...about New Media Literacies

This week my EdTech teacher asked us to look at USC's project on New Media Literacies (here: http://www.newmedialiteracies.org/the-literacies.php) as well as read an article (here: http://newmedialiteracies.org/blog/2008/11/10/YMRarticle_February08.pdf) entitled Extending Media Literacy: How Young People Remix and Transform Media to Serve Their Own Interests.

The concept of New Media Literacies is that they are a core set of competencies and skills that students need in order to navigate through the media landscape.  In the past, there was a culture of media consumerism - a certain set of people produced media content and the rest of us were consumers of that media.  More and more though, the culture is shifting to that of participation - we either choose to be or are expected to be active participants in the creation of media content through blogging, social-media and the like.  As we shift to this culture of participation it is very important that we foster the concepts necessary for successful particpation in our students.

These New Media Literacies are as follows: play, performance, simulation, approrpiation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, negotiation and visualization.  For the purposes of this assignment we are supposed to identify one of these literacies and reflect on it.  I am going to discuss the concept of play, which is defined by the project as the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving. Play is important because if you have a strong sense of play you are more likely to jump in with both feet to a problem, new technology or experience with a sense of discovery rather than a fear of failure.  This is especially important to this class as well as my interaction with the EdTech field. 

I do not think I currently have a strong sense of play but I think this class has helped me start to develop one.  At first all these new technologies - twitter, diigo, wikis, etc - were very overwhelming to me.  I came home from night one of class and told my husband I was 'screwed' because I felt like I'd never figure them all out and, more importantly to the concept of play, I was scared to try.  Maybe this is the difference between me, as a 'digital immigrant', and younger students who are more likely to be 'digital natives', but I actually hesitated to put my fingers on the keys when I'd get to these sites for fear that I'd 'screw something up'.  I continue to struggle with some of this fear, but through this class I think that I'm becoming more confident and more 'playful' with the technology.  When Ken introduced Jing during our last class I found myself starting to think in a 'hey, I could do that' sort of way instead of a 'no way I'm ever going to figure this out' way and thinking about ways I could use it and play around with it instead of fearing it.  I think this is improvement.  I'm definitely not there yet, but I think I am progressing and I definitely can see the value of play as it relates to EdTech.

...about Twitter. Today: engaging someone on Twitter

One of the assignments for this week was to 'engage' someone on Twitter.  Well, I tried three different times to engage someone concerning a topic they had tweeted about and so far I am batting .000.  Oh well.  I guess the good thing about Twitter is that if you can't get the information you want from the person you are asking you can usually find someone else who has tweeted information about that topic by searching.  I guess the good thing is that I am not so discouraged that I won't try to engage someone again so hopefully I'll get that batting average up soon.

Oh, and I met the 'fail whale' on Twitter this week.  He's actually cute in a blue-screen-of-death sort of way.  :)

Turning on the Lights

Turning On the Lights by Marc Prensky

I found this article fascinating and it made me think about technology in the classroom in a new way.  I hadn't thought about school being the 'dark' part of the day for students because school has always been where students are enlightened and introduced to things they might not experience at home.  But I completely see the author's point that kids are exposed to more information, much more early, through various channels than ever before and when we shut down those familiar channels in school we cut them off from a source of information that they are familiar with.  Also, I find it very sad that students feel like when they have to power down their tech devices they also end up powering down their brains.  It's almost as if technology is a new learning style.
I also liked some of his 'Principles for Principals', particularly the one about letting students have a meaningful voice in setting technology policy.  Let's face it, the kids are probably way more up on the newest and most exciting things and having a technology policy is really useless if it doens't address the actual ways that students are interacting with technology.  I also love the idea of eliminating busy work and lectures.  Neither of these 'teaching' techniques typically play to the strengths of most children.  There are so many better ways to have students express themselves than vocabulary lists and worksheets!  I also think if teachers would take the time to think about it there are better ways for them to express themselves than lecture and Power Point. 
I guess my big takeway was just to be open to the various ways that technology can be useful in 'turning on the lights' for kids.  I hope to embrace technology in my own classroom and I think some of the tips in this article will be helpful to me in doing just that.

...about online privacy issues

I think there are 2 domains to this discussion (and perhaps more, but, hey, I'm a beginner, remember?).  The first one might more properly be termed security rather than privacy - the safe keeping of your own data, network, etc.  Then there is privacy, which I consider to be more about what you yourself may be putting on the Internet and what expectations of privacy you may for for that information.

As I think about my own online security I kind of think about it like driving a car.  If I am wearing my seatbelt, driving the speed limit and am aware of my surroundings there is not much I can do if another driver crosses the center line or runs a stop sign and plows into me.  In computing I think of it like this: if I have secured my home network, have virus protection on my computer(s), keep my passwords protected and don't respond to phishing scams then I have done what I can do.  I hope that no one hacks my information, just like I hope I don't get in a car accident, but if I've taken all the preventative measures that I possibly can then there isn't much more I can really do about it.  I'm not going to stop driving a car because someone might hit me, that isn't practical.  Neither is it practical to avoid using the Internet because of the threat that could be posed by hackers and the like.

As for an expectation of privacy on the Internet I have a couple of thoughts.  First, I think that the best course of action is to operate with the assumption that anyone can get to anything you put out on sites like Facebook.  I know that you can manipulate your privacy settings in a million different ways but in order to 'be on the safe side' I think that the 'grandma' rule should apply here.  As far as some other sites, there IS an expectation of privacy when you register with them to use their services - places such as banking websites, photo storage providers, etc. 

I liked what the article Footprints by Will Richardson said about 'Googling well'.  To some extent the employers, admissions counselors, etc of the future are going to expect to find some sort of online presence for people they are considering for their organizations.  Like Richardson said, I think it is important that we control what we put out there precisely for these purposes.  As future teachers I think the important implication is that we help make students aware of this 'Googling well/poorly' idea and help them to use the Internet properly in order to put themselves out there in the best possible light.

...about blogging! Tonight: Choosing a blog platform

Tonight's task in Educ 109/261 was to research and choose a blogging platform and start a blog for the class.  This was easier said than done.  I did some online research into blogging platforms preferred by educators. Basically I chose blogger because I found 3 or 4 seemingly (hopefully?) reliable resources that said that it was a good choice for somewhat casual blogging by a beginner, and I am DEFINITELY a beginner!  :)

This was definitely a challenging task.  I know that the idea was to let us work the process, and I'm glad we did, but it was still a little overwhelming!  I am hoping that this platform works out well.  I know some people that use blogger so I am at least a little hopeful!

So, off I go into the world of blogging.  Wish me luck!