[LINK] Adding e-Literacy to the National Curriculum

[Tom Worthington]

Senator Lundy has posted a very useful draft submission on ICT skills 
for students 
<http://www.katelundy.com.au/2010/04/22/open-submission-to-the-national-curriculum-consultation/> 
to the Australian National Curriculum Consultation 
<http://www.acara.edu.au/consultation.html>.

The Senator proposes three core skills, to which I suggest adding 
"e-literacy" as a mandatory part of the curriculum. That is: we need to 
teach students how to read and write in the online environment.

The Draft K-10 Curriculum documents from ACRA make some mention of 
online literacy <http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/>:

     "... Students learn to interpret, appreciate, evaluate and create 
literary texts such as narrative, poetry, prose, plays, film and 
multimodal texts, in spoken, print and digital/online contexts...

     Multimodal/ digital focus ... cartoons, websites, picture books, 
films and television including children’s drama, Aboriginal paintings, 
cook books, road directories, pamphlets, online search engines, ebooks. ...

     Literature ... Students learn to interpret, appreciate, evaluate 
and create literary texts such as narrative, poetry, prose, plays, film 
and multimodal texts, in
     spoken, print and digital/online contexts. ...

     Research skills ... Multimodal/ digital focus advertisements, 
current affairs programs, newspapers and magazines, literary websites, 
graphic novels, manga, animation, feature films, television drama 
series, television documentaries, bio-pics and mockumentaries, blogs, 
wikis, mash ups, online social networking sites, ebooks ..."

     From: English Australian Curriculum, Draft Consultation version 
1.0.1, ACRA, April 2010 (emphasis added)

     "... Information and communication technologies (ICT) are evident 
in historical skills associated with locating, processing and 
communicating historical information. This includes the use of search 
tools for accessing a growing range of digitised online materials, 
spreadsheets and databases for analysing evidence and historical trends, 
and video conferencing for collaboration and debating ideas. ICT tools, 
such as wikis and blogs, have the potential to enhance students’ 
analytical thinking capabilities in their study of history. ...

     From: History Australian Curriculum, Draft Consultation version 
1.0.1, ACRA, April 2010 (emphasis added)

I attempted to complete the Australian Curriculum online survey to 
comment on some issues, but I was unable to get the web based survey to 
work <http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Survey>.

One comment I had was that the ACRA web site fails to meet manditory 
government web standards. The home page failed HTML validation, Mobile 
OK, and accessibility for the disabled tests.

After becoming frustrated by the poor quality of online communications I 
wrote a book chapter on "How to Read and Write E-mail Messages" (the 
book has a forward by Senator Lundy): <http://tomw.net.au/nt/intrnt.html>.

In the decade since then there has been considerable progress in 
understanding of how communication online differs from writing on paper 
and speaking face to face. Also the research in this area has shown how 
many assumptions about traditional communication were incorrect.

While much has been learnt, little of this has been reflected in the way 
literacy is taught in schools, or universities. That can be changes 
quickly using the computers, networks and software now being made 
available to educators and students. However, such an education also 
requires suitable assessment. It would be unfortunate to teach students 
how to communicate online and then assess their performance with a 
closed book pencil and paper test.

In the book "Green Technology Strategies" <http://tomw.net.au/green/> I 
outline a course which uses online forms for education, where the 
students learn by collaborating with each other, with the teacher in the 
role of mentor <http://tomw.net.au/technology/it/collaborative_eteaching/>.
While this course is at the postgraduate level for universities in 
Australia and North America, essentially the same techniques can be 
applied in schools.

It cannot be assumed that young people know how to communicate online 
for scholarly purposes, just because they can use an online forum. They 
need to learn how to use these tools in a more structured and 
disciplined way.

As Senator Lundy notes, students also need formal training in the sue of 
software tools. Existing educational standard may be of use for this, 
such as the International Computer Driving Licence 
<http://www.icdl.com.au/about_icdl.php/>.

But it needs to be kept in mind that such standards tend to emphasise 
the mechanics of how to use computer software, rather than how to use it 
to communicate with people.

ps: Version of this with more links and updates at: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/05/adding-e-literacy-to-national.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890