Self Assessment
Marjorie Thompson
A Brief Introduction
In
order to design course material for the 21st 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 21st 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
