 and welcome to the 9 30 a.m. to 10 a.m. session of the 2021 Open Simulator Community Conference. In this session, we are pleased to introduce the session, Digital Citizenship for Cyborgs and Abitars. Our speakers are Sheila Weber, aka Sheila Yoshikawa, and Valerie Hill, aka Valibrarian Greg. Sheila is a faculty member in the Information School University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, and an honorary fellow of the United Kingdom's Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. Her core teaching and research areas are information literacy and information behavior. She has maintained the information literacy weblog since 2005. Valerie Hill, Director of the Community Virtual Library, is a library and information science educator with a research focus on the intersection of information literacy and global digital participatory culture. She has started all age levels, served as a school librarian, and is a national writing project trainer. Hello everyone, welcome to Digital Citizenship for Cyborgs and Abitars. Sheila and I are both information science researchers and we're researching how virtual environments enhance literacy and how changes in digital culture are impacting literacy. All of us here today are represented as Abitars. And yet we're all seated, seating in the physical world. We're seated at computers and we're surrounded with our digital devices. Many of you have several computers up at the same time, juggling multimedia tools. I recently read that most teenagers sleep with their phone beside them, their digital device, which makes me feel that our digital devices have become appendages to our bodies. So hello out there, all you Cyborgs. Amber Case argues that we have all become Cyborgs with our lives entangled 24 seven with technology in her work on cyborg anthropology. Amber Case calls herself a cyborg anthropologist and you can find her work at cyborganthropology.com. Her TED talk that I heard 10 years ago or now 11 years ago back in 2010, it sparked a lot of discussion on Cyborgs and how we're all Cyborgs. Certainly we juggle numerous forms of literacy every day, all day long through apps and tablets and laptops and through our smart phones, particularly our smartphones are in our pocket. I like to say our library is in our pocket. And we do this throughout the day every day. I was in a drug store recently and the clerk at the counter said, I'm sorry, but you can't shop here today because our computer is down. I was amazed at that statement because it illustrates our dependency on the grid. Yes, we cannot function without our technology. Without it, we couldn't access much of the information that we take in and the information that we produce. Most of our content now is born digital. Whether or not one has an avatar, we all need digital citizenship. Now this argument about all of us being Cyborgs, it's the argument that we place before you today just to get you thinking because there's a need to think critically about the future of communication and certainly about the future of literacy for human beings who want to remain human. All of you I'm sure are familiar with the term digital citizenship. You hear about it a lot and you're familiar with all of the issues that we face today, such as cybersecurity and privacy. When I was an elementary school librarian, I earned a digital citizenship certification for my school and it's through an organization called commonsensemedia.org. You may have heard of it. Great organization that can help young people and teachers and parents learn about what it means to be a good digital citizen. But it's not only young people and children that need to learn this. Everyone needs to become aware of the problems that we're facing in our culture and in our future. So I'll put that site here in the text chat, commonsensemedia.org. If you know someone who may want to work with children, parents, educators. Whether we are walking around in the beauty of our physical world enjoying sunshine or we're teleporting through the metaverse as an avatar or we're juggling a plethora of applications on our many devices as a cyborg, we all need digital citizenship. So Sheila and I are here to tell you a bit more about why it's essential. Why there's an essential need for digital citizenship. So Sheila, I'll turn the mic over to you. Thank you, Val. So I'm going to be talking about why information literacy or media information literacy is essential as a foundation to thinking about the essential nature of digital citizenship. Library and information professionals and educators have known for some time that information literacy is as the UNESCO declaration put it in 2003, part of the basic human right of lifelong learning. In recent years, the use of misinformation and disinformation as political tools aiming to undermine and disrupt democracy and the disinformation circulating about the COVID virus have brought the need for media and information literacy to the attention of those with more power to influence and change that I have or Val have unfortunately, although we're doing our best. And I wanted to draw attention to this quotation from a very interesting panel that was broadcast this week from the Internet Governance Forum, this international forum with various stakeholders from different parts of the world and representing different sectors. And this is the quotation from Vieira Urvado, Vice President and Commissioner at the European Commission who noted that we see in the pandemic more than before how media literacy is important, that this is a matter of health of life or death to either have trustworthy information or to be overloaded with disinformation. And so that's this important message about media and information literacy being vital for everyone is reaching a new constituency of more powerful people who perhaps can make sure that this is brought into education and so forth more thoroughly. And in November this year, the UNESCO General Council endorsed the Wintourk plus 30 declaration on information as a public good, which states that press freedom, independence and pluralism remain major goals to guarantee information as a public good that serves as a shared resource for the whole of humanity. To these goals, we now add those of media viability, transparency of digital platforms, which is certainly an aspiration rather than a reality at the moment and citizens empowered with media and information literacy. And it's important I think that these international bodies are proclaiming this importance. So increasingly there's an awareness that people need to engage ethically and critically with information in all aspects of their lives, physical and digital lifelong. And so I'm going to hand back to Val to explore a concept that encompasses these ideas, meta literacy. Thank you Sheila. There's a new term that's come into use that fits how literacy has changed. As we all upload our user generated content and we download online content all the time. And this term is meta literacy. We're meta literate. When we learn to evaluate content, use information ethically and we strive to be digital citizens through an authentic online persona. Social media requires meta literacy or we will become self-absorbed infotain. You can see on this slide that the meta literate person or learner has many roles. Each of us can be a participant, a communicator, a translator, an author, teacher, collaborator, producer, publisher or researcher. Each of us has a voice, everyone has a voice and numerous platforms in which to share and speak. You can see on this slide that the meta literate person or learner yet each of us has the personal responsibility to think critically before we make intake or share information. The future depends upon our personal responsibility, each of us in digital culture. It's where we live. Definitions of the vocabulary that we use is evolving, the metaverse for example. Alongside the metaverse which has tons of definitions and deciding about the meaning of these words, that is literacy, VR, XR, AR, mixed realities. All of these have evolving definitions that impact literacy and education. Sheila will share more about the future. Thanks again, Val. And so I think it's exciting to consider how we can move this agenda forward in virtual worlds. So what can we as educators in virtual worlds do to progress things? So firstly, we can reflect on and develop our own meta literacy as individual citizens and as teachers, collaborators, producers or researchers. So I think learning how to be information literate, meta literate is a lifelong task. It's a never-ending task and I think it's valuable and enjoyable that this is a never-ending task. And educators need to develop lifelong to be able to enable others meta literacy because obviously if we're not open to new developments and learning ourselves, we're not going to be able to educate others. Secondly, developing the meta literacy of learners that we engage with. And this is not just explicitly teaching about meta literacy, which is something that I might do as someone in the information science field, but thinking how these attitudes and these understandings can be incorporated into other things that we teach. And I'm just suggesting here that in doing that, as well as thinking about the roles that VAL has outlined, there are three themes identified in the recently published UNESCO media and information literacy curriculum, which is a really fat volume that's free to download that was published very recently and which kind of outlines a curriculum for media and information literacy. And they identify that the three themes are knowledge and understanding of information, media and digital communications for sustainable development, peace and democratic discourses and social participation. I feel that these messages certainly appeal as far as I can see to the people I interact with in virtual worlds who I think would espouse these values and these goals. Evaluation of content and the institutions that produce that content and production and use of content and how one can be meta literate in producing and using content. And finally, I think we shouldn't be shy of identifying our own experience and understanding of how these ideas apply and how they can be taught in a digital environment. Many of you here have years and years of experience and insight into what it means to be meta literate in virtual reality, in virtual worlds. And I think these insights can be expressed boldly to help those who are still coming to terms with the idea that a virtual world is part of real life because I don't know about you but I still hear people distinguishing between real life and digital life. Whereas I think we here realize that it's all part of life. And now I'll hand back to you again, Val, to finish. And also I'll paste the references we've been making into the text chat in a moment. Yes, and you can see the references that we've been talking about here on the slides right now. And we're talking a lot about all the different realities that are all evolving, whether they're physical, they're virtual, or they're somewhere in between with augmented. And as they all evolve these different definitions of them, we believe that sitting here in a virtual world is virtual reality, it's simply without a headset. There's so much more we could say about information literacy. And you can find us on this contact information here. Meta-literacy and digital citizenship for cyborgs and avatars is just one way of looking at the fact that we are who we are in any of these spaces, physical, virtual, or augmented. You can contact us in Second Life as a main home base. We both work there quite often but you can also find us in other virtual worlds. I'm the director as I was introduced of the Community Virtual Library in Second Life but we also have a branch in Kitely and we're exploring a lot of VR headset worlds. Sheila leads the Weekly Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable which meets on Thursdays at noon, Second Life or Pacific Time. Both of us are involved in the Virtual Worlds Education Consortium which helps to connect and collaborate with educators, learners, anyone interested in virtual worlds around the globe. VWEC is hosted on the Community Virtual Library website at communityvirtuallibrary.org. Sheila and I are passionate about the need for digital citizenship and we firmly believe that cyborgs and avatars must remain human. So thank you all. I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference and I believe we have time for a few questions. Feel free to type a question in the local chat if you'd like to. I see Beth's pasting in the calendar of events for both the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable, the Community Virtual Library and the Virtual Worlds Education Consortium meets quarterly in Second Life with the next meeting coming up on January 5th. The cyborg thing, there's a huge argument out there about what a cyborg is. Most people think robots but I think what Amber Case is saying here to get us thinking is that if we must have our digital advice right beside us at all times, that is like an appendage, that is a dependency which could be, could align with the definition of what a cyborg is which is a human being that is totally dependent on something for survival that is digital or that is not organic. And so Amber Case goes by Case Organic online as her name on Twitter and everywhere, Case Organic to remain organic rather than digital. I see there's a question about meetings moving from or being augmented so one does not have to have a second life account so at the moment for the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable we are keeping it just in the second life but certainly recently we've had one or two attendees who've been talking about ways of bridging through to other channels like for example Discord. I suppose one thing is that actually meeting in the same I think it as a physical space has a certain bond. And so I think myself I might see having keeping a focus in different venues but certainly second life isn't the only one as here we are here enjoying a different venue. And so I think learning how to make the best out of the different venues and the different digital spaces. So just looking at the other text. I think also the argument about using the term cyborgs just gets us talking about all of these things because people have a lot of vague ideas of about science fiction and reality and a lot of those things merge. And so that's part of meta literacy is to try to think critically about what these things mean and what the definitions mean. So I think that's why we chose the term. Yes, I'm that also people seem to the fact that people are making this kind of black and white distinction it's a cyborg or it's a wheel kind of soft willy human being or indeed a kitty or that thinking about one's lives now being blended between the digital and the physical and that is how life is now. I think that's an important thing. A lot of people still find difficult to take on board. Yes, and that's why we need the term meta literacy because literacy has drastically changed because of online culture and there's no going back. So we've got to raise these conversations. So I think that might be we're getting prompts that that might be our time is up. Should we be handing back now? Yes, I'm waiting for someone to tell us that we don't have time but thank you all for being here and I hope our paths will cross across the metaverse. Yes, indeed. I co Vals greetings and hopes to the future. I see in the text chat that our moderator crashed. This is such a great example of literacy in digital culture juggling different things. There's no mastery. You don't go up the hierarchy and only master it. You just keep juggling. That's okay, I can jump in. But thank you, Val and Sheila for this and I think many of us think about this like this interconnections between virtual and our physical and I certainly agree with you Sheila that it's all real. So with that, we should wrap it up and in lieu of the moderator, thank you both and we'll kind of go on to the next presentation which will be starting in about nine minutes. So stick around for that and again, you can always go to the schedule if it comments hat and you would be able to find out there the speakers coming up next as well as that. And again, during breaks, we encourage you to explore the OSCC expo regions especially things like there are newer things to explore and I know later on that Art Blue will be talking about meta but make sure to look to check out also the planetarium and meta regions and the surreal art gallery too during the larger breaks. So with that, thank you again, Sheila and Val and I will wrap things up.