Totally random but I can see the connection to digital literacy in this story. Learning new things helps me to understand how I feel when I am not very good at something yet. I found myself in a totally unfamiliar place, turning that around was hard.


Christmas 2011 saw me flat on my back unable to walk, shuffling was about all I could manage. I had a massive disk rupture.  All the medical professionals I had seen assured me I would need surgery; Physio, Sports Specialist, Anesthetist, Surgeon and my GP. I felt pretty low approaching the holidays one of the few times a year I get to go and play with my family, our holiday was canceled. I ended up getting lucky and an Anesthetist managed to squeeze me in for an epidural over the holiday period, this sorted out the pain more or less and then it was back to work.

I have been going to the gym for about three months and the results have been amazing and rapid in coming; the nerve damage in my leg has healed, I can do most of the things I want to with my children, I am pain free, I have lost a few kg, I am fitter and I haven’t had to have surgery yet. I still have some bad days that are not entirely pain free but the difference is I now have a plan.

I came back to work mid January with the prospect of back surgery weighing heavily on my mind and no confidence in my ability to live my life. I was scared to do anything. I couldn’t be injured, I couldn’t be off for weeks recovering from surgery, my partner has epilepsy so sometimes I am the only person available to look after our young children. I was really starting to feel stressed.

Then I meet Justin Stewart a Musculoskeletal Rehab Specialist at the Uni Rec Centre - he has helped me turn everything around. I hobbled into the gym with a right leg that had nerve damage, my foot was numb and I just couldn’t walk properly no matter how hard I tried. l sat down (not something that was easy for me to do) to have my first conversation with Justin, I told him my story and I cried. I was living my life feeling that everything was out of control and I had no prospect of recovery, no confidence and no hope.

Under Justin’s supervision I began my rehabilitation programme at the gym. Going to the gym was totally foreign to me, I had tried at different times in my life but I had never succeeded, I didn’t identify with those gym bunnies. I am that overweight middle aged women but I knew I had to give this a go or I would rapidly find myself on the operating table. I couldn’t let that happen who would look after my family? Justin showed me that I was up to the challenge, he focused on supporting me achieve, never giving me more than I could manage. He worked on my motivational hot spots and with encouragement and kindness got me coming back every week. I have been enjoying myself, having fun even, I don’t recognise myself anymore. I am that gym bunny now and the journey getting here has been transformational. 

Football Game

My 6 year old had her very first game of football today. I learnt to be a sideline supporter. This is something I have never done before I don't even like sport and If I was to participate in any sport it sure wouldn't be a team one.  I wonder what I can draw from this new learning? Turning up was a good start,  I was motivated by a desire to do the right thing by my child.  Participating well that was easy everyone else was so I guess I was drawn into it by others enthusiasm. I got what to do by imitating others, even the 3 year old picked it up. I even knew when others deviated from the acceptable, not had to do saying the ref sucks in front of 6 years isn't good no matter what setting you think about.  Last but not least it was fun, didn't expect that.

What to do with just two

We had a session today with an equal ratio of presenters and participants. The participants had very different experience with ICT. It seems harder to talk conceptually with those who have had very little exposure to technology.

Terrible Aircon

Today a colleague and I ran a session in a room with aircon that had the participants either distracted by their shivering or falling asleep from the heat. Not really an idea environment for learning. Despite the conditions the participants engaged quite well with the workshop. In this instance they where looking for more direction than the other workshops I have run recently. Thinking about it, given that Google Apps is a new set of tools, it isn't surprising that people are looking for direction. Having said that they still seemed satisfied with discussion of the concepts and possibilities. It was interesting to see that the participants were concerned that they need to us Gmail for somethings and their email client for others they needed permission to use both. Once they got the message that there is no problem using both environments they seemed much happier. They certainly seemed to have the expectation that they should be able to get everything they need from one environment. I felt that we were enabling participants to be flexible, agile and adaptable. Seems to me we are helping to open a door to a different attitude toward technology, a change in state of mind where it is ok to stop, think, look. It sometimes seems all it is about is taking away panic.

Cohesive Units

I have been thinking about how working with groups of people who are familiar with each other seem to learn better. So far the sessions I have been running have consisted of groups of staff who know each other well. I suspect that the relationships that they have with each other helped to create a space where they felt they could assist each other.

Wednesday 20th April

Sessions today had a smaller group of people (6 - 8), it went well.  Giving people permission to explore and be creative is quite powerful. I set the scene by saying I was here to assist them finding the answers themselves.  They seemed receptive. The session with the general staff was amazing they clearly had never been given permission to explore in that way and where honestly blown away by what they could find with just a few search terms. They loved it. The academic where less open to the approach and wanted me to tell them exactly what to do. It was later in the afternoon when I saw them and they did seem tried.

Digital Literacy Approach in Action - My reflections on my work

In my workplace up until recently, development of staff and organisational ICT capability has been piecemeal and lacked a planned approach. Much of the support has focused on developing specific ICT skills rather than digital literacy competence. I suspect while people I work with are able to effectively perform some technical tasks they find it difficult to apply what they currently know to other applications or technical problems i.e. skills are treated as technically specific rather than transferable knowledge.

I am about to run a workshop, nothing really unusual about that. It is a very ordinary topic word processing and long documents. The interesting thing is I am trying a different approach. I want to focus less on the skills ... which buttons to click on... and more on the principles. I am a bit nervous most people I suspect will just want to know how to rather than why what for. I hope they can see that the principle of 'teach a person to fish' applies here in this space of digital literacy.
...

The word processing workshop went really well. I did not expected that staff would be so receptive to the style of workshop (22 people).  I expected them to want me to show them which buttons to push. We talked about concepts, they participated in the conversation and seemed engaged. I observed a room full of people engaged, learning and having fun. They had minimal direction, they got minimal instruction and I encouraged them to investigate for themselves and work together. It worked. I felt good and I looked at a room full of people who also seemed to feel good. They lost track of time, our 60 minute session run over by 30 minutes - not something that should happen but they didn't want to stop. Several people went away with clear plans to make changes to their practice and took the time to stop and tell me what they had planned.