Tapio Varis 2002 1

Teleworking for the Media and Culture

Tapio Varis

Professor and Unesco Chair in Global e-Learning

www.uta.fi/~titava

Tapio Varis 2002 2

Public Private Partnership (PPP)

• Skills crisis from 1750 throughout the 19th century

• Industrial developments required much wider basic literacy and mathematical skills

• Railway communications required to develop a new understanding of time and the behavious of mechanical machines

Tapio Varis 2002 3

21st Century Literacy SummitBerlin, 7-8 March 2002

• technology literacy• information literacy, contextual literacy• media creativity• social competence and responsibility

Tapio Varis 2002 4

James Potter: Media Literacy• “Media literacy is a perspective from which

we expose ourselves to the media and interpret the meaning of the message we encounter. We build our perspective from knowledge structures.” (1998)

Tapio Varis 2002 5

Multidimensional Media Literacy(James Potter)

• Continuum• Needs to be developed• Multidimensional: cognitive, emotional,

aesthetic, moral• Purpose: more control over interpretations• Effects & influence

Tapio Varis 2002 6

The Political Imperative What is e-learning

e-learning is:

“the use of new multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality of learning by facilitating access to resources and services as well as remote exchanges and collaboration.”

eLearning Action Plan March 2001European Union

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American Society for Training & Development (2001)

• E-learning is the use of Internet and digital technologies to create experiences that educate our fellow human beings

• E-technologies do not change how human beings learn but remove constraints

• E-learning is not just Web-casting lecture, nor training materials dumped online

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Orientations for Learning

• Behavioristic

• Cognitive

• Humanistic

• Social

• Constructivist

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eLearning about eLearning

• Research streams late 1990´s - early 2000: designing university programmes, focussing on e-learning, knowledge management, litreature review, technology analysis, network pedagogy

• Culture and adoptability of systems, electronic libraries, books, and media

• Differenet fields and disciplines

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E-Learning as a Process

• Pedagogical models

• Digital literacy

• What is e-Learning

• Network learning process

• Transparency

• Blended approach

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Pedagogical Models

Investigative learning Problem-based learning

Community-based learning Experiential learning

Self-directed learning Dialogical Network-based learning

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• Digital Literacy is "the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers." Paul Gilster Digital Literacy, Paul Gilster, Wiley and Computer Publishing, 1997

Digital Literacy as a way of thinking

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Tools of the Mind

• Sound

• Sight

• Brains

• Touch

• Telepresence

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Howard Gardner: Multiple Intelligences (1993)

• Human organism responds (or fails to respond) to different kinds of contents in the world, such as language, number, and other human beings. Faculties like perception or memory may well differ in strength or mode of operations across intelligences, with memory for spatial information being better or worse than memory for musical information in a particular individual.

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Problems and promises• Experience demonstrates that collaborative

ventures, based on existing providers and reliant on re-engineering of existing teaching and learning practices, are unlikely to be succesful, even where they are well financed

• A spirit is needed that recognizes the values of a multicultural world, civil society and participation and empowerment of people

• Digital literacy

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Network Pedagogy in Practice

• A Finnish case (Hannele Koli, Häme Polytechnic HAMK, and Pasi Silander, University of Joensuu):

• Teacher/instructor more telepresent than before• Traditional approach teaching-centered• Network pedagogy learner-centered (learning as a

process)

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How to Learn?

• Learning process has to be planned in advance as a goal-oriented activity with time frames

• Achieving the goals (learning from lectures without a lecturer)

• Combining traditional face-to-face approach with virtual learning environment (blended approach)

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Experiences of multimedia instruction

• Constraints imposed by the Internet

• Evolution of Web based delivery platforms

• Students learning culture

• Multimedia enhancements

• Interactivity and promoting collaborations

• The synchronous dimension

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eLearning team (Horton 2001)

• Managing the project (1 member)

• Designing the course (3 members)

• Building content (6 members)

• Providing the technical infrastructure (3 members)

• Conducting e-Learning (3 members)

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Cultural literacy and education

• ”learners must become aware and tolerant of the multiple cultures they will encounter online”

• ”language skills, national histories and customs”

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