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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Needed Skills for New Media

George Siemens post pointed me to Henry Jenkins New media literacies and indirectly to a white paper that provided the following list of needed skills for new media literacy:
  • Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
  • Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
  • Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
  • Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
  • Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
  • Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
  • Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
  • Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
  • Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
  • Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
  • Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
I saw Henry Jenkins speak at the eLearningGuild's Annual Gathering and I must confess that I was a bit critical. Henry was great at introducing the concepts of participatory culture - but he didn't really get into the implications of what this meant for all of us. So, I am very glad that George pointed me back here, because this gets into exactly what I was hoping for from him.

While Henry focuses primarily on students, the question is really important to all of us. In other words, in a world with Wikipedia, blogs, social networking, etc. - not to mention in a world of Google as the interface to knowledge - what new skills, techniques and tools do we need?

In looking at similar skills but with a slant towards the skills that knowledge workers need, I might rephrase them into the following list:
  • Work Integration — the ability to leverage social media and personal learning as part of problem solving
  • Meta-Learning — the ability to look at your own work and learning processes to continuously identify improvement opportunities
  • Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
  • Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix content as part of work and learning
  • Scanning — the ability to quickly scan from a wide variety of sources, to focus on salient details in order to maintain a broad picture and also to focus as needed to salient details.
  • Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
  • Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
  • Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
  • Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of information and conversation across multiple modalities
  • Networking Building — the ability to build a network of people who can help with a wide variety of needs
  • Network Access - the ability to quickly access your network for a variety of different kinds of needs in different ways using different tools
  • Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
  • Knowledge Work - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information as part of work processes that captures personal value, builds network, and collects appropriate feedback
Would it be fair to say that we have a responsibility to build these skills in ourselves? And help build these skills in others?

Isn't this what eLearning 2.0 is all about?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a comprehensive list of needed skills Tony. Thanks for assembling these in an easy to follow/understand format. I have a workshop coming up and I planned on addressing "needed skills" for workers in the settlement sector. Your list will help explain these skills.
Thanks,

Brent