is absolutely about the same thing: using ICTs. I mean, it’s okey separating the different skills that compound digital literacy, but this should be a starting point, not an ending one.
Thus, I find a second objection, and surely the most serious one, that is forgetting — intended or not — that there is much more to the Digital Divide than money/access and literacy/capacity building. The existence of an ICT Sector is crucial in the correct development of a local Information Society, specially in fields such as Education (ICT enhanced or just e-Learning) or e-Administration and e-Goverment. If ICTs are to be used as a locomotive to foster the economy, then the ICT Sector becomes, simply, a must.
Of course, a local Information Society must be driven by an accompanying legal framework that monitors and drives its development, be it by just regulating the activities that take place in the Network, be it through public policies devoted to this goal.
And last, but not least, there’s something even more important than all those described digital divides or stages: digital content and digital services. Simple as it might sound, with no content and no services, there’s no use having skilled people tapping on state of the art computers. And this is, by far, one of the most important pitfalls nowadays, almost unsurmountable in most developing countries — more than the economic divide, I’d dare say: while we “have” one laptop per child, there are just 3,102 articles in the Swahili Wikipedia vs. the 1,621,894 of the English Wikipedia.
Summing up, this is my 5 step approach, as stated on a previous article:
So, I liked Jakob Nielsen entering the field of ICT4D and the Digital Divide. But least I’d expected was some humbler approach, avoiding that holistic aim.