Metacognitive Journal Post

I think I could summarize my growth and learning in this class by just looking at the first word in title of this blog post, Metacognitive. My spell check in Microsoft word says that word doesn’t exist, or I spelled it wrong. Well, I now know what metacogntive means. What? You want me to explain it to you? How about you go research it yourself, and then you will know what this class was like for me. I do not mean that in a negative sense, this class was an incredible experience for me, but it didn’t come naturally.

From day one we explored things in this class that I, right or wrong, never made strong connections to. The concept of media and literacy were in many ways foreign to me as it has been quite some time since I engaged in the formal learning process in a different way than how we engage our students in the Agricultural Engineering Technology program at SUNY Cobleskill. Our classes all seem to follow a similar structure. You come to class, sit in a seat, take notes for an hour, read the textbook, go to lab, read the instructions to take things apart, follow the instructions to put them together, write a report about what you did, repeat for next topic. My intentions from the entire MALET program is to change that and engage in more effective dynamic learning opportunities with my students. So how did this class contribute to the cause? I could go on and on in a length that none of you have time to read, it’s Christmas and a lot of you still have shopping to do. Nevertheless I will provide a couple highlights.

For me it was important to get past the point that literacy meant more than just reading and writing. For me, it means everything involved in using information, in print or digital or in alternative media formats, to develop and communicate one’s knowledge. From this perspective I was able to then start making sense out of how students learn and why certain techniques tend to work and others do not. One of the biggest insights that I have gained through this course is that digital technology, smartphones, participatory environments, networked publics; they are not just new tools that we can use to enhance our learning activities, they are part of our culture. They are as much a part of our culture as our language, our books, and our social connections to our community. Some would argue that in many ways these new technologies are replacing those elements of our culture. It is hard to counter that argument. What I have learned though is that it does not make sense to wage a war against this cultural shift or creating a bunch of rules with the intent of “reversing” the migration of our youth towards digital worlds, but it makes more sense to embrace it for its positive value yet recognize the negative consequences and implement ways of rectifying them. Whether you believe we have a problem with Cyberbullying, diminishing beauty of the written word within our language, sacrificing our privacy, lack of focus with too many distractions, increasing mandates on our public education system, increasing levels of non-credible information being absorbed, polarizing politics, etc.; as educators we all have the responsibility to face these challenges and make an attempt to use our creative techniques to overcome them. However, banning the use of the technology and not embracing it into your curriculum is not the answer.

I want to thank professor Forbes and all of my classmates for a wonderful experience and growing opportunity. I learned from all of you as much as I learned from myself in my research activities. I hope that my contributions to the class were valuable for all of you as well. I look forward to working with all of you in future MALET classes and seeing the projects that you all accomplish. I wish everyone a safe, happy, and healthy new year and will see many of you (virtually) in a few weeks.

Information Literacy Guide

If you are a college student then you know how important it is to find quality information for use in your class assignments. However, it is important to realize that an important part of your college career is not only passing your classes to get your degree, but also to develop the skills you need to be an effective lifelong learner. While you are in college, you have numerous resources available to you that can assist you in finding the information you need without worrying too much about its credibility, such as your professors and librarians. After graduation this will change, and you will need to rely on your own skills to find, critically analyze, and apply various forms of information to your professional work, personal life, or both. In addition, as technology continues to evolve, you will find information presented to you in more ways than you can imagine. While this may appear to make information finding a much easier task, being able to critically evaluate the information will be more important as much of this information will be produced from biased sources or will not be credible at all. In fact, you don’t have to wait until after graduation to see this, it is happening as we speak. You may be inclined to use these new sources of information seeking to perform your academic assignments. The following is a guide to help you become more information literate whether you seek information through traditional means or through new media venues. This guide is based on the information literacy skills outlined by the Association of College and Research Libraries Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.

Step 1 - Determine the extent of information needed

This involves having a clear vision of what the research project or assignment is about and what the expectations are from your professor. Once you know this then you need to consider what the end product will look like, possibly in the form of a thesis, and what sources of information will help you get to that point. It is possible that the best sources of information to support your position may not be immediately available in digital format through the Internet. Be sure to consult with your librarians who may be able to point you to better sources and can often times get you access to something in a relatively short period of time. As you begin this initial research as to what sources of information are available, you may find that there is not enough information to support your position and may need to re-evaluate your overall project.

REFERENCE - Arizona State University Libraries. (n.d.). Skill 1: Determines the nature and extent of the information required for a specific purpose. Retrieved from https://lib.asu.edu/node/3149

Step 2 - Access the needed information effectively and efficiently

This is related somewhat to step #1 above, but has more to do with your actual in-depth research as opposed to just skimming to see what is out there. Once you commit to a position or a strategy for your research assignment, you must then secure the specific sources of information. This involves selecting the most effective, not necessarily the most convenient, tools for searching and finding information. In some cases this may include several different methods which may result in several different sources, which is usually a good thing. Yes, you may find something doing a Google search, but as we will discuss shortly, you will need to evaluate its quality. It is recommended to consult with a librarian when possible, keeping in mind that they have similar digital search engines they can use like Google, but  usually end up with more substantial and credible resources. You may also want to consider subscribing to a listserv or discussion group, especially if the research project is a long term project over the course of the semester. As things change or others with similar interests find information they will often share, giving you an opportunity to expand your information sources.

REFERENCE - The University of Auckland. (2013, April 10). Information literacy standards. Retrieved from https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/instruct/il/standards.htm

Step 3 - Evaluate information and its sources critically

This is an extremely important step and needs to be further broken down into sub-steps.

1)      Evaluate the authority – This involves asking questions about who the author is, what their credentials are, who are they associated with, and what is their reputation among their peers? This also involves questioning the publisher and what their objectives are.

2)      Evaluate the objectivity of the information – what is it the author is attempting to do with the information? Is the information biased and is it supported by factual evidence?

3)      Evaluating the quality – Consider how well organized the information is including everything some spelling and grammar to clear articulation of pictures, images, charts, diagrams, etc.

4)      Evaluating the currency – Is your topic time sensitive? In other words, is it likely that information on the topic published today might be different than information published a decade ago? If so, you need to consider how current the information is you are viewing.

5)      Evaluating the relevancy – Is this information relevant for your project and does it support your thesis? Try to avoid using a resource for one small part or statement within the information that may support your argument when the overall work is not really related.

REFERENCE - University of Oregon. (2013, July). Critical evaluation of information sources. Retrieved from https://library.uoregon.edu/guides/findarticles/credibility.html

Step 4 - Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base

This involves organizing the information that you have found and evaluated to be a good quality source of information into a manner that supports your position. To do this you will need to consider what the mechanism is for you to present your research findings. In many cases this will be a standard research paper report, but in some cases it may be an oral presentation or a visual presentation, such as a PowerPoint. In the case of a written paper, you should try to paraphrase the information into your own words as much as possible. This helps you to truly grasp the knowledge intended by the project. In some cases it will make more sense to simply quote the author, but even then it is important to put your own interpretation of the quote into the paper or write your own description linking the quote to your position. This also helps with oral presentations as well because you will likely be asked questions and if you haven’t taken the time to synthesize the information into your own understanding, you will not be able to answer the questions. In the case of a visual presentation, it is often suggested to include more images and diagrams and less text. If you use images and diagrams from your information sources, be sure you understand what they are showing and can relate it to your position.

REFERENCE - University of Maryland University college. (2013). Umuc information literacy faq for faculty. Retrieved from http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/informationliteracy.cfm

Step 5 - Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose

Now that you have absorbed the information, developed your knowledge of the subject, and organized your thoughts, not it is time to get it into your presentation mode. If you are writing a paper, you need to have the paper organized. Just because you have it organized in your head does not mean it will be organized well in writing. It is suggested that you start by writing a simple outline of the project without all of the word for word details and then evaluate the outline to see if it makes sense. Then after you write the details in the paper following your outline, you should ask for someone to review it for you. Sometimes your professor is willing to do this, but often times your college will have an academic support service with writing tutors that are happy to read these for you and offer suggestions on things that were not clear to them. It is easy for somebody with considerable topic knowledge to take certain things for granted as common knowledge and omit it from the paper. However, someone with little subject knowledge will be better able to make that decision for you. Finally, make sure everything flows nicely and that, even though the information may be clear and understandable, it doesn’t jump around or include quotations in awkward points in the paper. Similar strategies should be applied for presentations in oral or visual formats. Outline the topic, put it together, present it to a reviewer first, and be sure it flows smoothly.

REFERENCE - Neumann University. (n.d.). Information literacy toolbox for faculty . Retrieved from http://libguides.neumann.edu/content.php?pid=280768&sid=4028213

Step 6 - Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally

This is the part that can get you into trouble if you are not careful. Anytime you are entering a research environment, either in print or electronic, you need to be careful about your own security and privacy. You also need to be conscious of the fact that many scholarly sources of information, like the ones you may find most useful to your research project, are not free. You may have to pay a fee to access them, or in many cases your library has already paid the fee so you can have access. It is also important to have an understanding of issues such as censorship, freedom of speech, intellectual property, copyright, and fair use. Most professors will require one of two formats to follow when writing a research report, either APA or MLS. Be sure you know which one as it will affect the proper format for citing your resources. Of course, you need to be aware of when it is necessary to cite something and when it is not. Generally speaking, anytime you include a quote or image that you did not say or create yourself, it needs to be cited. In fact, even your own paraphrased description of a fact or concept that you essentially derived from someone else, in other words it was not your own previous knowledge or work that determined the information, you need to cite it. Again, this is something that most librarians are quite knowledgeable about and can provide tremendous guidance for you if you simply ask.

REFERENCE - Old Dominion University. (n.d.). Information literacy standards of the acrl . Retrieved from http://www.lib.odu.edu/genedinfolit/standard5.htm

My Interview with Sarah

For this week’s assignment we were asked to conduct an interview with an adolescent about their use of digital technology and social media. I chose to interview my neighbor Sarah who is 18 years old and is a senior in high school. As an 18YO, she is at the end of her “adolescent years” and being much more mature than the average 18YO that I have had in some of my classes, in my mind she doesn’t really classify well as an adolescent, she is definitely a young adult. However, I decided to conduct my interview with her anyways because I know she uses technology a lot, is friends with a generation of digital natives, and has a bit of a digital immigrant experience in that she did not have high speed internet access at her house until four years ago. In addition, I know her parents have instilled a strong sense of right and wrong in their whole family, including Sarah’s older brother and older sister. I believe, and is shown to be true in the interview, that this not only makes her conscious about her own use but she is aware of the “normal” or “abnormal” behaviors of her peers and could shed some light on interesting questions.

              

You can listen to the interview by going to my Soundcloud account at this link and click the play button.. However, I wanted to highlight some of the things she said that I find most interesting.

SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT – I asked her a few questions about whether digital technology has affected her ability to engage socially with people in a traditional sense, such as having conversations with people either in person or on the phone. As I suspected, she was confident that she and her family (parents and siblings) make an effort to actually ignore their technology and try to engage with each other at the dinner table, on trips, and other times when family connection is appropriate. However, she did give examples of other people she knew that definitely had a “problem” with being able to put the cell phone away when it wasn’t appropriate to use it. We also talked about “phone phobia” where people prefer to text message instead of call somebody because of the unknown elements of the conversation and being afraid of not knowing what to say. What surprised me was that she agreed that is described her, that she actually had a sense of phone phobia for that exact reason. I was also surprised by a comment that she made regarding other students in her school that had such poor conversational skills and such a lack of confidence that they would avoid going to talk to their teachers in school even when it was a critical issue. This really caused me to step back and think about my students and advisees at the college. It seems every year I have less and less students coming to see me outside of class, during office hours, etc., to get help with problems they are having. Yet, I see continuous declines in test scores, homework performance, getting into the right classes at scheduling, no direction of career goals, etc. Is this because they “don’t care” as I and many of my colleagues have been speculating? Or, do they really not know how to talk to me? Maybe setting up that twitter account isn’t a bad idea after all. Maybe I should create a Facebook page separate from my personal page and dedicate it strictly to advising. Maybe having “virtual office hours’ in Second Life will make a difference.

EDUCATION – We discussed a couple different things related to the use of digital media in schools and education. There were two highlights of her answers I feel are worth mentioning here. She mentioned in a couple different answers how important it was for her to have access to the internet to do her homework. In fact, she said that she will sometimes look up information on subjects or answers to questions when she knows all of the information is in her textbook. She finds it easier to look it up online than to try and find it in the textbook. We also talked about teachers and schools with rules against using or even bringing cell phones to class and her insight was extremely interesting. She essentially believes that when a teacher has a flexible policy where they let students bring them and use them in a controlled manner that isn’t abusive or distracting to other students, the students typically respect the rule without any issues. However, when teachers set strict rules against the use, students have a sense of rebellion in them that makes them want to use them anyway and try to break the rules. In our department back at the college, we have had numerous discussions about creating a department wide policy against cell phone use in classes and labs. I personally have never really liked this idea because I have always been one of the more flexible teachers in the program. I never make an issue about it with students, I never let it distract me, and I have never typed rules against it in my syllabus. Therein lies the problem with my department, because other teachers feel that they can’t effectively create a rule and enforce it if the rest of the teachers (me) don’t go along with it and join them. Until I heard Sarah’s insight on this, I never had a good reason for not going along with my colleagues in my department. I guess I just wrote it off to being “scared” to enforce it, not being comfortable with confrontation, not knowing what to do if I tell a student “turn it off” and he responds with “No. Why? What are you going to do if I don’t?” Now I feel like I actually have a good reason not to make a rule against it. I believe my students have the maturity to respect my flexibility and not abuse it, and I feel that if we try too get strict with it, we will be creating a rebellious environment which becomes a distraction in itself.

BULLYING – This was a small part of our conversation and for the most part Sarah only confirmed what most of us already knew. Cyberbullying does take place, it does happen in the real world, even in small communities, and it can get really bad and be extremely hateful. Furthermore, she also confirmed that she felt it was easier for somebody to cyberbully another person instead of doing it face to face because without the face to face contact, you don’t have to worry about how they will react, at least not in a direct instantaneous way. However, she did mention something a term that, not having a twitter account or being a tweeter, I had never heard of. It’s called “subtweeting.” Believe it or not, it is quite common knowledge among twitter users and I looked it up in the “Urban Dictionary” http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Subtweet. It is a form of Cyberbullying where somebody will tweet negative comments about somebody else without using their name or Twitter username.

PRIVACY – This was also a small part of the interview where I asked Sarah how she felt about people digging into her private life through social media and whether she felt a sense of loss of privacy as a result. She first indicated that she was conscious of this potential and therefore was very careful to never post something that revealed anything she wanted to remain private. At the same time she was aware that colleges and businesses often looked at social media sites of students during application processes to make decisions and therefore she was conscious to never post anything negative, but did feel that there was a sense of privacy invasion, and that colleges and businesses didn’t really have a right to dig in to your personal life like that.

In summary it was a great conversation and I learned a lot by doing this assignment. It has actually helped me piece together a number of things we have covered in this class, and other topics from the other classes I am taking. I have struggled to see how some of these things fit and can be applied in my environment, and I am still not 100% clear on everything, but doing this assignment has really helped me move forward. Thank you Sarah!

MEDIA EDUCATION

Marshal McLuhan made a number of observations and prophecies throughout the 1960s and 1970s as he observed the effects of media, television and predicted the effects of the electric age of information. I find many of his predictions amazing as we have seen recent evolutions of digital media and social networks utilizing the Internet, the evolution of Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, verifying his predictions to be true even though they were made over 30 years ago. One observation he makes is shown in a short video clip called End of Secrecy (1974). In this video clip McLuhan discusses how in the age of electric information there can no longer be any secrecy. He uses the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal as an example and also includes how it will be impossible to hide anything in politics. He also discusses the concept that there can be no more “monopolies of knowledge” where only certain people have certain knowledge and others who wish to learn that knowledge must go directly to them to get it. Today, both observations of McLuhan are proving true with digital media, television, and the Internet. Political scandals and corruption, both true as well as exaggerated, are hitting television and web sites daily. The overwhelming distrust and dissatisfaction people have in government is a direct result of digital news media, social networks, and mass media. We are also now seeing an overwhelming amount of “shared knowledge” applications with the use of the Internet for academic research, collaboration, and open courseware in education.

While McLuhan made these comments in the same two minute video clip, to me they are essentially two different outcomes, agreeable that they are derived from the same sources, but have different implications on education today. First, in terms of the secrecy factor, it is important to understand that not everything we are seeing as being “exposed” is completely accurate. In Toward Critical Media Literacy (Kellner and Share, 2005) the statement is made “Media do not present reality like transparent windows or simple reflections of the world because media messages are created, shaped, and positioned through a construction process. This construction involves many decisions about what to include or exclude and how to represent reality” (p.374). We have all seen this numerous times where news media, either on television, radio, or the Internet portray a situation or circumstance, usually political, in a way that is not completely accurate and is often times misleading. They leave out certain parts of the story, or exaggerate other parts of the story, and add in artificial visuals, sounds, music, etc to play with people’s minds and try to tell a story that is borderline fictional. Their motivations to do so are arguable and I do not wish to speculate on them in this blog, but there is common knowledge that it happens. As Kellner and Share point out, an understanding of this is the first step for students engaging in critical media literacy to be able to sort out everything and construct their own knowledge and make their own decisions (p.381).

In terms of Internet based research and open courseware in higher education, the issue of ethics becomes central to the discussion with application in many contexts.  Such contexts include intellectual property rights, copyright laws, and plagiarism (De Gagne & McGill, 2009, p. 3 – 10). These issues present a need and opportunity to incorporate ethics education into critical media literacy, both for students as well as teachers.

REFERENCES

Marshall Mcluhan Speaks – Centennial 2011, End of Secrecy (1974), Retrieved from http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/electric-age/1974-end-of-secrecy.php

De Gagne, J. C., & McGill, B. A. (2009). Ethical and Legal Issues in Online Education. Journal of eLearning and Online Teaching, 1(7). Retrieved from http://www.theelearninginstitute.org/journal_pdf/JeOT%20-%20Ethical%20and%20Legal%20Issues%20in%20Online%20Education.pdf

Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2005). Toward critical media literacy: Core concepts, debates, organizations, and policy. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 26(3), 369-386. Retrieved from http://one2oneheights.pbworks.com/f/Kellner_critical_media.pdf

Advertisement Deconstruction

I performed an advertisement deconstruction activity using a television commercial from the 2013 Super Bowl game. The commercial was sponsored by Anheuser Busch and the Budweiser brand. For those that watched the event, you will most likely remember this ad as being the story of a young Clydesdale pony growing up with his trainer to be separated and then they reunite at a parade. For those who are not familiar, or maybe forgot, here is the link to the video. http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-super-bowl-commercials/0ap2000000134659/Brotherhood

What did I learn from this activity? The deconstruction framework given to us to perform this activity itself taught me a lot about critical literacy relating to media, regardless of the actual advertisement. Understanding the small details to pay attention to such as images, logos, camera angles, lighting, music, messages, stereotypes, and dozens of other criteria was a great eye opener. Since doing this activity I have noticed myself picking apart television commercials as I watch shows with my family. Obviously without being able to go back and replay them over and over it is hard to catch a lot of details, but commercials are much more interesting to me now, despite what the actual product is.

For the specific advertisement that I chose though, I am not sure that I had any major revelations, and therefore am concerned whether my choice of advertisement was a good choice for the intended purpose of the advertisement. There were not a lot of “negative” or deceitful strategies or schemes to the advertisement. It was a heart touching warm fuzzy feeling story that did not really show much of the product at all. In fact, if you would have asked me before doing this activity if that commercial even showed one can or bottle of beer in it, I would have said “no.”After reviewing it several times for the deconstruction activity, I did in fact notice a Budweiser bottle for about 2 seconds. The Budweiser logo was displayed multiple times and was more obvious, which leads me to a more important question I think…what’s the point?

What is the point of the advertisement? To make people cry? To make people smile? To sell beer? How are they trying to sell beer if they only show beer in 2 seconds out of a 60 second advertisement? To answer this I decided to do a little searching for information on marketing and found a number of resources that help to understand that advertisements like this one are simply following theories of marketing, especially theories related to the concept of “ad-evoked feelings” (Pham, Geuens & De Pelsmacker, 2013, http://www.columbia.edu/~tdp4/Pham-Geuens-DePelsmaker%20(2013)%20Ad-Evoked_Feelings%20--%20forthcoming%20IJRM-%20April%202013.pdf). The story in the ad is nothing more than an attempt to make people have a more positive evaluation of the brand. One could speculate on various direct and indirect results of having a positive evaluation of a brand, but ultimately the end goal is that more people will buy specific products (Bud regular, Bud Light, Bud Light Lime, Black Crown, etc) if they have a more positive evaluation of the Budweiser brand.

In addition to the Budweiser commercial, there were a few other commercial aired during the 2103 Super Bowl that I believe are following the same marketing strategy and do not really display any product in any significant time, they just tell a story that affects people’s emotions and then display their brand logo. Some examples include Coca Cola Security Camera (http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-super-bowlcommercials/0ap2000000134697/Security-Camera), Chrysler Ram To the Farmer in All of Us (http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-super-bowl-commercials/0ap2000000134685/To-the-farmer-in-all-of-us), and Jeep America Will be Whole Again (http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-super-bowlcommercials/0ap2000000134679/America-will-be-whole-again).

Citizenship and Democracy

                This week we explored a couple readings and videos related to citizenship and democracy as a result of social networks, the Internet, and other forms of digital media. I found these to be interesting as previous subjects and blog posts from a number of students in the class have brought this issue up quite a bit, and now we were able to see it addressed directly from people with research based expertise. One theme that kept getting my attention was that while it was commonly agreed that such tools have created a new dynamic in society with real potential for good, there are a number of unforeseen, and often undesired, issues and consequences that arise.

                First, as Saskia Sassen mentions numerous times in her video lecture talk Networks, Power, and Democracy, the networked domains, despite their openness, cannot be expected to produce well distributed outcomes (Varnelis, 2006). She uses the blogosphere to illustrate her point and argues that there are sociological factors that end up directing the majority of traffic to the same places, recreating a conventional few-to-many model. At the same time, the lower traffic areas of the blogosphere has a better distribution of thoughts and ideas but they are not seen or read by many, and the few that do participate are often just agreeing with each other or rehashing the same ideas and arguments over and over, which doesn't really get the results that these networks were designed for.

                Second, as pointed out in the group discussion video that focuses on the research of Raquel Recuero titled Digital Youth, Social Movements, and Democracy in Brazil, social networks and digital tools designed for participatory involvement have the tendency for political issues and debate to polarize as opposed find common negotiated ground (Connected Learning, 2012). When one reads somebody else’s opinion or argument on an issue, if it doesn't agree with theirs, they get upset and do one of three things. They either restate their opposite opinion, choose to not participate further for fear of judgment or other social implications, or result to offensive verbal (textual) attacks. This was the one aspect of the readings and videos that I connected with on a personal level. I briefly touched on this in one of my earlier blog posts in the course. If you notice a large percentage of online news articles, or YouTube videos related to political issues, there are often tools provided under the articles and video windows that allow people to comment, much like blogs. If you read the comments, they are always extremely polarized, rarely constructive in terms of finding common ground and compromise, and very often contain offensive language and rude aggression towards people with opposite opinions.

                In fact, one of the most recent political issues in the United States has been addressed extensively in social networks and digital media, and I personally find the whole thing extremely ironic. The issue was the shutdown of the government over debate of the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. The politicians were obviously polarized in their views, which created the whole conflict that led to the shutdown. The public was outraged and the public networks became filled with suggestions that all of the politicians should be fired or their pay withheld until they could resolve the issue and move forward. The notion seemed to be that they should “do their job’ and by doing their job they were suggesting that they should “negotiate” and “compromise” and both sides kept blaming the other side for not negotiating, not compromising. The ironic part was that if you tried to find public comment about what a good compromise would be, or any public comment suggesting reasonable negotiation, it didn’t exist, or was rarely evident. Instead, anybody who tried to contribute anything of substance to the debate was abruptly met by someone on one side or the other accusing the individual of not understanding their side and therefore their “uninformed” opinion should not be considered. Essentially, the same public demanding the politicians work together were just as polarized as the politicians were, and what they really meant when they said they should ‘work together to find common ground” really meant the other side should give in to what we are asking for.

                In reflecting on the last few weeks, I am seeing a common message coming to the surface, and it came to the surface again this week at the end of the Recuero video, that education should play a major role in addressing these negative symptoms of public networks so that the true potential, which most all experts on the subject matter seem to agree is present, can be realized for the better of our community, our nation, and the world. In W. Lance Bennet’s Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age, he makes the quote…

“Yet for all the tangential incursions of politics into the social and play environments of digital media, the sphere of more explicitly youth-oriented politics remains comparatively isolated and underdeveloped.” (Bennet, 2008).

So, if this is true, which I personally believe it is, then how do we correct this? Sassen calls for the creation of new political models and framework. I agree. However, I think it also calls for new educational models as well.

REFERENCES

Bennett, W. L. (2008). Changing citizenship in the digital age. Civic life online: Learning how digital  

           media can engage youth, 1, 1-24. Retrieved from

http://mitp webdev.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262524827_sch_0001.pdf

Connected Learning, (2012), Digital youth, social movements, and democracy in brazil, retrieved from

http://connectedlearning.tv/raquel-recuero-digital-youth-social-movements-and-democracy-brazil

Varnelis, K. (2006), Networks, power, and democracy, retrieved from

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpw1GpHzAbc&feature=youtu.be

Networked Publics Participation Gap

This week in New Medias New Literacies, we began reading some very thought provoking works by Kazys Varnelis, Networked Publics, and by Henry Jenkins, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. These readings are covering a wide application of concepts, theory, and issues that relate to digital literacy. One in particular that stood out to me was the “participation gap” described by Jenkins in chapter four, Why We Should Teach Media Literacy: Three Core Problems. The entire chapter is devoted to Jenkins belief, as I absolutely agree, that digital literacy is not something we should let children and young adults develop on their own, and that it takes deliberate structured intervention and infrastructure to ensure it happens properly. In regards to the participation gap, Jenkins points out numerous examples of the disadvantage, both in short term and long term, to those without affordable or accessible high speed Internet or without access to high capacity computers. My attention really perked when he specifically pointed to the advantage of having unrestricted high speed Internet access at home, instead of relying on a library’s connection or within a school system.

“What a person can accomplish with an outdated machine in a public library with mandatory filtering software and no opportunity for storage or transmission pales in comparison to what person can accomplish with a home computer with unfettered Internet access, high bandwidth, and continuous connectivity.” (Jenkins, 2006, p.13)

I have personal experience related to this subject that thankfully is now a part of my history and no longer the present. After taking my teaching position in 1998, I moved to Schoharie County and was fortunate to rent two different houses over the course of eight years, both with high speed Internet access (DSL and Cable). After I married my wife, we purchased a home that was somewhat located in a rural area, although only several miles from a densely populated area with high speed Internet access. The area also resembled more of a residential neighborhood than a sparse farm area. Unfortunately the only Internet access available was dial up, extremely slow, or satellite, extremely expensive. The house was nice though, and quite affordable, so we went ahead and purchased it with the thought that as broadband access was spreading, we would certainly be one of the first to be connected. Well, it happened, but it took three years before we saw it. After high speed internet had become a norm in my life, having to rely on my college’s access was extremely debilitating for those three years. I lost social connections to friends and family, I spent more time at my office than with my family, and my desire to pursue knowledge diminished significantly.

Today I no longer have that problem as I am now connected through DSL, I have re-established social relationships with distant friends and relatives, I am spending more time at home introducing my daughter to the wonderful resources on the world wide web, and albeit slow, am redeveloping an eagerness to search and sift the vast amounts of information available. That must be the case with everyone, right? Not exactly. In Networked Publics, we are shown that the United States significantly trails many other countries in terms of high speed internet access, and points to a few different reasons, including the fact that the US is not a densely populated (Varnelis, 2008, ch.4, speed bumps on the road toward ubiquitous broadband, para. 5). Furthermore, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimated in 2010 that there were still approximately 14 million residents of the United States who were not being served by broadband Internet (FCC, 2010, p.17).

My assumption is that anybody, or at least the majority of people, reading this blog has access to high speed Internet at their home. However, as educators, both in and out of formal educational institutions, we have an obligation to champion this cause, and to encourage our politicians from our local communities to the White House to continue the work to make broadband access, either through hard wire or wireless, accessible to and affordable for all American households.

REFERENCES

Federal Communications Commission. (2010). The broadband availability gap. Retrieved from http://download.broadband.gov/plan/the-broadband-availability-gap-obi-technical-paper-no-1.pdf

Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. The MIT Press. Retrieved from http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/jenkins_white_paper.pdf

 Varnelis, K. (2008). Networked publics. London, England: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Literacy Debate

In a 2008 New York Times online article, Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading, Motoko Rich presents us with an interesting look at how adolescents today are transforming our traditional definition of literacy, and how students practice and develop literacy (Rich, 2008). She uses specific teenagers as case examples, includes thoughts from the parents, and presents multiple sides of the issue from various organizations and intellectuals involved in education and educational psychology. What counts as literacy? Literacy by definition is one’s ability to read and write. However, I do not believe that the ability of one to do so should only be taught, cultivated, applied, and assessed in a strictly traditional printed form. Doing so is ignoring the fact that the world is changing, and the needs of the 21^st century in terms of business, democracy,  and society includes a new digital literacy that requires people to search, sort, read, write, and evaluate incredible amounts of information that are being produced daily and modified by the hour. To infer that the Internet, digital forms of text, and new media are changing literacy in a negative way is a closed minded type of analysis of the issue. Yes, there is some research out there that suggests Internet usage may be correlated to a decline in test scores. However, that result in itself warrants close examination and scrutiny.

The fact that these assessment models are not written or updated to address digital literacy or text derived through new technologies and new media, is essentially a prescription for declining scores and an increase in failure rates. Research does suggest that the more a student reads for fun, the better they do on these test scores. The Internet is what students do for fun, like it or not, it’s fact, and unless we ban in the Internet, that is what students will spend their time on. Students can use the internet to read for fun, which should increase their test scores. However, test scores do not improve because new media literacy is a different animal, and unless the tests are rewritten to address new media literacy, we will still continue to see students struggle on those exams. There is a key concept in education when it comes to curriculum design. Curriculum should not be written or structured to prepare students for an assessment, more commonly referred to as “teaching to a test.” Curriculum starts by identifying what the student will need to know and what they will need to be able to perform when the curriculum is over, and the curriculum is then designed, developed, and implemented with that goal as the basis for everything. The assessment is not that goal. The assessment is a measurement tool used to determine how well students are working towards those goals. Therefore, literacy assessments that do not include 21^st century forms of reading and writing are a statement by the assessment creators that the world is not changing around them and that new media literacy is not important or relevant for career skills or for any forms of lifelong skills that contribute to a better society, which is delusional.

I offer the following example to help illustrate my point. The New York State Education Department requires students to use a graphing calculator on their standardized algebra assessments. What do you think would happen if NYSED forced students, during the NYS Regents exams for algebra, to use grid paper and pencil to make all of the graphs they need to answer the assessment questions? My guess is that the test scores would be drastically lower than they already are. Curriculum writers in mathematics along with math teachers started using graphing calculators back at least when I was in school (mid 1980s) if not before, because they knew that it was just as important for students to be able to analyze graphs as it was for them to make the graph, utilizing technology to make more graphs faster allowed them to do more analysis.  Now, a graphing calculator is a requirement by NYSED to take the NYS Regents exams for algebra. 

Careers, communities, governments, schools, organizations, the world as a whole, will need people to be digitally literate as we move forward. Curriculum should be adjusted to include both traditional forms of literacy along with new media literacy so that we are meeting those needs, and the standardized tests used to measure reading comprehension and writing abilities should be redesigned to include digital literacy. Let's stop "teaching to the test", start teaching to our needs, and create some tests that assess how well we are teaching to our needs.

REFERENCES  

Rich, M. (2008, July 27). Literacy debate: Online, r u really reading? The New York Times.  
 Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?      
 pagewanted=all&_r=1&

How I use Texts

 "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).

What do I do with texts, how do I make sense of them, and how do I use them to further my own learning? That depends primarily on the environment in which I am using them, work or personal. In my work, the majority of texts I use for my own learning, as well as the majority of texts I reference for my students in their learning, do not lend themselves well to social interaction per se. These books, some of which are hard print and others in electronic format, basically explain how machines are built, how they work, and how they come apart and go back together. Furthermore they are usually written by the person, or a close affiliation to the person, who designed the machine. They are, for the most part, very factual and based on scientific concepts and proven technological principles. However, they are often times misinterpreted or misunderstood. This ultimately structures my approach to teaching and the materials I build and present to my students in the classroom and in the lab (shop). 

When I put lecture material together, I try to consider the potential for confusion, misinterpretation, or misunderstanding of the text. This consideration comes from past experience and history with former students as well as my own struggles in comprehending the text. I try to create new text, present and explain diagrams, show videos, do demonstrations, and structure hands on lab activities in ways that reinforce the text and allow students to comprehend it from alternative means. In addition, I often times require students to write out and describe what they have learned. This comes in the form of lab reports where students reflect on what they did and write technical descriptions of what they worked on, along with system reports where they have to research and study specific systems on specific machines without my assistance and write a report along with the creation of an oral / visual presentation. In a way, this is another form of text for the class, and one that does allow social interaction between myself and the student as their text allows me evaluate and assess their learning and provide feedback, clarification, and support.

In my personal world, I typically access text electronically via websites, and rarely ever turn to printed text with the exception of my community’s local weekly newspaper. I like to read about news and events from these sources for many reasons, including their tendency to be updated when in reference to current events that are dynamic and changing by the hour. In addition, many web based news media outlets have built in an instrument that allows readers to integrate their social networking tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc) in response to the articles. I find this adds a wonderful dimension to the text as it allows people to respond to, question, challenge, and learn from both the original text as well as other humans. This is a great way for people to apply the concept of critical literacy and sociological imagination which Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel argue is essential to the practice of active citizenship (Lankshear & Knobel, 1992/94/97, p.89). On a side note, anyone who has had experience in reading or posting to these articles with their Facebook page know that the positives of this ability to interact with other humans are often offset by the insensitive, rude, and vulgar comments by some who need a serious lesson in civility. It is fine to disagree and even attempt to sway someone to your side of the argument, but when people start labeling each other with degrading names and profanity, the urge to participate goes away.

What about blogs, or weblogs? In my personal world, I do not find myself attracted to these forms of text much. That isn’t to say that I never read blogs, but as Lankshear and Knobel point out, bloggers are predominantly “individuals writing for relatively small audiences on themes, topics or issues of personal interest to themselves” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2001-2003, p. 197). Typically, the topics and issues that interest me are either not what bloggers are writing about, or the search engines and means of searching that I use do not land on blogger sites often. However, getting back to the work side of my life, I am intrigued about the use of blogs in my classes. While I currently do not use them, I may consider experimenting with them, or a similar form such as wikis, in the future.

Typically, I have my students work together is small groups (2-3 students per group) on lab activities and sometimes on system research reports. If I had them present their reports in the form of blogs or wikis, not only would it allow me to analyze and assess their learning as I always have, but it would allow the incorporation of a number of other benefits illustrated by David Huffaker in his 2005 article The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs to Promote Literacy in the Classroom. “Blogs present a perfect medium for literacy” (Huffaker, 2005). What kind of literacy? Simple practice of reading and writing, maybe a form of functional literacy, at an advanced level in terms of using technologically accurate terminology and descriptions, critical literacy from the standpoint of other students being able to question, challenge, and provide feedback directly, and most certainly New Literacy.

I’ve heard many people say that teaching is an art, and art is all about creativity. To me, a good teacher is one who can find creative ways to help facilitate learning in students, and I think I might have just found a new way to do that.

REFERENCES: 

Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (1992/94/97). Critical literacy and active citizenship. In C. Lankshear & M.             Knobel, Literacies: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives (p. 89). New York, NY: Peter Lang    

        Publishing.

Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2001-2003). The "new literacy studies" and the study of "new" literacies. In  

        C. Lankshear & M. Knobel (Eds.), Literacies: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives (p. 197).             New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing

Huffaker, D. (2005). The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom. AACE      

Journal, 13(2), 91-98.

About Me

I wanted to take a brief moment to tell you a little about myself which will help bring some clarity to my future blog posts regarding New Media and New Literacies as they apply to me in my work and in my personal life. My full time occupation is at the college level where I teach courses related to agricultural equipment and engineering technology. Basically, I work with students pursuing careers where they will operate, maintain, troubleshoot, and repair farm equipment (tractors, combines, hay tools, tillage and seeding equipment, etc), construction equipment (backhoes, bulldozers, wheel loaders, excavators, etc), as well as lawn and garden equipment. I have been doing this for approximately 15 years. In addition, when the normal college semesters are over and students are home on break, I do some additional teaching in the form of industry training for the Bobcat Equipment Company. Beyond that I am a pretty "average" person. I have two kids (5 and 1) with a wonderful wife, a pretty average house that I paid an above average price for, two vehicles with too many miles, etc. In my spare time, which is very little, I enjoy golfing, snowmobiling, and a little gaming on my computer.