Self Assessment

Marjorie Thompson

A Brief Introduction

In order to design course material for the 21^st century, it is important to get an idea about the direction society is going, what technology can do. It is important to understand how it can benefit society and the individual. It is also important to understand what negative effects can occur from using technology. The course material and structure of the assignments for the course, New Media and Technology have been very informative in giving a foundation for understanding media and new technology in the 21st century.

Strengths

In order to be able to assess the course materials and the current thought about new technology, one needs to be able to read between the lines. It is essential to be able to understand when a statement in a research paper is a futuristic prediction made by a particular person about the direction he or she thinks the society will go in with the use of technology and when a statement comes from an examination of facts. Comparing futuristic hypothesis to actual facts is a way to assess how technology will really effect people. When reading the paper “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century”, there were many good ideas about how technology can be used and there were some ideas that were unrealistic about how media should be used. Knowing how to evaluate these is a strength. To paraphrase Gail Bush from the YouTube Video “Information Transliteracy in the 21st Century Classroom” in the 21^st Century, “you need to question the answers”(Bush, 2012)

In most of the publications I read for this class, the researchers stressed that education is going through some major changes. Technology is seen as the instant solution to solve all of the problems of slow and inattentive students. However it is important to be able to see beyond the present day hype about technology and understand how elements of technology will affect the future generations.

As the world becomes more complex, it also becomes more confusing. Having a solid framework to understand what these changes mean is also about having an understanding about whether changes will be positive or negative. In order to know whether change will be positive or negative, one has to know how to assess the impact of technology from a few indicators. In order to make these assessments one has to have a clear sense of ethics a moral compass if you will. Once these boundaries are in place, learning can be directed around potential problems. 

While there are positive aspects of technology, people who use technology can become overwhelmed by many factors. It is important to feel that one can control their life the direction of their path and that people will have respect for each other. As children grow into adults they can be overwhelmed by many factors. If their teachers and parents are not aware of the negative effects of technology and peer pressure, individuals can become self-destructive, suicidal.

Improvements

Improvements would consist of getting a better idea about the background and direction of the path of my learners. Having a background in jewelry, art history, I have many ideas about instructional videos to make. The easiest way to determine what sort of videos to make would be to determine where there is a knowledge deficit and work from there. However, it is difficult to know what the knowledge deficit would encompass. One population of learners might have a knowledge deficit of information that another population of learners would be very aware of.

In researching topics, I try to fill knowledge gaps of the area that I am seeking information about. When I made the presentation “The Individual and Collective Intelligence”, I had never read the work of Rousseau. It was interesting to gain a greater understanding of some basic concepts underlying the political history of the public space. I feel that I made progress by looking at 21st century research into the struggles of the individual in conjunction with the group by reading psychological research into subjectivity and individualism.

Insights

Through the readings in this course and the course Learning and Emerging Technologies, I have gotten a greater understanding of current thought about the interface of technology and the individual and the group in the 21st century by looking at such areas as metadata, collective intelligence, media, and popular culture. As an artist, I have never been interested in popular culture. I thought that Andy Warhol and other artists from the 60's and 70's addressed popular culture with Pop Art and this was a subject that had already been done.

However, it is revealing to know where the current thought is on collective intelligence. When I first began reading the research, I was somewhat taken aback that many researchers had very positive opinions about using the internet. These opinions seemed to be biased. It was strange to read researchers proposing in the paper “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century”, that schools use social media in classrooms when there are Federal regulations against it or that students ignore copyright laws or rules of plagiarism and liberally sample creative works. I was relieved later in the semester to listen to the interview in the Google hangout with the Brazilian social anthropologist who spoke about her research into the effects of social media on the "Digital Native" generation of Brazil. In this interview, it was interesting to see that she concluded that all collective activities are not intrinsically good, which corroborated my intuitive feelings about many aspects of social media and the internet.

In the future, I feel that I will be able to use this new knowledge in several ways. Using this foundation to build on, I will be able to structure learning environments that are constructive. Knowing that students have a hard time understanding bias in education, it would be important to stress that students question the source of materials and be true to their intuitive feelings. Working from the ideas of backwards design, I will be able to direct teaching materials towards a desired goal. I feel that there are many ways that education can be enhanced through the use of innovations in technology and look forward to creating fun engaging learning environments.

References:

Gail Bush “Information Transliteracy in the 21st Century Classroom” 2012, National Louis University,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1JjcmGJb2A&feature=youtu.be, January 26, 2012

David Crystal, Language and the Internet, Cambridge University Press, 2004

Henry Jenkins with Ravi Purushotma, Margaret Weigel, Katie Clinton, and Alice J. Robison, “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2009

Multimedia Guide

Presentations are in essence explorations in multimedia expression. There are many resources online with which one can create multimedia work. 

In this library guide,  I wanted to consider resources devoted to different aspects of creating multimedia presentations and the creative processes used in creating these presentations that might not be compiled elsewhere.

Writing

Presentations call for short phrases which target ideas in a spare format. There are several ways this could be approached.

Poetry

Many times presentations are comprised of phrases which are grouped around ideas. The idea of using poetry to explore an idea could expand people's concept from using the language of advertising to be more oriented around literature. By presenting material in this manner, presentations could look at incorporating English lessons into other subjects as a part of a multimedia presentation.

Concrete poetry is formatting the type of the poem to look like the subject that the poem is about. Visual interest is added to the presentation through arranging text in new ways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_poetry

http://www.poetry4kids.com/blog/news/how-to-write-a-concrete-poem/

Haiku

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. In Haiku, there are 17 words which are broken up into 3 phrases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

Rewriting

In this essay, the author looks at revision and how this can help with writing. Many people might think that their first draft is good. Or they might think they do not have skills to write if they are not satisfied with their first draft.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/06/29/revising-your-writing-again-blame-modernists/WhoH6Ih2kat2RE9DZV3DjP/story.html

When considering content it is important to keep in mind the idea of copyright and patent laws.

Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Chartres

Familiarizing oneself with copyright basics is very important when thinking about using material that is not original. If the material is being used for making something that is not for profit or noncommercial applications then it is generally important to cite authorship which consists of making note of the author or artist, source, page number, publishing date

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf

Artist rights

If one creates original work, making sure you have control over the content is important.

http://www.arsny.com/

Creative Commons

In Creative Commons, one can allow people to use work for noncommercial applications and still retain their copyright.

http://us.creativecommons.org/

Image Resources

Having interesting images is helpful to make your presentations appealing. What is more if you incorporate history of the images into the message of your presentation, you could open the message up to a multidisciplinary platform of learning.

http://arthistoryresources.net/ARTHLinks4.html#images

Art resources

http://www.nyarc.org/content/about

There are many tools online to create videos which can help vary the look of presentations. One thing that presentations are supposed to do is create a more interesting learning environment but if presentations are uninteresting, the same or boring it will defeat the purpose of creating the presentation.

Using the presentations for professional applications might be different from personal or educational uses. It is best to check the specifics on each website.

Video Creating Software

Most website which feature software to make animations offer platforms which allow for experimentation. They generally offer a trial period in which you can subscribe for free, a minimal fee, or offer creating free presentations which fall within a time limit. Some offer free subscriptions as well with the stipulation that the final presentation has a watermark on it.

Most presentation software websites have instructional videos and also have sample videos so it is fairly easy to determine what type of presentation will result and whether that presentation fall into the learning style that you are looking for. In addition, many of the presentation platforms offer multiple styles to choose from so there is great variety within any of the individual  multimedia company.

This tool can be used by teachers or students to create a fun character and have then deliver the content of written material in a virtual space.

http://www.voki.com/learn.php

With this tool one can create simple cartoons from scenes featuring up 2 characters. The characters deliver text speech. There is the opportunity to choose from a variety of characters, backgrounds and musical backgrounds.

http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-976437

This application creates comics like comics in the newspaper.

http://www.toondoo.com/

This company has a variety of plans to create personal or professional videos.

http://goanimate.com/\

This tool allows for creating presentations with amusing cartoon characters.

http://www.wideo.co/

Powtoon has a similar format to PowerPoint but has the ability to incorporate animated characters, has different transitions, backgrounds and has a music library. It allows for more spontanious presentations and the end result is a very lively upbeat presentation.

http://www.powtoon.com/

Animoto has a variety of presentation styles. It allows to upload photos in a variety of formats, some of which have backgrounds related to themes and some of the formats have a collaged look to them.

http://www.animoto.com

Games

There are several websites that give people the opportunity to create games

http://gamesalad.com/

youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-0-mZqMUbY

http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html

http://www.sploder.com/free-game-creator.php

http://www.gamemaker.nl/

greeting game

http://greetinggames.com/en_us/

http://www.tinglygames.com/portal-games/

minecraft

https://minecraft.net/

warcraft

Troyan, Scott D., Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook, London, Routledge, 2004, p. 10.

Interview with a college student

I interviewed a 22 age male college student who is studying to become an engineer. I asked him questions about technology, gaming and social interactions. 

When did you start playing games?
When I was 4, I learned how to read and play chess.  I have played chess most of my life. I have played Pokemon video games since I was 8. Other games include Neopets, Pokemon and now plays Magic the Gathering, a card game, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Skyrim and other games. 
Magic the Gathering is a game that I started playing when I was 9. It is a complicated game with many cards which feature fantasy art work. These cards are grouped in different catagories. The company that created the game releases new cards several times a year so the components of the game change constantly.

How many Magic cards do you know? 
5000-8000 

Does that help you with your memory? 
Wizards of the Coast, the company that created the game Magic the Gathering, create a new set of cards every few months. They release the cards and publish images of the new cards on the internet the day before you can buy them. The day that the cards are released there is a huge card playing tournament called a Pre Release Draft. At these drafts, you are able to pick a card from the packs that the other players buy. In order to pick a good card, you have to know what the cards can do. I memorize about 180 cards the day before they come out so that I am able to play. When drafting, you have about 20 seconds to look at the cards from the pack that other players buy. You have to make a decision about which cards will benefit your deck and pick one card out of a 15 card pack.   

When you moved to upstate from New York City, you told me that other kids in your school bullied you and created a hostile environment. You arranged for a speaker to come and talk to the school about this situation. How did you feel about the speaker coming to your school? 
In 6th or 7th grade, about 7 students  were involved with organizing a speaker to come and talk about bullying in school. Paul Fallia is a retired police officer who spoke on character education and human diversity. He addressed bullying, discrimination, intimidation, harassment. He also spoke on ethical awareness. I felt it was uplifting and encouraging.

In school, did you have many group projects? How did you feel about working in a group? 
Depends on the group. When everyone participates, it's a good experience. Usually there is one person who lets everyone else do the work.

In college, you organized study groups and did a lot of research for these groups-do you feel that people are competitive in these groups? 
I would learn the topic by research and then tutor the group. We went to teacher's office hours with different people. Everyone generally enjoys studying together.

How do you use technology?
Technology has been an integral part of my life.  I've had a cell phone for 5 years. I text most of my friends and prefer it to making phone calls. I am the IT person at home and I've built several computers. Recently I built a computer for a friend. I ordered the parts and the case. The computer ended up being worth about 3 times the cost of the parts. Right now, I'm building a computer for my car. This is a very complicated project involving much research. It involves electrical knowledge, wiring knowledge and researching many of the electrical and computer components.
Sometimes people use technology to cheat on tests. People used their cell phones to look stuff up during tests.  You can also photoshop soft drink labels to put test answers on a bottle and take the drink into the test. However I have not done these things. In classes where the instructor grades on a curve, cheaters make the grading situation bad for those who don't cheat and make the instructors think they are doing a better job teaching than they actually are.

You've used lectures from Berkley and the Khan Academy to study from. How do you feel the lectures differ from the classroom lectures? 
Some lectures explain the material better and in other cases, you can replay the lecture.

Right now you are in calculus ll and you have been tutoring your friend in math.  Do you think that tutoring has helped you retain the material from the classes that you have taken? 
Many things help. By resorting the information and retelling it, I am able to find ways to reteach myself the material in the process.

How do you teach yourself about building computers and your car? 
I go online and teach myself, working from my knowledge base. I've read Bosch computer management and a 400 page electronics manual for my BMW. I also go on different car forums which are on-line chat rooms. When I had a Beretta, I went on the Beretta forum. Now that I have a BMW, I communicate to other car owners through the Bimmer forum. Most people on this forum are doctors and people with more money. They have a higher expectations of projects and are more snobbish than on the Beretta Forum. If they don't like a project, I just ignore it. I just think they would not do projects that I do because they have more money and would pay someone if they wanted anything done to their car.
Other areas that I have looked into are ways people have modified their cars which include styles called Tuner, VIP, Bosokou to name a few. Bosoku is a style of car modification in Japan. 
Other forums I have been on include electrical forums, CNC forums. Most of time I look at projects and find out how the people who post did something.

When was the last time you read a book? 
I have been reading textbooks and informational book in college. I am too busy to read for fun in college. The textbooks I read for college classes include reading about things like Vesper Theory in Chemistry. Vesper Theory describes properties of molecules. In high school, I did my senior project on the way carbon fiber is used in the engineering field as a material. This research was done primarily on-line.

Deconstructing an alcohol ad: Svedka Vodka

           

I found this advertisement on the website The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, part of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in their Marketing Gallery. This website posts alcohol advertising to “to stimulate discussion, comment, criticism, and public concern about alcohol marketing and youth”

Aesthetics

The product advertised is vodka, specifically Svedka Vodka. The product is given a human/robot persona because the robot in the ad has the name of the vodka on its leg. The product is placed in the foreground and is very noticeable being a white bottle against a black background.

The name of the product Svedka Vodka is mentioned 4 times. On the bottle, the leg of the robot, at the top of the ad where there is a "Like on Facebook" posting and along the side of the ad in fine print.

It would seem that the slogan is “r.u.bot or not?” and Voted #1 of 2033", each of which are mentioned once. I am not sure that I have heard this before. I seem to recall hearing it but I can’t be sure. I really haven’t seen many alcohol ads lately and the robot on this ad is pretty distinctive so I think I would have remembered it. I don’t remember seeing this robot before.

The robot is female with sexuality portrayed as a young woman. Although a machine, the sexuality of the robot is pronounced by robot’s the large breasts and the stiletto shoes the robot is wearing. The text of the ad reads “The ultimate party machine” the implication being that the robot is the party machine which is sexual in a very offensive way. It suggests that drinking alcohol would lead to sexual behavior.

The tone is sarcastic in a demeaning way towards women.

The ad appears to have been created with a computer graphic program but the point of view is from the floor in front of the robot. The effect is to view the robot so you see the lower half of the body more predominately.

The lighting highlights the foreground where the robot and the vodka bottle are. The background is mostly black which makes the robot and the bottle stand out. The floor and ceiling have enlarged computer numbers on them in neon red, violet and blue violet. This color scheme gives a futuristic science fiction look to the ad.

Target audience

The target audience is the young adult, people who go out to bars, probably male who might get their dates drunk. It is men who are not interested in relationships or emotions. 

This ad assumes that people drink and have sex. It also suggests the idea of people who do not know each other, meeting and having one night stands.

The product is vodka. I do not find the ad appealing because it implies that if a woman gets drunk enough she will be a party machine in a sexual context. Using the robot to portray her implies that this person does not have any emotions and there is also an implication that she would be used as a sexual tool which could imply sexual coercion or rape after being plied with alcohol. There is also an implication of gang rape by using the phrase,”The ultimate party machine.”

Do we really want this?

 I don’t know what males who this ad would appeal to would want. I think this is for the 21-35 population. I know that there are some males who have an attitude about sex and drinking. I don’t know what these people are like. I find this ad really creepy-I think it would appeal to a person or crowd of males who had problems with empathy. It reinforces the lack of empathy in a manipulative way. It implies that plying a woman with alcohol to have sex with her is fine. It also implies that objectifying a woman as a sexual robot is what she wants.  

What did I learn from this process?

Most of the time I ignore ads unless they are eye catching or feature something that I find either very appealing or very unappealing. In the case of this ad I decided to deconstruct it because it had elements that some might find appealing such as the use of the robot and elements that were very unappealing the use of the robot. After I wrote most of this paper, I looked up this ad to find out it was part of a larger advertising campaign. I learned that this robot was the central figure in a marketing campaign run by Svedka Vodka which also used the slogan “Voted #1of 2033”. When I was researching this ad campaign, which was retired in 2013, I read a review of it written by a male. He said that he found the ad campaign creepy because it objectified women as robots which is how I felt. Although I really do not drink very much, after reviewing this ad I really do not want to try Svedka Vodka. 

Weblogs and the Public Sphere

Marjorie Thompson

In "Weblogs and the Public Sphere" by Andrew O'Baoill, blogging is examined in reference to its use and

 influence in the public sphere. In this article, the tools and techniques put into practice are blogging and other

 forms of social media. The key issues outlined in the text are the cultural and operational aspects of blogging.

My opinions about these readings are multifaceted.  I thought it was interesting to read  the essays and

 videos of social media researchers discussing the results of their studies. These presentations gave

 assessments of how the internet is used in real world.  

The public sphere of the internet was seen originally by Futurists and creators of the internet as a cyberspace

 where democratic dialogue could take place and people would be able to increase their voice in the

 democratic process.

In "Weblogs and The Public Sphere", it is pointed out that the people who write blogs are not specifically

 interested in creating a sense of the public sphere from them. Public sphere is defined as "inclusivity of

 access, a disregard for external rank, and the potential for rational debate of any topic until consensus is

 achieved are necessary criterion for meeting Habermas's model of an idealized public sphere. "(O'Baoill,

 2004)

Many people who blog are amatures writing about whatever is on their mind so many times their writings are 

not directed around a specific topic. Most people write whatever they are thinking about without a

 specifically political point of view or intention.  The blogs they write are their random thoughts. People have

 many conflicting opinions and there is no consensus between them with which to create a public sphere.

 Even though anyone can start a blog which would fit into the criterian of universal access and disregard for

 external rank, readership many times is dependent on the people who access the blog so this limits the

 dialogue/debate.

The webinaire about Brazilian youth discusses several aspects of social media in Brazil. At the time of this

 webinaire, Brazil had had social media for less than a year. Raquel Recuero, a social media researcher,

 discusses her research along with several other people. She states that social media has created

 opportunities for greater communication about aspects of culture such as young people learning dance steps

 which are popular but she has also found a dark side to social media. In Brazil she states that she has found

 much violence associated with the use of social media. Many people express violent prejudice towards

 various groups such as women and use social media to harass and cyberbully. Students form groups to 

harass other students and teachers. In addition to this and contrasting to it is the tendency to not comment on

 social media. She states that she has found that people have a tendency to not comment  to avoid conflict.

 This is actually completely the opposite from the democratization theories about the internet.

After reading these essays and viewing the videos, I felt that it is really necessary to consider all aspects of

 social media if one is going to assess its function in society. The internet is a powerful tool but like anything

 else it can be positive as well as negative. One can do constructive things, waste time in a meaningless way

 or be very destructive. Being aware of this potential can help direct intent when creating educational 

programs.

References

"Weblogs and the Public Sphere", Andrew O'Baoill, "Into the Blogosphere", 2004

Raquel Recuero, "How are Brazilian youth becoming digital, and what potential does digital media provide for democracy and social movements?" Connected Learning, webinaire with Jeff Brazil, Adriana Amaral, Greg Tuke, Henrique Antoun, João Miguel Lima, July 25, 2012

Saskia Sassen, "Networks, Power and Democracy" video, Saskia Sassen spoke at the Netpublics research group on Networks, Power & Democracy on March 23, 2006. uploaded to You tube July 26, 2012

Upon reading the paper "Beyond Locative Media", I was struck at what a time capsule it is. Locative media as an art form was formulated when people had little experience using PDA’s or handheld GPS locating devices. This art movement is an outgrowth of artists who were loosely organized under the title net.art. Although their art had nothing to do with each other, all of their art work involved the use of the internet and could not exist without it.(Tuters)

Although I am an artist who stays pretty current with trends in art, I was not familiar with Locative Media art nor was I familiar with net.art, so it was interesting to find out about both. I do remember reading the Headmap manifesto, when it was published in 1999.

"location aware, networked, mobile devices make possible invisible notes attached to spaces, places, people and things...computer games move outside and get subversive.

Sex and even love are easier to find.

Real space can be marked and demarcated invisibly.

”¦what was once the sole preserve of builders, architects and engineers falls into the hands of everyone: the ability to shape and organise the real world and the real space.

Real borders, boundaries and space become plastic and maleable [sic], statehood becomes fragmented and global.

Geography gets interesting.

Cell phones become internet enabled and location aware, everything in the real world gets tracked, tagged, barcoded and mapped.

Overlaying everything is a whole new invisible layer of annotation. Textual, visual and audible information is available as you get close, as context dictates, or when you ask."(Tuters)

Having used hand held GPS devices in employment situations to map landmarks, it was strange to read the development of this movement. It is interesting to see how these devices have become integrated into society in the 10 years since the .walk project at the 2004 Transmediale festival in Berlin or 15 years since the Headmap manifesto was written.

In trying to find a use for using GPS devices as an art movement, the author proposes that they be used to track the development of products because people up till now do not have an idea about all of the people involved with the production of something as simple as cheese. Most people are aware about the process that it takes to manufacture objects or food. They are also aware of the implications of manufacturing products where workers have good working conditions vs subhuman working conditions. In the mid 1800's, Dickens wrote stories to protest working conditions and the use of child labor. More recently, stories about working conditions in factories in Bangladesh as an example have come to light since the 1970's. These reports keep people aware of many factors which affect the labor force.

Recently, there was a story about an app created for phones to keep track of data used in cattle ranching. Rather than having to carry around many pieces of paper, the farmer could enter vital data on his phone, thereby making his task easier.

What I find more interesting as people become more familiar with PDA's and mobile devices they find real uses which give more control and change lives. It is no longer Descartes wondering whether he is asleep or awake and whether he can trust the information that his senses give him. People use nanny cams to determine if their children wake from naps or even if their children are being abused by caretakers. There is clothing designed with sensors combat infant death syndrome to tell parents if  their child is having breathing difficulties. 

Rather than a dark world where people are just keeping track of objects, many of these devices can provide critical information which can assist with decision making. Soon we will wonder how we ever functioned without them.

References:
Networked Publics Book  

edited by Kazys Varnelis, MIT Press 2008

What counts as literacy and how literacy changes in response to the new media landscape

There is a huge push in the gaming industry to promote games as learning tools. However, most gaming companies do not produce educational games. In the paper,”Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture”, it was pointed out that games such as Civilization present a false or distorted view of history. With huge budgets to work with to create content, some people actually believe that these games create historically accurate scenarios. (Jenkins, 22, 2009) When my son played these games, he thought that they were historically accurate. When I viewed the material, it was apparent that although fun to play, the narrative had nothing to do with history. I encouraged him to question the story line. Being able to distinguish between fiction and fact is another part of literacy when using any media.

 Having a sense of skepticism is part of literacy that should be developed as one uses new media. New inventions have occurred since the dawn of time. Understanding how media is created, being able to see the ghost in the machine can help to develop that skepticism. In creating new media content, one uses similar skills to creating content in other media. One types, photographs, creates films, art work etc. All forms of media have many influences. Film makers create films from history or fiction. Art work can use other media, historical or fictive sources as inspiration for subject matter. Not knowing what these works are, not connecting new media to previous media can create a false sense that the computer is a magic box. Literacy about content from a broader cultural perspective bridges the gap between “new” and “old” media.

A computer is a tool. In conjunction with the internet, it has many capabilities. One can read text on the screen. One can store books using the memory of the hard drive. It is a word processor. There are websites where one can self-publish. Understanding what this tool can do increases literacy. Being able to harness this tool to increase the self-actualization of each individual implies that the rights of individuals need to be upheld. This requires literacy about intellectual property which may or may not be an unrealistic expectation in education, depending on the age of the individual. 

 References

-S. Bennett & K. Maton, “Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: Towards a more nuanced understanding of students’ technology experiences”,, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, Sydney, Blackwell Publishing, 2010.

-Crystal, David, Language and the Internet, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

-Henry Jenkins with Ravi Purushotma, Margaret Weigel, Katie Clinton, and Alison Robison “Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture, Media Education for the 21^st Century”, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, 2009.

“The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives" (Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9).

As I turn these passages over in my mind, a few questions come to mind.  What is referred in the first passage as literacy and what is this social practice? In Digital Literacies, the author writes that there can be multiple types of literacies attained by using digital technologies.

The subject of digital literacy and social practice is fairly complex and much research has been done in this field. All the papers I read for this blog examined the theoretical use of digital technology in the classroom with the exception of the paper "Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: Towards a more nuanced understanding of students’technology experiences" which compares some aspects of the use of digital technology in the classroom to the use of digital technology in every day life.

My back ground is in art and design. Although I am from a different generation than those considered “digital natives”, I have used digital technologies for a variety of purposes This has increased my literacy in many fields of interest. In this blog I would like to examine different literacies and how they are created or affected by different social practices. 

First, I would like to examine the idea that the social practice of using Facebook and other social media devices creates literacy. Facebook gives one an opportunity to connect with people from many parts of the world a chance to view postings that they consider interesting on a daily basis.  Many individuals and businesses use it as a form of advertising. Using Facebook, I have connected with different companies and individuals which has furthered my literacy in the fields of art and design. One example is a company in Australia owned by a gemologist who procures rough gemstone material from very small mining operations. He posts detailed photos which are very informative about where he goes and what he goes through to procure the stones and create the jewelry he sells on his website. Because I connected with his Facebook page, I have been able to become more literate about where and how gemstones are sourced.

The point of using digital technologies in education is to be able to increase the usage of many different media into curriculum design and thereby bring a the students into the learning process. In Digital Literacies, the author writes about how engaged a student is with using the internet: “A user of the screen...has several windows open at the same time – attending to chat, surfing the internet, listening to sound-as-music, is engaged in forms of ‘attention’ management entirely unlike the withdrawing, reflective modes of reading traditional written text” Certainly it is nice to understand that people enjoy using computers for a variety of purposes. I have to say that when I withdraw to research something on the internet, I use multiple screens and I don’t think it makes me more or less social.

Using digital technologies, more people can create work and supposedly communicate their points of view. But is that what's going on? The speed in which information is transmitted and consumed leaves little time to create quality work.  In the paper "Beyond the digital natives debate...", the author discusses this and states “For example, content creation activities (as measured by items such as creating text, graphics, audio or video) are consistently lower than might be anticipated given many claims about what young people are doing with technology.” Many times if a person creates something which others don't like, one becomes like a gladiator in the Colosseum with the crowd deciding "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down". The term cyber bullying has entered the language, coined to refer to the way people can use the public forum of the internet to create new power structures anonymously. While this is certainly not a taught skill, it is a part of literacy of what social interactions can become in a digital environment where people have access to other people and interact anonymously.

The internet also creates a platform where everything is seen on the same scale. The most mundane You Tube video has a similar impact as a video of a historical event or someone committing a crime. The web creates a digital forum where artwork that took years to create in seen on the same scale as an animal video by an audience who consume it in less than a second and move on.There is pressure to create sensational work because there is so much material out there and the impact of anything that one create is over so quickly. In Literacy and the new technologies in school education: Meeting the l(IT)eracy challenge? the author writes about the change from print media to a multimedia platform and examines the idea that technical competence is also referred to functional literacy.

In The Educated Blogger, Huffaker writes about students writing a blog and how about how it increases one's ability to use language. While this is similar to keeping a journal, it has the advantage of giving students the opportunity to greater creative expression by using the ability to combine photos and other multimedia elements.

However, on the internet, many people disregard authorship, ownership of copyright and patent in reference to the creator when posting images they do not own the copyright for. Photographs and artwork are posted without attribution about the source or creator of the image. The attitude of users of Facebook and other social media platforms is that the old rules do not apply, that one does not need to give attribution to artists, photographers as if these media platforms create their own rules. However the question is what is accepted social practice? My accepted social practice is to make sure that all material I use or source is in the Public Domain or give attributions. I think this is an important point because this not just about the legality of using material created by someone else. It is also about respect for the work of other people and the respect for the concept of originality of work.

Is digital literacy defined by social practice and does it develop as one uses the internet? That is, can a person be considered literate if they can use equipment? The use of new technologies can create a gadget sensibility that the novelty of using a computer makes these expressions different from expressions of the past. Literacy about new technology requires literacy about all aspects of culture.

In Digital Literacies, Gunther Kress remarks: “Contemporary texts are becoming ever more multimodal, that is, they combine writing and image (on screen or page); writing, image, moving image, music and speech (on a DVD, on a website); or gesture, speech, image, spatial position (in f2f interaction). This requires that we think newly about reading and writing, but also that we think about the meaning-contribution of all other modes that appear in texts. We can no longer treat image as merely decorative, or even just as ‘illustration’: images are now being used to make meaning just as much – though in different ways – as is writing.”

Coming from an art background, I have never seen paintings or drawings as “just illustrations”. Studying art history and artists from many time periods has increased my literacy about artists, art work, the time periods they lived in, the social trends that influenced their work. From the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the poetry of the Dadaists where graphic design was an integral part of the content and message of their work, and avant-garde film makers, media in many forms has been a source of information for me.

As the pace of life increases, our appetite for new content will increase. This does not insure that the content will have better quality or meaning. There will always be new technologies to explore-the question is what we do with them and can we go beyond their novelty to create original content that is meaningful and respectful of others in a world that relies more and more on digital communication?

Readings:
S. Bennett & K. Maton (2010) Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: Towards a more nuanced understanding of students’ technology experiences jcal_360 321..331 Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, Wollongong Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, Sydney

Durrant, C. & Green, B. (2000) Literacy and the new technologies in school education: Meeting the l(IT)eracy challenge? The Free Library 01 June 2000. Retrieved on January 24,2014 from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/literacy and the new technologies in school education: meeting the l(IT)eracy challenge? a063132991.

Gillen, J. & Barton, D. (2010) Digital Literacies: A research briefing by the Technology Enhanced Learning Phase of the Teaching and Learning Research Program. Retrieved on January 21, 2014 from Digital Literacies: A research briefing by the Technology Enhanced Learning Phase of the Teaching and Learning Research Program.

Huffaker, D. (2005) The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom. AACE Journal, 13(2), 91-98.