RU Digitally Ready, at HEA conference 2012

This week was the HEA conference in Manchester.  I was presenting a Digital Literacies workshop, called RU Digitally Ready?

The theme for the conference was Great Expectations, something which I believe sums up the potential mindset of our incoming students with the change in fees, but which also fits with the University of Reading’s aspirations for all its members, both staff and students, when it comes to improving our levels of Digital Literacy.

The workshop abstract said:

"Digital literacy levels can vary widely between
different individuals, roles and individual lifelong
learning agendas. Develop innovative training
opportunities to help improve everyone’s level of
skill in this rich learning landscape, even in times
of constrained resources, following the Digitally
Ready project’s experiences."

and the aim was to provide some structured thinking space to help delegates consider ways to engage learners (staff and students, in this case) with the need for them to take ownership of their own development of digital literacies.

I re-used the materials from the student-facing workshops I ran recently, supplemented with some images from various photographers available under CC licences from Flickr.  The images I chose happened to be of two dinosaurs at a theme park, two gnomes playing chess, a bug made from old bits of junk and a Vietnamese gate.  It is fair to say that these were chosen with an element of ‘metaphor’ in mind, but it was left to the delegates to interpret them as they chose.

There were many interesting interpretations, with the gnomes being most used.  How would you use these to come up with ideas to help motivate people?

(CC-BY-SA CafeYak.com http://www.flickr.com/people/14893221@N06)

(CC-BY rfduck http://flickr.com/photos/rfduck)

(CC-BY-NC-SA Pigalle http://www.flickr.com/photos/pigalleworld)

( CC-BY Tony Fischer http://www.flickr.com/people/tonythemisfit)

About patparslow

I am a researcher in the School of Systems Engineering, working in the fields of social media, digital identity and learning. I have previously worked in IT training/education, land survey, civil engineering, IT support, and as a software engineer.
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