Exploring curation as a core competency in digital and media literacy education — from the Journal of Interactive Media in Education (jime.open.ac.uk); with thanks to Robin Good for the Scoop

Paul Mihailidis
Department of Marketing Communication, Emerson College, United States

James N Cohen
School of Communication, Hofstra University, United States

Abstract:

In today’s hypermedia landscape, youth and young adults are increasingly using social media platforms, online aggregators and mobile applications for daily information use. Communication educators, armed with a host of free, easy-to-use online tools, have the ability to create dynamic approaches to teaching and learning about information and communication flow online. In this paper we explore the concept of curation as a student- and creation-driven pedagogical tool to enhance digital and media literacy education. We present a theoretical justification for curation and present six key ways that curation can be used to teach about critical thinking, analysis and expression online. We utilize a case study of the digital curation platform Storify to explore how curation works in the classroom, and present a framework that integrates curation pedagogy into core media literacy education learning outcomes.

From DSC:
Yesterday, I had posted an item re: interactive video. As I looked at the credits for the piece out at the Wall Street Journal, it made me reflect upon this thought:

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UseOfTeams-DChristian-July2013

 

This will be true whether we’re talking about K-12, higher ed, and/or the corporate training/L&D world.

 

In the future, the whole world will be a classroom — from fastcoexist.com by Marina Gorbis

 

TheFutureOfEducation-Gorbis-6-28-13

. TheFutureOfEducation3-Gorbis-6-28-13.

From DSC:
What Marina is asserting is what I’m seeing as well. That is, we are between two massive but different means of obtaining an education/learning (throughout our lifetimes I might add).  What she’s saying is also captured in the following graphic:

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streams-of-content-blue-overlay

 

Also see:

 

AmplifyMOOC-July2013

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Also see:

Dear Kids:

First of all, why learn how to program? Why learn programs such as Scratch?

  • It is critical that you have at least some exposure to programming — as having some basic understanding of what programming is like will be very helpful for you. Coding is becoming like air and water for your futures.  That is, it’s like the modern day version of reading, writing, and doing basic math.

You will also be able to:

  • Build games that you can use to play with your friends! 🙂
  • Create/code your own website and code others’ websites to help them out.
  • Design immersive, story-driven experiences.
  • Write software for churches, other individuals, non-profits.
  • Get jobs anywhere in the world – and be highly-marketable/employable.
  • Make a solid contribution to the world via the development of software and new applications.
  • Have some basic understanding of programming so that when you have jobs later on, you will at least know what programmers do.

To get started, see:

Thanks,
Dad

P.S.  Take your time and have some fun with it; and don’t get discouraged if things don’t come easily or automatically for you. Thinking like a programmer requires a different way of thinking; so it may take some time to develop or appreciate.

 

From DSC:
1) To start out this posting, I want to pose some questions about “The Common Core” — in the form of a short video. <— NOTE:  Please be sure your speakers are on or you have some headphones with you — the signal is “hot” so you may need to turn down the volume a bit!  🙂

With a special thanks going out to
Mr. Bill Vriesema for sharing
some of his excellent gifts/work.

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DanielChristian-SomeQuestionsReTheCommonCore-June2013

 

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Having asked those questions, I understand that there is great value in having students obtain a base level of knowledge — in reading, writing, and basic math.  (Should we add keyboarding? Programming? Other?  Perhaps my comments are therefore more appropriate for high school students…not sure.)

Anyway, I would be much more comfortable with moving forward with the Common Core IF:

* I walked into random schools and found out which teachers the students really enjoyed learning from and whom had a real impact on the learning of the students.  Once I identified that group of teachers, if 7-8 out of 10 of them gave the Common Core a thumbs up, so would I.

* The Common Core covered more areas — such as fine arts, music, drama, woodworking, videography, photography, etc.    (Just because STEM might drive the economic engines doesn’t mean everyone enjoys plugging into a STEM-related field — or is gifted in those areas.)

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2) Secondly, here are just a few recent items re: the Common Core:


 

Good Read: Who’s Minding the Schools? — from blogs.kqed.org by Tina Barseghian

Excerpt: (emphasis DSC)

For those uninitiated to the Common Core State Standards, this New York Times article raises some important questions:

“By definition, America has never had a national education policy; this has indeed contributed to our country’s ambivalence on the subject… The anxiety that drives this criticism comes from the fact that a radical curriculum — one that has the potential to affect more than 50 million children and their parents — was introduced with hardly any public discussion. Americans know more about the events in Benghazi than they do about the Common Core.”

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The Common Core Standards

 

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Editorial: Make the Common Core standards work before making them count — from eschoolnews.com by Randi Weingarten
AFT President Randi Weingarten calls for a moratorium on the high-stakes implications of Common Core testing until the standards have been properly implemented.

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How to train students’ brains for the Common Core — from ecampusnews.com by Meris Stansbury
Excerpt:

According to Margaret Glick, a neuroscience expert and educational consultant at the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE), the Common Core State Standards and the accompanying assessments will cognitively require more than past standards. “They will require a deep understanding of content, complex performances, real-world application, habits of mind to persevere, higher levels of cognition and cognitive flexibility,” Glick said during “The Common Core State Standards and the Brain,” a webinar sponsored by the Learning Enhancement Corporation.

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Common Core testing will require digital literacy skills — from ecampusnews.com by Dennis Pierce
Excerpt:

It also will require students to demonstrate certain digital literacy skills that go beyond the core curriculum, observers say. These include technology operational skills such as keyboarding and spreadsheets, as well as higher-order skills such as finding and evaluating information online. And many observers have serious concerns about whether students will be ready to take the online exams by the 2014-15 school year.

 

Minn. moves ahead with some Common Core education standards — from minnesota.publicradio.org by Tim Post

 

Carry the Common Core in Your Pocket! — from appolearning.com by Monica Burns

Excerpt:

Whether you are a parent or educator, you have likely heard the buzz around the Common Core Learning Standards. Here’s the deal.

Across the United States schools are adopting these national standards to prepare students for college and careers by introducing rigorous content to children in all subject areas. The standards cover students in Kindergarten through Grade 12 in English Language Arts and Mathematics. The Common Core Standards app by MasteryConnect organizes the CCLS for students, parents and teachers with mobile devices.

 

 

Addendum on 6/19/13:

Addendum on 6/27/13: 

 

From DSC:

  • What if you want to allow some remote students to come on into your face-to-face classroom?
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  • What if you want to allow those remote students to be seen and communicated with at eye level?
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  • What if you want Remote Student A to join Group 1, and Remote Student B to join Group 2?
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Well…how about using one of these devices  in order to do so!


 

New video collaboration robot: TelePresence gets moving — from cisco.com by Dave Evans

Excerpt:

That is why Cisco’s new joint effort with iRobot—demonstrated publicly this week for the first time—is so exciting: We’ve created a mobile Cisco TelePresence unit that brings collaboration to you—or, conversely, brings you to wherever you need to collaborate. Called iRobot Ava 500, this high-definition video collaboration robot combines Cisco TelePresence with iRobot’s mobility and self-navigation capabilities, enabling freedom of movement and spontaneous interactions with people thousands of miles away.

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irobot-june-10-2013
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iRobot Ava™ 500 Video Collaboration Robot — published on Jun 10, 2013
iRobot and Cisco have teamed to bring the Ava 500 video collaboration robot to market. The robot blends iRobot’s autonomous navigation with Cisco’s TelePresence to enable people working off-site to participate in meetings and presentations where movement and location spontaneity are important. The new robot is also designed to enable mobile visual access to manufacturing facilities, laboratories, customer experience centers and other remote facilities.

 

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Double Robotics Double

http://www.doublerobotics.com/img/use-office.jpg

 

 

MantaroBot™ TeleMe

 

 

 

From Attack of the Telepresence Robots! — from BYTE  by Rick Lehrbaum

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Kubi

http://twimgs.com/informationweek/byte/reviews/2013-Jan/robotic-telepresence/kubi.jpg

 

 

MantaroBot “TeleMe” VGo Communications “VGo” Anybots “QB” Suitable Technologies “Beam”

 

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RP-7i ROBOT

RP-7i Remote Presence Robot

 

Also see:

 

MOwayduino are mini robots designed to get kids & kidults playing around with robotics — from techcrunch.com by Natasha Lomas

Excerpt:

Fast forward a few decades and enter mOwayduino: programmable Arduino-based robot toys designed to be used in conjunction with mobile apps (e.g for radio controlling the device via the phone’s accelerometer) plus hardware add-ons — creating a rich environment for learning by playing around with hardware and software building blocks.

Or that’s the idea. At the moment, mOwayduino is at the concept/prototyping stage.  The Spanish company behind the project is apparently aiming to crowdfund the idea via Indiegogo. For now, you can register your interest via their websiteUpdate: mOwayduino’s makers say the Indiegogo campaign to fund production will launch in less than two weeks. “If we succeed, in three months, it will be on market. For people supporting the Indiegogo project, mOwayduino will be available at a special prize,” the company tells TechCrunch. “If we exceed the money we need for the production, we will develop a graphical programming App for tablets.”

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29 games kids can play to try Engineering — from freetech4teachers.com by Richard Byrne

Excerpt:

Applications for Education
The games found on Try Engineering are appropriate for middle school and elementary school use. The games could be good activities for students to try after you have used one of the Try Engineering lesson plans addressing a game topic. Some of the lesson plans address concepts that are appropriate for high school students.

 

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Teacher gives epic resignation in video — from eSchoolNews.com by Meris Stansbury
“Everything I love about teaching is now extinct.”

 

 

InPursuitOfHappiness-ATeachersResignation-May2013

 

From DSC :
After listening to this, I can’t help but reflect on the run-away train/emphasis on standardized tests. It appears that not only has such an emphasis robbed the joy, curiosity, wonder, initiative, and creativity of our students, but also that of our teachers. 

With each day that passes, I want to see more programs and opportunities that support an amazing variety of pathways and choices.  We each have different gifts, abilities, passions, callings, etc.  — teachers as well as students.   The very words “standards” and “standardization” seem to be incongruous with how we are actually made.

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Perhaps I should have called this posting, “Assessment gone awry…?”

 

 

 

 

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11-year-old-inventor-May2013

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With thanks going out to Mr. Joe Byerwalter for bringing this to my attention.

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Game changers + kids — from live.huffingtonpost.com

Excerpt:

What happens when you bring business innovators together with today’s youth? Choose2Matter is about to find out. We talk to the people behind Choose2Matter and leaders of the business world about the power of the idea that everyone matters.

 

Also see:

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Choose2Matter-May2013

Michigan district fires all teachers, closes every school — from takepart.com by Suzi Parker
A funding crisis caused the Buena Vista School District to close its schools for the rest of the year—and perhaps permanently.

 

From DSC:
This is not right.

If the State of Michigan can’t resolve this…
I hope that a corporation or two — or a major philanthropist or two — steps in here to insure that all these students have Internet access. Then provide/allow these students to go online.  Let these students take any class that they want to — and help them enjoy learning as much as possible. They will learn things along the way — without even knowing that they are learning (along the lines of what Sugata Mitra has been saying).

Are there issues with this idea? You bet. I can think of several off the top of my head:

  • Parents out at work, kids at home…
  • Online learning works best with disciplined students…
  • The students may take courses that are not STEM-related
    (However, if they are interested in another discipline or topic, these things could be brought into their learning along the way.)
  • The students may not take courses related to the Common Core standards
    (However, this is not a big concern for me; as pounding everyone into a similar “mold” goes against the reality that each of us is different.  We each have different gifts, skills, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, passions, interests, and preferences.)

But we’ve let these kids down — and make no mistake, we will all pay the price for this type of thing — one way or another. We need to help these kids discover the joy of learning…before it’s too late. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

5 ways to build a future leader — from forbes.com by Meghan Biro

Excerpt:

This skills shortage threatens to undermine all the positive advances in talent recruitment and management and this is alarming to me.

Companies just can’t find the people they need. And at the same time, they’re cutting their recruiting and development budgets, expecting new hires to hit the ground running.

Calvin College professor: 18 reasons to save art education in elementary schools — from mlive.com by Jo-Ann VanReeuwyk

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artistjpg-07eaac856a9e51ae_large.jpg
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Jo-Ann VanReeuwyk holds a piece of art she created called “Sheath, ”
which she made from grapevine and is displaying during a
Calvin Symposium on Worship in 2010.
Paul Newby II | MLive.com

 

From DSC:
A valuable list of contributions that we receive/experience from the arts!!! Here are 5 of them:

  1. To participate in the arts is to be fully human.
  2. Art is a way of knowing and a form of communication.
  3. The arts teach problem-solving, risk-taking, creative thinking, collaborative thinking, innovative thinking. Indeed all of the higher level thinking skills.
  4. Art helps form multiple perspectives. It gives voice. It helps us identify and express issues that are global, common to all people groups.
  5. The arts emphasize value.

 

 

© 2024 | Daniel Christian