I have basically had a computer since the '80s when I bought a Commodore 64 and took my first programming course to learn BASIC. Discovered that I learned best by making huge mistakes - things like formating over the floppy disks that held the operating system, or erasing a system file. The world did not end and the PC did not explode. Okay, there was that one time when I re-installed over part of a hard drive that I wanted to keep, yet I survived. Eventually I evolved into that person that everyone asked for help when they couldn't make the program they were using work or print out that document.

When I, much later, decided to become a teacher, computers seemed like a natural choice. So I taught students and adults things like computer basics, web development and media production. That eventually led to the job I have today as an educational technologist at Karolinska. Though I must admit that it was KI's involvment with MOOCs that sparked my interest. A MOOC is a massively open online course. I love the idea of education being open to anyone who wants to learn and believe that digital tools are slowly but surely removing barriers that keep so many people from accessing an education.

A little digital history

I connected with the world through music and Internet forums and made worldwide friends through ICQ and IRC while being an online DJ for Seismic radio. We used Real Producer to broadcast to our audience while chatting about the music we played. ICQ eventually led to MSN messenger, which was then abandoned for Facebook. I even have long-time accounts on Google and Twitter, but have not really used them in a regular way, other than for school-related projects.

My digital world today

Doug Belshaw's eight elements of digital literacies is an interesting way to make sense of something that is really very messy, since as he mentioned, the digital world is very broad and consists of far too many pieces to be able to pigeonhole into one meaning. 

While I consider myself to obtained the skill and mindsets for many of the digital listeracies I also notice that I am continually striving to find some sort of balance.My ultimate goal is to maintain some control over that identity that is out there and that one that is me. 

A screencast about Jing

A screencast about Jing

I did a short screencast to share a tip about a nifty little webtool called Jing. Here is what I thought about the experience. 

Using the screencast program was pretty easy once I got the hang of it. I found it difficult to do any recording where anyone could hear me and found it necessary to find a quiet place to work. It also helped me to write a script of what I wanted to say in the film clip. I experimented with different screen sizes and ended up using full screen to show all of the steps included in my infovideo. 

All in all, I think video is an excellent way of sharing information. It does take a bit of time to prepare but once it is done it will save time in the long run. 

Student blogging

Handwriting by djking 

What I found as a high school teacher is that many students (in my case mostly boys) detest writing reports. So when one group of students were working on creating their first film together and there was a need for individuals to document the process, I decided to try blogging instead of the usual log book. 

At first I was a bit worried that it would take a lot of time to show them how and get them started, but they understood the procedure and opened their blog accounts without any problems. Each week I would read what they had written and respond with my own comments. I liked that they had access to feedback so quickly.

Publishing what they wrote online seemed to affect the quality of what they wrote. Their texts were more reflective, not just reporting what they had done during the week, but even writing about problems that occurred and explanations for what they would need to think of during the week to come. 

The only drawback that I experienced was that some of the students had trouble remembering their passwords from one week to the next, or even which e-mail address they had used to open their accounts. So time that could have been spent writing was instead spent logging in to their blog. I had no way to help them with that. 

Now that I know about Voice Thread where students can record comments to a specific course, I would be tempted to try using that as an alternative to writing when they need to document their work.