Self-Assessment and Metacognitive Journal Post

Self-Assessment and Metacognitive Journal Post

The article in one of the first modules “R U Really Reading” first got me thinking about what new literacy really meant, and the final readings in Davd Crystal’s “Language and The Internet” brought the message into more light. We are in an age of multiple literacies. Text is neither all there is, nor enough in a day with an oversaturation of media.

Marshall McCluhan’s first assertion that in a television age, children will be bored with simple text lessons. Although he was not found of the idea of “new media” taking over, he was aware that we would need to adjust and to include new media to be able to compete.

In Crystal’s Language and the Internet, he discusses the new languages of email, chatgroups, virtual world and the internet. These new skills come easily to digital natives who adjust go new languages, and new norms seamlessly. It’s a bit harder for digital immigrants who often get caught up with how the languages are incorrect.

I realized that I use transliteracy all the time at work using multiple platforms and technology, each with their own specific language. Text based, imaged based, synthesized down to the essentials for web and chat. I had not initially realized the extent to which I was engaged in these various “languages” and literacies.

Interview of Adolescent boy (age 14)

(friend of my son)

Do you use technology in school?

“Yes, we use iPads and computers for math and essay writing, sometimes for tests. They also let us use our ipods if we are done with our work.”

Do you use “learning games” in school?

“Sort of” We use QR scanners. You put in your QR code which goes to a url to do math learning games. Sometimes it’s math questions, sometimes its games that are math related.

Do you like the online learning games?

“Sort of” I like the same and math books. Sometimes it’s more interesting.”

Do you use video or online gaming? What kind?

“Yes, Call of Duty, Wii games, Minecraft, Clash of clans where you play with groups. There are 5 different clans at our school. You sometimes know all the people in the clan and sometimes you don’t”

Can you describe the kind of interactions in Clash of Clans?

Clan battles we haven’t done yet. We help out members of our clan and lend troops.

Do you read books for pleasure?

 “Sometimes, but I don’t have time to a lot any more”

If you had time would you?

“I guess so, I did last year”

How much screen time to you have?

“Maybe a couple of hours. Not everyday. It depends on what else I’m doing and who is around”

How old were you when you starting playing online or video games.

“I think 8 years old, but only at friends or my cousin’s house when we visited them”

Do you have a mobile devise? If so, when did you get it?

“Yes, I was13 years old, but it’s not a phone, it’s just an ipod and I can only use it in wifi”

Do you want a phone?

“Yes”

How do you learn new games?

“Play them and get better. Get friends help.”

Do you get frustrated by new games you haven’t played before?

“No, only if they are boring.”

How do you study and do you homework?

“I don’t really study because it doesn’t work for me. I just remember the stuff from when I’ve been in class. I also do my home at friends houses and at school.

How do you arrange to meet friends?

“Text them”

What do you do with your friends?

Meet each other in person at each others houses or on “the block”. Play nerf war, football, baseball, gaming, watch TV movies or Youtube.”

What excites you when you think of the future?

“I don’t think about the future”

What do you think about when your hear the word “community”

“The block”

What helps you learn?

 “Taking notes, going to class, sometimes watching videos.”

What stops you from learning?

“Boredom. Boring bad teachers. The videos in math class are terrible and don’t help at all”

Media Education

a. What is / are the tools and techniques being put into practice? 

b. What is / are the key issue(s) outlined in or underlying the text (think in terms of Green’s model: operational, cultural and critical)? Who's responsibility is it to teach critical medial literacy?

c. What are your feelings and opinions on the reading?

d. Be sure to reference the reading including author and page number

What is / are the tools and techniques being put into practice? 

The thought I found most striking in the McLuhan Speaks videos was this statement:

“ “

Having been involved and interested in media for a while, I of course had read and researched a bit about Marhsall McLuhan but I’d always thought of him as the proponent of the information age. When he spoke about the shift in society's predominant communications to a mostly technologic one, and new media being the force behind social changes, I thought he saw this as the natural evolution of things, which by extension, was a good thing. In fact, McLuhan was interested to understand media as the predominant force behind modern culture, not to embrace it. His famous quote “The Medium is the Message” is an observation of the power the medium has on society and that power far out weights whatever the message actually is, but surprisingly to me, he did not love new media, nor was he a proponent. He sought to understand it so he would know how to mitigate its effects for him personally.

McLuhan really strove to understand the effects on our brains, our cultures and our global society as a means of knowing what to expect. He had no illusions that the global society would be any better than a national or local one, in fact he probably would not be surprised about the advent of cyber-bullying, or stalking as this would have been seen as a natural progression of the lack of privacy in this new age.

Related to the Jenkin’s reference, that schools” foster a critical understanding of media as one of the most powerful social, economic, political, and cultural institutions of our era” I believe his point is similar that, schools need to teach critical thinking skills related to new media. To analyze and understand the effects of video, print and other media and not take all messages at face value.

What is / are the key issue(s) outlined in or underlying the text (think in terms of Green’s model: operational, cultural and critical)? Who's responsibility is it to teach critical medial literacy?

McLuhan talked about Cool media and Hot media and described Cool media as being "low" in definition and information and it requiring that the audience participate to complete the experience. This is in some ways related to Jenkins idea that collective intelligence and community responsibility. Schools and classroom teaching needs to change due to electronic media, for one because kids are more sophisticated in their expectations and skills with digital media and would be bored and unchallenged but as the power and reach of new media enters the classroom, McLuhan’s idea of the global village is created. Kids can learn about other cultures directly from kids in those cultures, or see real data from a satellite or Google maps. Schools become the mediators and providers of these tools, and the kids are more and more creating their learning experiences.

Print reshaped the sensibility of Western man, for whereas he once saw experience as individual segments, as a collection of separate entities, man in the Renaissance saw life as he saw print--as a continuity, often with casual relationships. Print even made Protestantism possible, because the printed book, by enabling people to think alone, encouraged individual revelation.

As with art criticism in the early days of   initiating great transformations not only in social organization but human sensibilities. He suggests in "The Gutenberg Galaxy" that the invention of movable type shaped the culture of Western Europe from 1500 to 1900. The mass production of printed materials encouraged nationalism by allowing more rapid and wider spread of information than permitted by hand-written messages. The linear forms of print influenced music to repudiate the structure of repetition, as in Gregorian changes, for that of linear development, as in a symphony. Also, print reshaped the sensibility of Western man, for whereas he once saw experience as individual segments, as a collection of separate entities, man in the Renaissance saw life as he saw print--as a continuity, often with casual relationships. Print even made Protestantism possible, because the printed book, by enabling people to think alone, encouraged individual revelation. Finally: "All forms of mechanization emerge from movable type, for type is the prototype of all machines."

c. What are your feelings and opinions on the reading?

d. Be sure to reference the reading including author and page number

I think McLuhan was really a product of his age. Although he was the guru of the technological age, he really dreaded and was suspicious of the advent of this age and how it would change humanity, although he appeared to hold this as the natural evolution of the species. He was interested and concerned about how people are changed by the instruments they employ. I had always heard the term global village as a positive term, yet McLuhan really thought of this as an inevitable evolution towards a world of no privacy, and connectedness to the point of possible bloodshed, rather than utopia. As he mentions in McLuhan Speaks, “Electronic communications affords us more opportunities to interfere with and shape the future”.  His ideas that we are responsible for the effects of the outcomes of what we put out there in a world where we are interconnected and always on.

New Media and Global Citizenry

New Media and Global Citizenry

In the readings this week, I found the discussion about Digital Youth, Social Movements, and Democracy in Brazil and it’s relation to article on Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age by W. Lance Bennett. to be quite compelling and illustrates both the pros and the cons of new media and social networks and how the general society is reflected in what is seen in the virtual world.

Youth engagement has long been an issue in many political and social movements. Traditionally, youth are both, often harder to engage in social and political movements, as well as the flip side of that equation; the force behind many social and political movements. When engaged, youth movements can have tide turning affects and social media has the potential to harness both the social nature of youth and their technological proclivity, to organize and mobilize in ways that have not been possible before.

With social media specifically and new media in general, youth constituents have been quicker to become engaged because they are already engaged with this technology in their daily lives. Critics see this actually as disengagement, as it does not necessarily result in higher voting rates or rates of civic engagement that have been measured in the traditional sense, but social media has opened up new avenues of engagement that seem promising for future social movements and grassroots mobilization.

Again, critics point to the relatively trivial things that are currently the predominant focus of most social media, including buying behaviors and pop culture being the highest volume. They also point to the abuses, threats and frauds that are prevalent in this domain, yet there is also, true grassroots activism and social movements happening in social media. The openness of the virtual world, even in societies that have been very closed in the past have brought new voices to many people who have not had a voice or an audience in the past, and they can now have an international and vast reaching audience. This is truly revolutionary.

Raquel Recuero, from Brazil, talked about social media in her country in the recorded Google hangout meeting, as both providing a voice for many points of view as well as a mirror to the general prejudices of society. When asked about how prejudice is manifested in social media she points out that prejudice is present in society in general.  Within social networks it is also apparent. Social media is a reflection of what is in the society, and is not creating that prejudice. Sometimes people use the relative anonymity of social networks to voice prejudices and other socially unacceptable ideas and behaviors in a more flagrant way than they would in a public setting, but the ideas and sentiments are present before social media gave them a venue to vent.

She also mentions that she sees in her studies a trend of people shutting down more contentious issues within social media by choosing not to comment on peoples links to avoid fights and exposing themselves to social retaliation within that social media.

While people are able to us social networks to express their tastes and opinions., gender prejudices are coming up even within social networks unrelated to politics and social activism and these comments are not always welcome. Recuero mentions and the other panelist agreed that any expression of taste can bring on criticism.

She went on to mention that traditional media is losing ground to the amount of content and targeted content on social media and people are becoming more critical as they become more exposed to different ideas through different media. The youth market wants to “hang out” online and prefer the more interactive format.

Mobilization efforts are using Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, and struggles between religious groups. This has larger ramification than it would normally because the local voices have a larger audience and the potential to reach people is so great. Youth are using Facebook and twitter to create content  and news about what is going in locally.

Bennett makes that point that while its true we see youth engaging socially online that all engagement is not “civic” engagements, and we should not be too quick to categorize their engagement as political or social in nature.  Media engagement is not the same as civic engagement. (Bennett, 2008 p4)

            “The engaged youth paradigm implicitly emphasizes generational changes in            social identity that have resulted in the growing importance of peer networks          and online communities.

Youth have abandoned many of the more traditional venues and media outlets for a more individualized and partitioned engagement online. Bennett goes on to say that “. So there may be ways in which the Internet promotes participation, but undermines the“civic.”

I tend to fall somewhere between the two descriptions of youth being either engaged or disengaged and would say time will tell if the promise of the individuals who have not had a voice until recently will take the opportunity to spread their ideas in a meaningful, constructive and civic minded way. We have seen examples of movements do just that and have real impact, and yet we also have the other examples of a disengaged youth who have declining rates of civic engagement and their social networking is generally about more trivial matters and does not rise to the level of civic engagements.

Referenes

Bennett, W. Lance. “Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age." Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. Edited by W. Lance Bennett. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 1–24. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.001

Recuero, R. (n.d.). Raquel recuero - digital youth, social movements, and democracy in brazil [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://connectedlearning.tv/raquel-recuero-digital-youth-social-movements-and-democracy-brazil