Week 3 - Reflection on Jenkins' "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century"

     One topic that stood out for me in the reading was collective intelligence, one of the 11 core media literacy skills.  It is defined as "the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal" (Jenkins, p.39).  Like-minded individuals come together online and share what they know and create a knowledge bank that can be tapped by the group.  A group may develop something trivial, like a guide to a game or a movie, or work together to modify Google maps by sharing images they captured, in order to allow victims of Hurricane Katrina to find information about any specific location. 

     "The ideal of collective intelligence is a community that knows everything and individuals who know how to tap the community to acquire knowledge on a just-in-time basis" (p.42).  When I was choosing where to buy a house, for example, I "consulted" an online forum and got responses from a lot of people who actually lived in the area and were willing to share information. I didn't need to drive around and knock on people's doors to get the information.  The online community enabled me to get this information quickly and at minimal cost. 

     For me, collective intelligence is the best manifestation of the participatory culture of the Internet.  Everyone feels free to contribute and whatever they contribute is appropriately valued.  People have more community involvement and are solving problems together.  It is not just about absorbing more and more knowledge, but being able to share this knowledge with other people.  "We are moving away from a world in which some produce and many consume media, toward one in which everyone has a more active stake in the culture that is produced" (p.10). 

     Using Green's Model, collective intelligence falls under the Critical Dimension, wherein social practices such as literacy are socially constructed and individuals can act on and transform literacy.  Collective intelligence is what made Wikipedia what it is, an online encyclopedia formed by contributions of all kinds of people -- from the scholarly experts to the lay person, who may know just one bit of information about a subject.

     I believe that the digital media, through collective intelligence, empowers people and makes them active participants in the community.  One person cannot solve the world's problems, however, the Internet makes it possible for people to work together for a common good, even if it is something as simple as sharing a traffic update.  As teachers, we should not only encourage our students to expand their knowledge, but also teach them how to work with others and learn the value of teamwork, social awareness and active citizenship.
    







    



  

Week 2 - Literacy - Online R U Really Reading?

     The world now relies on the Internet to the extent that makes it necessary for people to be possess digital literacy to be considered literate.  While it is true that reading books is a major factor in literacy as it helps students gain the skills in reading comprehension, for a lot of people, the Internet has made it easier to gain access to education.  The book is now considered just one of the different media for learning.

     There are pros and cons to the use of books and the Internet, and people have differing opinions on which one is better.  One gleaming strength of the Internet is the element of participation involved, whereas reading a book is mostly considered a more or less a passive activity.  Furthermore, one book may be a literary gem, while another book may contain useless or biased information.  On the other hand, a student can spend hours in meaningful online research, or spend all day chatting or playing games.  It is still how we use the media that is of utmost importance, if we intend to gain something from it.

     The advent of the digital age is prompting educators to rethink what literacy is and what should be included in the basic instruction of reading and writing.  Online reading is considered another skill that needs to be learned, as it involves interpretation of visual elements such as graphics.  A person who intends to be an active participant in the online community should be able to acquire writing skills that now include use of Internet to publish written material online in a blog or website.

Week 1 - Literacy as a Social Practice

"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 the author is trying to impart by this passage is this:  It is in how a person perceives and responds to information that any change in his literacy and the society’s literacy can occur.  Literacy is not a one-way street.  It is interactive.  It is dynamic.   Every person in our society is able to contribute to literacy in their own way.  And what we contribute is determined by how we perceive and respond to each other’s ideas, and how we use these ideas.

A good example of this social, interactive literacy is web blogging.  According to Huffaker (2005), “Blogs represent a perfect medium for literacy” (p. 93).  A blog, in a way, is a form of storytelling or self-expression.  Bloggers tell their “stories”, i.e. share their ideas with an online community.  People from all over the world are able to comment not only on the story but also to each other’s responses.    And whatever was shared in that interaction may be used by these people in another discussion and it goes on and on.  Imagine the magnitude of learning and social change that can be achieved through this!

This is what New Literacy is all about, as explained in an editorial by Dana Wilber.  She states, “New literacies, in contrast with traditional literacies, are more participatory. They are more collaborative in allowing for the open sharing and creation of information on sites like wikis and blogs“ (Wilber, 2010).  Gone are the days of writing a book report, meant to be read only by a single professor, and subject only to that professor’s feedback.  Through the internet, whatever ideas we share does not end up in the recycling bin, but has the potential of influencing other people and igniting change in the society.

Introducing myself...

Hello everyone!  I'm Noemi, a Registered Nurse.  Like most of you, I am also new to blogging.  This should be interesting.  I'm old school and still prefer face to face interaction in a traditional classroom.  However, multi-tasking is the norm now, as I am a busy working mom to two little girls.  I am thankful though that online education is here as an option for people like me.  I hope to make the most of it.  Nice meeting you all.  :)