Concepts

Concepts
Words have different meaning. Let us understand each other. Share with us how do you understand a certain concept.


 * Media Literacy/Digital Literacy**

Media Literacy is one of the three areas where P2V will apply peer learning methodologies in policy, practice and school inspection. The P2V work plan describe it as a topic "significant in widening the uptake of e-learning in schools". On the European Commission website, following the launch of [|a public consultation on media literacy], the following definition is given:

Media Literacy may be defined as the ability to access, analyse and evaluate the power of images, sounds and messages which we are now being confronted with on a daily basis and are an important part of our contemporary culture, as well as to communicate competently in media available on a personal basis. Media literacy relates to all media, including television and film, radio and recorded music, print media, the Internet and other new digital communication technologies more. I also found this definition of Media Literacy in a report titled assessing the media literacy of UK adults: [|http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/bsc/pdfs/research/litass.pdf]

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has recently produced a ‘Media Literacy Statement’ (2001) in support of a general statement of policy on media literacy and critical viewing skills. This statement lays the primary emphasis on ‘the ability to think critically about viewing – ie to understand why one likes or dislikes certain programmes or genres and relate such preferences to moral and intellectual reference points; and, having done so, to take greater responsibility for viewing choices and the use of electronic media’


 * Digital Literacy** or **Competence** seems to be a sub-group of media literacy and is referred as follows in the European Commission's eLearning Programme website:


 * Promoting digital literacy**

This will encourage the acquisition of new skills and knowledge that we all need for personal and professional development and for active participation in an information-driven society.

In a document titled 'Implementation of Education and training 2010 Work Programme', the European Commission describes Digital Competencies as follows:
 * Digital Competence**

Digital competence involves the confident and critical use of electronic media for work, leisure and communication. These competences are related to logical and critical thinking, to high-level information management skills, and to welldeveloped communication skills. At the most basic level, ICT skills comprise the use of multi-media technology to retrieve, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in networks via the Internet.

//Source: Alan McCluskey//

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Valorise
The meaning of the word "//valorise//", according to my computer's dictionary is: "//give or ascribe value or validity to (something).//" It is, however, not in this sense that the word is used in European R&D projects. The EU Leonardo programme defines "//valorisation//" as "//... the process of disseminating and exploiting project outcomes to meet user needs, with the ultimate aim of integrating and using them in training systems and practices at local, regional, national and European level.//" There are a number of key expressions in this definition that might require clarification: process, dissemination, exploiting, outcomes, user needs, ultimate, integrating, using them. Trying to specify what some of those words mean should bring us closer to understanding what "//valorisation//" is really about. The use of the adjective "ultimate" - the Chambers 20th Century Dictionary says: "//furthest; last, final; limiting//" - seems to indicate that it is a question of a longer term and possibly underlying aim. It hints at something about the less immediate nature of this aim with respect to others. Uptake (if we can abbreviate "//integrate and use//" in such a way) is not the primary aim of the R&D project, but it may well be seen as fundamental from a wider perspective. In fact the success of a project could be considered in terms of the uptake of its outcomes, although this is not generally used as an indicator because uptake invariably takes place well after the project has finished. In addition, the very nature of R&D projects often sets valorisation beyond their boundaries at some future stage of a process that ideally extends in an unbroken line from the initial idea to its finalwide-scale uptake but in reality can be particularly fragmented especially in the field of education. The dictionary says of integrate: "//to combine (two things) so that they become a whole.//" Integration implies that something new and unfamiliar becomes progressively accepted and familiar through its use. In the process, the new and unfamiliar "//something//" will invariably get transformed and existing ways of doing things and the working context will also be changed. From this perspective, integration can be seen to be a learning process for those involved in it. In other words, valorisation is about strategies for "//changing minds//". In the European R&D context people don't talk so much of outcomes as "//deliverables//". That is to say, tangible project results such as a report, a method, a database, a thematic network or software and tools that can be seen to be the results of the project. It is much easier for us to grasp such tangible objects than intangible processes. Accountability is handled through deliverables. European funding procedures require deliverables to be "promised" at the beginning of the project and then produced at the end as proof that the work has been done. Yet in a successful valorisation process outcomes are not treated as finished products. They are invariably transformed as tey are integrated. Although R&D projects often involve some form of assessment of what future users will need, no prior study can ascertain exactly how the integration of complex outcomes will take place. This is because it is extremely difficult to predict how the outcome will be changed in the process and how the "//receiving//" context and ways of working will also be transformed. Beyond individual words, this definition glosses over one key question: who does what? One might be misled into believing that it is the same set of actors that are the subjects of the different verbs used: disseminating, exploiting, integrating, using. Dissemination may well be carried out be those who originally organized the project, although traditionally dissemination is not a major part of R&D projects. Depending on the nature of the partners, exploitation of outcomes may or may not be carried out by some of the project partners. If this is the case, it will not be done as part of the project itself but as part of their on-going activities. Often project outcomes are designed for a set of “//users//” who were not part of the original project although some of them may have tested the outcomes. End users themselves will necessarily carry out the integration and use of outcomes. A number of assumptions are inherent in the action of "//valorising//". One is that the outcome has a value for the audience with whom its creators seek to valorise it. Clearly the originators of the project are convinced of the value of what they have developed. In addition, the project that led to the outcome may well have "//tested//" the appropriateness of the proposed outcomes in terms of their validity for the future users. Testing the validity is not always done, however. When it comes to so called "//good practice//", its originators didn't necessarily create it with a view to having other people adopt it. A second assumption, implicit in the idea of valorisation, is that the outcome can be transferred from the context in which it was developed into a new context and still retain its value or validity. These two assumptions are interconnected. The value of the project outcome for the future "//adopters//" will depend on the extent to which they are able to get value from the outcome in their own context. Here a third "assumption" frequently comes into play: when the outcome has been carefully crafted for specific contexts, it can be used in those contexts as it stands. This assumption makes a statement about the word "//transferred//", in the second assumption above. This implies that outcomes can be treated like "//objects//" that can be shifted around and used at will. The P2P project, in its policy stand, clearly demonstrated that such an assumption has limited validity. Capitalising on the outcomes and experience of projects whether they be R&D projects or those done by teachers and pupils, cannot be satisfactorily carried out by the transfer of those outcomes or that experience like commodities from one context to another. Capitalising on the experience of others and the projects they have carried out requires a collective learning process that necessarily assesses the original idea or tools and then, when appropriate, transforms them into something that is appropriate in the new context. There is very little explicit understanding of the transformation process in the so-called "//transfer of knowledge//" and the valorisation of project results in education. There is however a certain tacit understanding of how ideas from other contexts can be used as inspiration to develop new solutions. Work is required on how valorisation, seen as capitalising on ideas, experience and tools from other contexts and projects as a starting point for developing appropriate solutions, can be encouraged through informal and semi-formal peer exchange and networking. This work should also include the development of a practice-driven evaluation approach to support self-evaluation as a central pillar in the peer-based valorisation process.
 * Meaning**
 * Ultimate**
 * Integration**
 * Outcomes**
 * User needs**
 * Who does what?**
 * Assumptions**
 * Hypotheses and ways forward**

//Source//: //Alan McCluskey, Saint-Blaise// http://www.connected.org/words/valorise.html

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Best Practice
Two words: “practice” and “best”. Practice refers to the way things are done. It encompasses the notion of tacit knowledge that is bound up in the way we do things, knowledge that has evolved over time. This knowledge makes sense in the context it was born in. It is also firmly anchored in personal experience. To share that practice – especially on a large scale - requires it to be formulated, shifting it from tacit to more formalised knowledge. This shift produces greater awareness of the ways things are done, but it also goes hand in hand with a loss of flexibility and of appropriateness. At the same time this shift is accompanied by a certain loss of vitality as knowledge is moved away from personal experience towards advice, instruction and theory. It is as if the knowledge were severed from the person and the context it sprang from. The word “best” implies a choice, making a selection based on values, intent and context. When people evolve new ways of doing things, they make the choices themselves. Whereas in the drive to generalise the use of best practices, there is a tendency to rely on an external expert body to define the criteria for what is good and not good. In so doing the personal process, based on experience and experimentation, is shifted out of the hands of the actors themselves. Practice, when it is “best”, migrates from being an integral part of the situation and the person to being an “object” that can be taken down from the shelf, handed round and applied. The overriding intent behind promoting the development of “best practice” is to capitalise on personal experience in developing exemplary ways of doing things so as to improve the ways everybody does those things. And beyond this intent is the drive to accelerate change and improvement in a highly competitive environment. The strategy chosen could be called commoditisation of practice. Personal experience is selected according to externally set criteria, stripped of its personal and contextual nature and then package such that it can be widely circulated and used by other actors. This strategy has a number of unfortunate consequences. It shifts the onus of knowing what is best in given circumstances away from the actors themselves and into the hands of external experts, resulting in a disempowerment of the actors that leads not only to rigid if not inappropriate ways of doing things but a also to a crucial loss of motivation on the part of actors. This strategy also shifts attention away from personal (and collective) experience as a rich and vibrant source of knowledge towards a dependency on pre-packed knowledge provided by others who are “experts” in developing such knowledge. My initial reaction was to try to shift the expert intermediary out of the equation by having the actors themselves formulate and share best practice. Doing so has the added advantage of increasing their awareness of what they do and how they do it. It also means that they reflect about their own criteria of quality. Despite these advantages, I suspect that practice will still get commoditised in the process, because the central aim remains the conversion of experience into useful “objects” of learning involving standardised descriptions of what is being done and how to do it. What is required is a way of sharing experience without loosing all its vitality and particularity such that it can inspire others to think about how and what they do. This is why I like the interview. It is a discussion between two people that can be used to give a form to the person’s story. The dialogue inherent in the interview allows the attentive listener to draw out underlying values and assumptions in a non-threatening way such that they become an integral part of the story.

//Source//: Alan McCluskey, Santa Luzia, Portugal http://www.connected.org/words/practice.html

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