Digital cultural literacy is more important than ever as collections and media are experienced almost entirely online. Everyone—students, professionals, and the general public—need skills to navigate the glut of content at their fingertips. This session explores two avenues for increasing digital literacy: K-12 online media literacy education and storytelling, and intervening in GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) metadata.
Despite vast online content, there aren’t many OER’s that help K-12 students navigate it. With the speed of Internet evolution, existing OERs become quickly out of date. Bethany’s Digital Civics course helps middle schoolers better understand media and storytelling online by teaching them to identify misinformation, and develop skills to counter it with well-researched, engaging online content of their own. In this way, they not only better understand the current media landscape, but are encouraged to actively intervene to make it a better, more civil and just place.
Digital literacy instruction must also be available to those who are positioned outside of traditional learning institutions. Dovi’s work with incarcerated youth created a digital arts education program and establishes a model for learning about and creating digital art using Virtual Reality as an educational tool. The project focused on the power of storytelling through creation of art, and highlighted the students’ lived experiences, which often get silenced and overlooked because of their incarceration history. She believes that librarians can help bridge gaps in teaching and learning, using Open resources and networks to promote authentic storytelling and to empower young people to be active agents in their information consumption and sharing.
Curationist’s Meta-metadata case studies also seek to empower students at the college and professional levels to engage with OpenGLAM metadata as a site for expanding and diversifying cultural discourse. Metadata, or the basic facts recorded about a museum or archival object, is often seen as neutral, but is in fact rife with bias and omissions. These case studies, introduced by Sharon, a metadata specialist, and Garrett, a college professor and OER advisor, invite students to critically examine the ways in which metadata skews or obscures certain stories in favor of dominant narratives and invites them to intervene by bringing their own research, experiences, and points of view to enhance existing metadata to further anti-racist, feminist, queer, anti-ableist, and anti-colonial goals. Garrett will introduce Curationist’s API OpenGLAM search tool and its vast pedagogical potential.
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Understand how OpenGLAM digital cultural heritage objects can be a source for antiracist, decolonial open educational resources, for K-12, incarcerated youth, higher ed, and life-long learners
- Explore how metadata in general, and OpenGLAM metadata in particular, can be a site for social justice education and engagement
- Understand how Open resources create greater accessibility for lifelong learners
- Discover how to empower students and communities through contributions and critical discourse over cultural artifacts
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