Have you ever vetted purchase decisions with your friends online friends? If so, describe your experience. If not, why not?
When it comes to consuming, I still make most of my decisions the old-fashioned way. For me, the Internet has not even come close to replacing more traditional consumer behviors (going out, sampling a product(s), purchasing a product, discussing a product with those trying to sell it) and I hope it never does. Internet life is a subset of REAL life and cannot replace the fun of going out and going shopping.
In what ways do you use the Internet when considering making a purchase? If I have to make a large purchase, like a bigscreen T.V., a electronic gadget, car, apartment etc... I will use the Internet to look up information, compare prices, see reviews from other users/buyers etc...
In what ways has social media* shaped your decision about purchasing an item/items? Other than the above-stated ways, social media has not done much at all to shape my purchasing decisions or habits. I rarely participate in online shopping. For me it's almost an oxymoron. Like for many people, shopping offers a sort of therapy almost. Online it's just clicking buttons. You can see or feel the real item. Test it for fit or quality, only hope that it works out.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Social Action
You work in a school where only half of your students have high speed access and computers at home.
What could you do to bridge this digital divide? How might you use social media to change this situation
and get kids and their families decent computers and high-speed access?
This is a very difficult situation. The gap in this case is substantial and would present a MAJOR barrier to effective learning, teaching and communication to everyone involved. Getting more computers in the schools could be accomplished through partnerships and deals with corporations and businesses who receive a certain amount of money to give to a charitable cause every year, if the school didn't have enough money to purchase computers.
However, bridging the digital divide entails more than just computer access at school. It involves, as the question points out, making sure that kids AND their families have access in their homes as well. All of these technologies and social media tools are useless if you don't have access to them. I think, first of all, we must reach a consensus as a community and a society that access is important. We must educate on what the digital divide is, agree that it exists and that it is a hindrance to our educational progression, and brainstorm ideas on how to deal with it.
I think it would be a great idea if teachers/schools/school administrators started utilizing text messaging to increase the sense of community amongst students and their families. More people have cell phones than computers, including most students, and text message updates on everything from upcoming events, to student progress could be a great tool bridging the social divide (which perpetuates the digital divide).
What could you do to bridge this digital divide? How might you use social media to change this situation
and get kids and their families decent computers and high-speed access?
This is a very difficult situation. The gap in this case is substantial and would present a MAJOR barrier to effective learning, teaching and communication to everyone involved. Getting more computers in the schools could be accomplished through partnerships and deals with corporations and businesses who receive a certain amount of money to give to a charitable cause every year, if the school didn't have enough money to purchase computers.
However, bridging the digital divide entails more than just computer access at school. It involves, as the question points out, making sure that kids AND their families have access in their homes as well. All of these technologies and social media tools are useless if you don't have access to them. I think, first of all, we must reach a consensus as a community and a society that access is important. We must educate on what the digital divide is, agree that it exists and that it is a hindrance to our educational progression, and brainstorm ideas on how to deal with it.
I think it would be a great idea if teachers/schools/school administrators started utilizing text messaging to increase the sense of community amongst students and their families. More people have cell phones than computers, including most students, and text message updates on everything from upcoming events, to student progress could be a great tool bridging the social divide (which perpetuates the digital divide).
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Creatvity and Play
My childhood experiences were many and varied. Making half my childhood memories on the southside of Saint Petersburg and the other on the Southside of Chicago provided for a diversity of experiences. Play was an important part of my life. Internet and T.V. were not allowed in my house the way they are in large doses in other homes. We were sent outside, in the heat, in the snow, sometimes in the rain. In Chicago I made sprinkler memories, walks around the block memories, block party memories, dancing in the basement memories. Having a younger brother and sister made for good games of hide-and-go-seek in my grandmother's big house in North Chicago. In Saint Petersburg, my play landscape was characterized by Easy Bake Ovens, buliding "fortresses" out of chairs, blankets and pillows in the middle of my sister's bedroom, playing in the "jungle" (the plot of banana plants in the middle of my backyard) and hanging out outside in the heat.
Play was extremely important in the formation of my early ideas of life. Playtime was time to explore the world and form my own ideas about it based on how I saw things. It was time to vent, to blow off steam, to get away from my parents and to be whoever I wanted to be at the time. "Simulation games" like Easy Bake Ovens, toy cash registers, vacuums, refrigerators and grocery stores parlayed into real-world application of crucial life skills.
Play is a necessary part of the learning/educational process. Play is most key in the earlier days, when the brain of a child is still in the early stages of its development. However, and this goes along with the points that Sir Ken Robinson made in the video, play is still important throughout the learning process and beyond. "We start to educate children progressively from the waste up, then we focus on their heads." This rings true in classrooms across America. I absolutely LOVED the story he told about the Jillian the dancer.
"It was great, I walked into a room and it was full of people like me."
I loved this quote and it illustrates how we as educators must stop ignoring the other parts of the human body. As Sir Ken Robinson pointed out we must stop "educating kids out of their creative capacities." "Education [] is shifting beneath our feet." Now a Masters degree is necessary where before a Bachelors degree would suffice, and a Doctorate for a Masters...We are going to have to start reshaping/rethinking our ideas of education and what it means/will mean in the next 10-25years.
"We are educating for a future we have little to no concept of."
Play was extremely important in the formation of my early ideas of life. Playtime was time to explore the world and form my own ideas about it based on how I saw things. It was time to vent, to blow off steam, to get away from my parents and to be whoever I wanted to be at the time. "Simulation games" like Easy Bake Ovens, toy cash registers, vacuums, refrigerators and grocery stores parlayed into real-world application of crucial life skills.
Play is a necessary part of the learning/educational process. Play is most key in the earlier days, when the brain of a child is still in the early stages of its development. However, and this goes along with the points that Sir Ken Robinson made in the video, play is still important throughout the learning process and beyond. "We start to educate children progressively from the waste up, then we focus on their heads." This rings true in classrooms across America. I absolutely LOVED the story he told about the Jillian the dancer.
"It was great, I walked into a room and it was full of people like me."
I loved this quote and it illustrates how we as educators must stop ignoring the other parts of the human body. As Sir Ken Robinson pointed out we must stop "educating kids out of their creative capacities." "Education [] is shifting beneath our feet." Now a Masters degree is necessary where before a Bachelors degree would suffice, and a Doctorate for a Masters...We are going to have to start reshaping/rethinking our ideas of education and what it means/will mean in the next 10-25years.
"We are educating for a future we have little to no concept of."
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The type of reader I am, I feel like I've missed out on something important if I don't read the whole article or whole story or whole book. Simply scanning a reading is not my style. So to have two articles both over 20 pages (one a whopping 37!)was just short of the death penalty. But that's all for the complaints.
The content in each reading, video followed each other pretty closely and often overlapped and repeated. I can say that I have pretty thorough understanding of new media literacies.
1. What is your general reaction to the video? Well for starters I liked the music. I thought the video accurately and succinctly got to the essence of what new media literacies are; that someone who knows nothing at all about what a "new media literacy" is (like myself) could sit down and watch the video and walk away with a pretty good idea.
Points of Interest:
"We're not just consumers of media anymore, we're producing things."
Necessary skills include: Negotiation, appropriation, play, simulation, multi-tasking...
2. What features of participatory culture are evident in the video? Which are not?
I don't understand this question and I HATE when I don't understand the questions? Do you mean what features of participatory culture were not discussed in the video versus which are? I'll answer this question...
The video and article shared definitions and skills. Play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multi-tasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation are New Skills that the article and video both site. Obviously the articles (with its 37 pages) explores the concept of new media literacy more in-depth, as well as its implications.
Points of Interest: *3 Concerns=>Need for Policy & Pedagogical Interventions
1. Participation Gap, 2. Transparency Problem, 3.Ethics Challenge
~Schools and Afterschool programs must devote more attention to fostering new media literacies~
~Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement~
~Fostering such skills & cultural competencies requires a more systemic approach to media education in the US~
3. Based on the video and article, how do the experiences of the student look similar/different from your experiences as a student?
I like this quote: "If it were possible to define generally the mission of education, it could be said that its fundamental purpose it to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, [creative] and economic life." -New London Group (2000 p.9)
Luckily, I was able to go to pretty good schools that employed a pretty good staff and group of teachers and principal that allowed for pretty good teaching methods.I recognize several skills on the list from my experiences. I remember having ample opportunities for play, performance, simulation, distributed cognition...However some of the newer competencies that require more technological savvy i.e., transmedia navigation are not as memorable.
4. In what ways might you engage your students in participatory culture?
Every subject presents ample opportunities to involve students in play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking and distributive cognition. I would like to teach writing so there are ample opportunities for collective intelligence (Ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with other toward criminal goal), appropriation.
Educational Fair Use
1. What is your reaction to the new media literacy video?
2. Define Media Literacy Education. In what ways is it important for students to be aware of media literacy? Media Literacy is the tools that students need to be active in the new participatory educational setting.
3. Define Educational Fair Use. Define the different licensing options associated with Creative Commons?
4. What is your reaction to the idea behind Creative Commons and their different licensing options?
5. How might you use Flickr in your classroom?
The content in each reading, video followed each other pretty closely and often overlapped and repeated. I can say that I have pretty thorough understanding of new media literacies.
1. What is your general reaction to the video? Well for starters I liked the music. I thought the video accurately and succinctly got to the essence of what new media literacies are; that someone who knows nothing at all about what a "new media literacy" is (like myself) could sit down and watch the video and walk away with a pretty good idea.
Points of Interest:
"We're not just consumers of media anymore, we're producing things."
Necessary skills include: Negotiation, appropriation, play, simulation, multi-tasking...
2. What features of participatory culture are evident in the video? Which are not?
I don't understand this question and I HATE when I don't understand the questions? Do you mean what features of participatory culture were not discussed in the video versus which are? I'll answer this question...
The video and article shared definitions and skills. Play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multi-tasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation are New Skills that the article and video both site. Obviously the articles (with its 37 pages) explores the concept of new media literacy more in-depth, as well as its implications.
Points of Interest: *3 Concerns=>Need for Policy & Pedagogical Interventions
1. Participation Gap, 2. Transparency Problem, 3.Ethics Challenge
~Schools and Afterschool programs must devote more attention to fostering new media literacies~
~Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement~
~Fostering such skills & cultural competencies requires a more systemic approach to media education in the US~
3. Based on the video and article, how do the experiences of the student look similar/different from your experiences as a student?
I like this quote: "If it were possible to define generally the mission of education, it could be said that its fundamental purpose it to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, [creative] and economic life." -New London Group (2000 p.9)
Luckily, I was able to go to pretty good schools that employed a pretty good staff and group of teachers and principal that allowed for pretty good teaching methods.I recognize several skills on the list from my experiences. I remember having ample opportunities for play, performance, simulation, distributed cognition...However some of the newer competencies that require more technological savvy i.e., transmedia navigation are not as memorable.
4. In what ways might you engage your students in participatory culture?
Every subject presents ample opportunities to involve students in play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking and distributive cognition. I would like to teach writing so there are ample opportunities for collective intelligence (Ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with other toward criminal goal), appropriation.
Educational Fair Use
1. What is your reaction to the new media literacy video?
2. Define Media Literacy Education. In what ways is it important for students to be aware of media literacy? Media Literacy is the tools that students need to be active in the new participatory educational setting.
3. Define Educational Fair Use. Define the different licensing options associated with Creative Commons?
4. What is your reaction to the idea behind Creative Commons and their different licensing options?
5. How might you use Flickr in your classroom?
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