[kids online: new publication]

"Kids Online: Opportunities and Risks for Children", edited by Sonia Livingstone and Leslie Haddon (Bristol: Policy Press). 

The book provides an up to date account of how children use the internet in Europe, including such topical issues as social networking, risky contacts, parental mediation, media literacy and many more.


Ordering information is available here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/EUKidsOnline/KidsOnlineflyer.pdf

As Professor Tanya Byron, author of the influential Byron Review into Safer Children in a Digital World says, "Professor Livingstone and colleagues provide extensive evidence-based findings which enable academics, educationalists, policy makers, parents and young people to think beyond anxieties generated by new technologies and make informed decisions about maximizing digital opportunities while managing risks. An impressive and essential book, central to the child digital safety debate."


Expected Results:

• Core findings regarding children’s and parents’ experiences of online technologies, focused on comparisons of children’s and parents’ perceptions of and practices regarding online risk and safety.
  
• Patterns of risk and safety online to be identified following top-down hypothesis testing and bottom-up exploration of relationships among different variables, conducted on a cross-national basis.
  
• Evidence-based policy and research recommendations.
  

Read more here.






Note: top image from Kids Online book site and second image from Teenagers Today site.

[digital participation: report]

"This review aims to provide a critical introduction to the policies and research on the subjects of digital literacy and digital participation, seeking to show what they mean for classroom practice. Aimed at teachers and practitioners, especially those involved in continuing professional development programmes, and providers of teacher training or practice-based Masters courses, it reviews the major research and evidence on developing digital literacy and digital participation in the classroom.


It highlights the fact that there is extensive theory, conceptual development and policy on digital literacy and digital participation, yet little evidence about how this can be translated into practice. The review aims to support and enable practitioners to start developing informed strategies to promote digital participation in real school settings by introducing them to a range of debates and key concepts and by relating these concepts to practice. It should be used as the basis for supporting the development of teachers’ professional knowledge and skills in the critical use of digital media and technology for learning and for the enhancement of the curriculum. Throughout, examples of existing and emerging practices are included as breakout boxes to illustrate the conceptual content.


The document supports Futurelab’s Digital Participation project, a programme of research and development in collaboration with teachers in primary and secondary schools which seeks to model, trial and evaluate practical strategies for enhancing young people’s digital literacy in the classroom and their development of digital participation for life.


For more details and related documents see:
www.futurelab.org.uk/projects/digital-participation."

Read the entire report here: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/lit_reviews/DigitalParticipation.pdf

[new teaching resource: online learning communities]

Of interest to educators: a new release from IGI Global (they published a paper, "Transliteracy as a Unifying Perspective," written by The Transliteracy Research Group - of which I am a part).

Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery
ISBN: 978-1-60566-780-5; 354 pp; August 2009
Published under Information Science Reference an imprint of IGI Global

http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?id=34727

Edited by: J. Ola Lindberg, Mid Sweden University, Sweden and Anders D. Olofsson, Umea University, Sweden


DESCRIPTION

In today's society, the professional development of teachers is urgent due to the constant change in working conditions and the impact that information and communication technologies have in teaching practices.

Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery features innovative applications and solutions useful for teachers in developing knowledge and skills for the integration of technology into everyday teaching practices. This defining collection of field research discusses how technology itself can serve as an important resource in terms of providing arenas for professional development.

****************************************

TOPICS COVERED

• Collaborative online professional development
• Computer-supported collaborative learning
• Education delivery
• Knowledge management in education
• Models of online communities
• Online learning communities
• Online pedagogy design and development
• Pedagogies afforded by technology
• Teacher professional development
• Virtual environments

For more information about Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery, you can view the title information sheet at http://www.igi-global.com/downloads/pdf/34727.pdf

To view the Table of Contents and a complete list of contributors online go
to http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?ID=34727&v=tableOfContents.

You can also view the first chapter of the publication at http://www.igi-global.com/downloads/excerpts/34727.pdf


Some other texts also on pedagogy and online learning communities that may be of interest (but note, some might require institutional access):

• Barriers to online teaching in post-secondary institutions: can policy changes fix it?
• Shift happens: Online education as a new paradigm in learning
• Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age: designing and delivering e-learning
• Online learning as information delivery: Digital myopia

[world digital library]

The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.

The principal objectives of the WDL are to:

• Promote international and intercultural understanding;
• Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet;
• Provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences;
• Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries.

Items on the WDL may easily be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution, or can be located by an open-ended search, in several languages. Special features include interactive geographic clusters, a timeline, advanced image-viewing and interpretive capabilities. Item-level descriptions and interviews with curators about featured items provide additional information.

Navigation tools and content descriptions are provided in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Many more languages are represented in the actual books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and other primary materials, which are provided in their original languages.

The WDL was developed by a team at the U.S. Library of Congress, with contributions by partner institutions in many countries; the support of the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and the financial support of a number of companies and private foundations.

Read more about the background, partners, contributors and more.

[cfp: born digital]

Educational Insights (an online journal mostly focused on education) has a call for papers out. Due date for abstracts is 15 of June:

Teresa Dobson, Academic Editor | Michael Boyce, Managing Editor

Born Digital (Contemporary Art and Education)

"Over the last 20 years a new generation of art and literature born as electronic, or borne within distributive digital channels, has developed in tandem with new ways of defining, measuring and decoding them (i.e. reading), and along side new delivery mechanisms for pedagogical methods and practices. Born Digital wishes to explore these new artifacts and their new distributive form in the context of pedagogy and artistic practice.

A wide range of new forms wherein narrative is restructuring and redefining itself are of interest: Blog novels; E-literature; Narrative within locative applications such as google maps and geo-tagging with GPS; RSS poetics; Narrative in the context of mobile games and social media applications such as youtube, flickr and facebook. Likewise, consideration and analysis of the digital artifacts born out these mediums is a concern to us.

We are interested playing with the concept of being Born Digital, taking into account multiple meanings of Born, including: Existing as a result of birth; Having a natural or perfectly suited ability; Existing as a result of a particular situation or feeling; And keeping in mind its homonym Borne, to play with a notion of transport, of delivery, of support and endurance.

Generally, we support submissions using an original approach, which avoid excessive commentary on any canon, and we encourage efforts to express the matter within the structure of the medium itself. That being said, we expect rigorously critical investigation within the parameters of any play.

Please submit your précis by June 15, 2009 to educational.insights@ubc.ca

For more information : born digital"