A curriculum for the 21st Century should surely acknowledge that our relationship with digital technologies now transcends the desktop computer and an understanding of the processes going on “inside the box”. Whilst interesting and valuable, these elements of the curriculum cannot by themselves, produce people capable of making the most of emerging technologies and avoiding the potential pitfalls of what Castells (2000) refers to as a ‘Network society’.

We are challenged by the socio-cultural rationale for a curriculum to explore the notion of “the digital citizen” and to move towards a coherent educational experience which prepares people for a world fundamentally different to that of little more than a decade ago. "To participate and take advantage, citizens must be digitally literate - equipped with the skills to benefit from and participate in the Information Society. This includes both the ability to use new ICT tools and the media literacy skills to handle the flood of images, text and audiovisual content that constantly pour across the global networks" (Europe's Information Society Thematic Portal, 2007).

We have similar issues and aspirations in further and higher education, where "Most students arrive ... with a reasonable level of proficiency in using digital devices. Many have encountered digital resources and tools at school or in employment. But the university curriculum is where they develop advanced digital study and research skills, and encounter professional practices with digital technologies. All the evidence shows that students' digital capability advances most when they are engaged in activities that are meaningful in the context of their chosen course of study" (Exeter CASCADE project).

Digital Curriculum Presentation

The Vimeo video stream should be clever enough to detect the type of video stream you need for your device. If you do have difficulties with watching the video please leave us a message on the General Questions discussion board.

Tools

At LSBU we have a small studio, with a green screen. This allows us to shoot a dialogue to camera using an autocue. Images are created using a presentation package (set to widescreen format). Using Final Cut Pro video editing software, the images are inserted into the video replacing the green background. This might sound complicated but it is actually one of the easiest ways of creating "eLectures" to support blended and eLearning.

References

Castells. E. (2000) The Rise of The Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. London: Wiley.

Europe's Information Society Thematic Portal (2007) Digital Literacy: Skills for the Information Society http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/tl/edutra/skills/index_en.htm , accessed 9 December 2009

The Exeter CASCADE Project [WWW] http://as.exeter.ac.uk/cascade/