ThatCamp Philly: Digital Literacy

After running a discussion on working with students who have low technology skills at the first ThatCamp Philly, I ended up on a panel discussing general digital literacy. There was a very productive discussion by attendees, which included friends like Rebecca Goldman and Janine Utell.
  • 55% of households in Philadelphia lack internet access.
  • 550, 000 individuals in Philadelphia are considered low literate.
  • A lot of questioning of the "digital natives" myth.
  • Students often do not realize they need to know technology to take an online class.
  • Digital literacy issues often combine with *literacy* issues.
  • Many employers do not have paper applications. Now what? Jobs do not have time/resources to train.
  • I have had students cite from Yahoo Answers.
  • An idea to survey students' technology skills.
  • Revolving door of adjuncts means repeated training.
  • All humanities classes should have lab component.
  • Everyone keeps talking about digital natives!
  • How do we get expectations to line up?
  • Generational differences in how technology is used could be part of this...Rachel gives example of Using Google Street Maps in class and students being blown away by it.
  • Jazmin does work with a library "tech van" to teach citizens how to use email, Office, etc
  • Students don't know how to do research for transferring to colleges...
  • Often digital literacy can be connected to *literacy* issues...
  • 550,000 adults in Philadelphia are "low literate" (half the population of adults!!!)
  • Connecting service learning to literacy and digital literacy
  • Jobs don't want paper applications
  • You have to have baseline of programmatic literacy or you're just not going to get the job
  • A lot of our returning students are not tech savy
  • Computers can be used to create literacy
  • Surveys for what they use on desktop and phone 
  • Add what browser you use to survey
  • Students often form web searches as questions!
  • Discussion of relationships with libraries
  • Freshman Comp students required at multiple schools to attend a library session...
  • Issues with adjuncts not being "invested" in programs to add this stuff...
  • Yahoo Answers can be solved with better understanding of credible sources...take a day to discuss them specifically...
  • Yahoo Answers is not New York Times is not Science
  • Rebecca: Why do they need scholarly sources!?!
  • Research project as a treasure hunt!
  • Grammar, syntax, protocols, of digital literacy
  • Discussion of what is required for K-12 programs...
  • Students frightened by changing thesis as research goes on
  • Rebecca: Students come to her already written paper and looking for sources afterwards...
  • Have empirical library days in Comp II and/or Lit classes
  • Another call for digital literacy across the curriculum
  • Having, besides the four papers, allowing students do pick and choose platforms for assignments (150 points)
  • By presentation day, must have sources that need to be DEFENDED
  • A big change these days is students don't have to learn how to code/wysiwyg 
  • List of approved sources for papers (make using these part of rubric)
  • Rebecca: students have to do background research first before expert research
  • search involves failure!!!

ThatCamp Philadelphia: An Overview

A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of attending ThatCamp Philadelphia at Chemical Heritage in Philadelphia. After getting a little lost (4th and Chestnut was closed for a protest), I made it to the conference and found out that the session I proposed a few days before had been picked. I really appreciate that, despite not being there, people still voted for my session. I met up with old friends like Amanda French (lots of ohhhs and ahhh when she mentions she is ThatCamp coordinator), Deb Gussman (10 years ago, she was my first literature professor and now she is attending my panels. Wow.), and John Theibault and settled in at the conference, which had very impressive coffee. I also met longtime Twitter friend Janine Utell and became acquainted at lunch with very awesome people like Siobhan Phillips and Rebecca Goldman and Adeline Koh, a new friend from the Stockton family.

(although I wish I could have been at lunch with John and Amanda because I hear they discussed Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of my favorite poets)

The main meeting room was packed by the time I got to the conference. I got a little lost on the way towards 4th street because of traffic being blocked by a protest march. Google Maps on my phone, run through my speakers, really saved me. 

I spent a lot of time during the day with Amanda French, who is That Camp Coordinator (oohhh, aahhh). 

One of the most interesting aspects of this unconference was how good the coffee is at Chemical Heritage. 

The day was planned via a series of poster boards. 

ThatCamp Jersey Shore: Open Source Tools

I believe this panel on open source tools was the last one on the first day. We ended up going around the room and discussing open source tools we have found useful in the classroom.

  • Joomla is a promising CMS that has many useful plugins. Someone showed one which integrates photo galleries and Google Maps.
  • There was some discussion, since we were there, of Atlantic City. The Atlantic City Experience uses Joomla.
  • AC is an easy city to forget because a lot of the living documents are gone.
  • Deborah Gussman talked about a digital edition (I can’t remember the author unfortunately…Deb?) she is working on. She wants to supplement it with political and legal documents. And wedding dresses. There was some talk that Omeka may be more useful for this.
  • A big issue we discussed was how there is no easy way to do backup on most blogging platforms. I also brought up Zotero as an example of that too. There needs to be a simpler way for non-techy users to do backup/move content.
  • Nines.org has paid and open source content. A “guest pass” can be acquired. They also fund digital humanities archives like Herman Melville’s Typpe.

 

Google Maps

In case you have not heard yet, Google Maps is a new service brought to you by the people at Google. I have always had a bad experience with mapping sites online. Numerous times I have have gotten even more lost than my total lack of natural direction gets me by using them. Google Maps gives you real time mapping and real time updating. You can also search for local businesses with it. Sounds like a good tool.

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