literaties .... but digital ones?

Who am I in a digital age? First of all my problem was to know what digital literacies mean. I had no idea of the dimensions that could be taken in consideration, about the expectations one - as me - would be confronted with in her job. The dimensions suggested by White and Cornu (White, D. & Le Cornu, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9).    were easy to understand an a first raising of consciousness about my personal positioning in digital contexts. I was surprised to hear that it is not about being young or "more experienced"  - to become digitally literate - ...what a relief....it's more about how I would like to expand my current literacies and what to develop for a future identity in a digital context. It was interesting to see that I had more residential spheres than I would have said before we elaborated our map during this first webinar on topic 1. I felt like being on the pole of "no literacies" finding myself with Iphone, laptop and piece of paper to get my literacy positioning done, switching between several opened web-pages - almost all of them rather new for me... and beyond this: All in English.... as you have noticed, not my "homerun". 

Even more surprised I was when I heard myself say that I would be OK for leading the first - this - topic ..... after a long period of silence in our pbl group (at least it felt long). When we started I was not prepared how I should have been. I had problems to understand some of my pbl-group members (due to different English sounds, to pronunciation, to transmission qualities and very fast speaking). My ears went crazy, trying to understand all that was said in our first meeting(s) and I was sure to miss the really important points for sure. It was great to get help and facilitation, to express " not knowing" or "not yet understanding". I think to remember that it was about the third meeting when I began to relax a little bit, when there where first jokes in the group and the humor became visible when we first worked in collaboration online. 

Before attending this course I was sure to not register online for a tool I did never see, never use, not knowing how to use the tools offered inside.... but I did and it was a mixed feeling of excitement and apprehension of leading the group in a chaos. 

It was good to know (from former meetings) that it is ok to wait some moments for opening documents, finding drives and folders, defining the right type of a document to let us all together work on the same file. Otherwise it would have been a difficult part of my very fresh online learning journey.... 

Looking back to this moments, I realized how important relation and trust building in an online learning community was and is and that leading this group building processes is part of a competency that one should elaborate ... to facilitate and foster online learning in groups. 

Connecting means getting in touch - not physically

here I am again - looking forward to many meetings in the next three months
We invest quite much (around 10%) to get to know the course, the outline, structure, the working model and the people: at our university and than in my small group of eight or ten with our women facilitators.
It felt like sports at the beginning - regarding the meeting times it definitely was - for the tools and platform and handling of all together during a zoom-Meeting (not allowed at this point in time at our School).
A very effective and clever criteria to bring people together into small groups: Meeting structure preferences... even thinking about finding four meetings for the following two or three weeks seemed to me craisy (thinking about the problems we usually face when searching an hour or two within the team..).
We were able to find two meeting times and we took time to introduce ourselves and our tasks, working alliance and proceeding to fulfill the upcoming tasks. For me it did not end here - I was not able to understand a part of the communication in the group - my ears felt like a satellite - searching for signals when my colleagues from very different regions were talking with more or less good infrastructure for transmission.
It took me some time to relax after the meetings - with an impression of having done sports physically..... trying to understand every single word, meaning, expression, feeling,... of my new colleagues. It felt somehow exciting with some anxieties "shining" through a good feeling of having chosen the right course for me.

What I realize several times  - Klaus Grawe (2004) theory of consistency and his model of the four psychological  needs: orientation/security - self esteem (protection and enhancement)  - belonging/being part  - searching for lust/prevent reluctance  are active - at work, in learning environments, in common, known and new situations. Many reactions inside me and expressed in the group, in reflections with team mates at work were linked to one or more of these 4 basic psychological needs.

To take time for a start, to label it "connecting week" means also to highlight the importance of this "joining" phase and at the same time to give the group the right to take the time (almost) without any delivery at the end -- without pressure of results.
I liked this very actively expressed "connecting week" and I would even give it more time or facilitation. It is the first step, for everyone the fullest calendar (problem to find common meeting times) and on the same time the creation of the ground on which things will grow....

The importance I give to connecting time for peoples not knowing each other - will be raised.