Final Reflection

        Technologies have been essential in the progress of mankind.  They have shape how we do things.  From the invention of the wheel to the invention of the internet, humans have found ways to create thing that facilitate their lives.  It is that the definition of technology according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2013), “the use of science in industry, engineering, etc., to invent things or to solve problems.”  I firmly believe that technologies are here to make our live easier, that is why it is so difficult for me to understand why some people are against the use of modern technologies in the classroom.  If modern technologies are used to solve problems in many areas of our daily lives why can we not use these same technologies to improve the education our children receive?

            Earlier in the semester I defined literacy as having the skills to, look at and understand the meaning of letters, words, symbols, and forming characters or symbols on a surface with an instrument.  Therefore, we have seem a transformation in what it means to be literate, from writing and reading symbols in the walls of caves, to writing and reading The Great Gatsby, to writing and reading text messages. Our concept of literacy has change throughout time, partly due to the changes in technology.  It was in this course that I was able to put the two together. I was able to reach the conclusion that just as technologies change, so do literacy, and therefore as an educator I have to keep up with technological advancements in order to be an effective teacher.

Understanding the needs of our students is essential in order to meet them.  As an educator I think we have come a long way in terms of developing methods of integration of technology in the classroom. At the same time I still believe we have a long way to go before we have integrated our classroom fully into the technology our students need to be successful in our modern world.  It is indispensable that we provide students with appropriate tools, not only physical but also mental, in order for them to be successful.  It is a most, for our students to be transliterate.  They must be able to navigate across platforms in order to prosper in our fast changing world. Our classrooms need to change in order for this to happen.  Our classrooms need to stop being one dimensional and become multi-dimensional.  It will be my pleasure to be part of that change, one that I understand someday might be obsolete, but it is vital today. 

Technology Literacy Guide

The following guide was created to guide Middle School and underclassmen High School student in the process of writing a research paper.

Picking a topic:

You want to pick a topic that interests you. Maybe pick something that brings curiosity to you.  You may want also to consider your audience at the time of picking a topic.  Remember the purpose of research is to answer a question.

Where do I look?

You may want to consider the following places:

The library

Text Books

The internet

Experts in the field

The library:

When you visit the library you may request help from the librarian or you may want to find the book catalog and search the topic of your research. You may also look for Journals or academic publishing on other related researches.

Text Books:

You may want to look at the index of your textbook.  Your topic may be listed there.

Text books are written by experts in the field, therefore they make a good source of information.

Experts in the field:

If you have the opportunity to interview en expert in the field of your research, he or she will be able to provide a lot of helpful information and key perspectives. 

The internet:

As we all know the internet is great place to find information.  At times it may seem like we have infinite amounts of information on the internet.  You have to be careful as to what from the internet you use, as anybody can post just about anything on the internet.  I would recommend sticking to the following when using the internet for your research:

1) Professional Journals

2) Academic Research similar to yours

3) Educational Sites (.edu)

4) Websites by professionals in the field of your topic. 

How do I know what to use?

All information you look at you should evaluate through the following focus:

Who wrote it? (is he or she an expert in the field)

Why did they write? (as part of some research, as their opinion, as a response to somebody else’s work)

When did they write it? (if the piece is to old sometimes the information may no longer be accurate)

 After answering those questions, you need to ask yourself, how this information helps me answer my question.

Writing your research:

Depending on the field of study a specific format may be have to follow a specific format.  Make sure you understand all the requirements and pieces of the format before you begin.

You used it, you cited:

Give credit where credit is due.  Depending on the format you write your research on, will depend who you cite your work.  Make sure to keep track of every source you use (title, author, publishing company, year it was published, city where it was published.)

The internet and democracy

Social Media networks along with the internet have created an opportunity for the growth and spread of democracy.   Before moving on we must understand the term democracy, according to the Merrian-Webster online dictionary (2013) democracy is an organization or situation in which everyone is treated equally and has equal rights; while they also define democratic as relating to the idea that all people should be treated equally. The internet is a place that is regulated by local governments.  Therefore, not all user of the internet are bound by the same rules consequently raising flags about the true democratic aspect of the internet.

The World Wide Web provides the potential for a space that can borderless, not controlled by one specific entity.   At first the internet was viewed as a place where a diverse community could have a forum for discussion of topics that affected everybody. (Kaan, 2005). This view quickly changed as its participants became labeled as uninformed, impulsive, and materialistic. (Kaan, 2005).  While social networks provide a place for free discussion of thought, their use has fallen to be undisciplined, intolerant, and superficial rather than deliberative.(Kaan,2005)  These has degraded principle of democracy first presented by the internet, where everybody would be treated the same.

While social networks have the potential to serve as a positive form of communication it has fallen short in becoming a place where everybody will be treated equally and have equal rights.  In Networks, Power, and Democracy, Saskia Sassen (2006) presents the idea that everybody can participate in principle in social Medias.  She later also mentions that a small group of bloggers receive the most attention.  We can conclude that while everybody can participate in social Medias, not everybody will get the same attention, therefore not treated equally.

Social networks have changed the way we communicate.  This does not imply that the change has been a positive one.  We see how to many times social networks are used to harass, humiliate, mock, and bully individuals, or groups.  Raquel Recuero in Digital Youth, Social Movements, and Democracy in Brazil, presents us we a simple example of how in Brazil someone on Facebook compared women to Facebook in a derogative manner. She also includes the fact that social media is exposing problems that were already existent in society.

Democracy is not going to be improved by giving more people a voice online.  It will be improved when the education and values that are transmitted to younger generations improve.  We cannot expect democracy to improve until the basic principle behind democracy, equal treatment for all, is carried out by the masses.

Participatory Culture

It is interesting to me that most of the skills needed by today’s youth are not necessarily taught in traditional schools.  “The skills they acquired—learning how to campaign and govern; how to read, write, edit, and defend civil liberties; how to program computers and run a business; how to make a movie and get it distributed—are the kinds of skills we might hope our best schools would teach.  Yet, none of these activities took place in schools.” (Jenkins, 2006, p.5).   In those sentences Jenkins makes note to the skills exhibited by some peculiar teenagers which she describes in the previous paragraphs.  Some at the early age of 14 were running to be elected mayors of cyber communities, creating web browsers and creating web pages to foment reading and writing skills.  It seems crazy that these important skills are not being addressed in educational institutions, but are learned independently in cyberspace.

In my opinion, it is the sole purpose of educational institutions to provide its members with the skills to become productive to the needs of the many.  While our society and culture are changing ever so fast in face to changes occurring in technology and media, it seems that academia seems to trail in the preparation of citizens to conduct modern task.  “A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.” (Jenkins, 2006,p.3).  It appears that educational institutions are only preventing a participatory culture.  You may wonder what leads me to make such a remark.  Let’s start with the fact that some of the most prestigious universities close their doors to most students, with their very exclusive selection process;  therefore, excluding the opinions and ideas of the many in the discussion of many topics that are only shared among closed circles of these elitist institutions.  A second more concrete example is the fact that the one of our assign reading(Networked Publics) was posted on the internet originally for free, for the consumption of the public, but was removed by at the request of the publishing house [ MIT press]. “At long last, the Networked Publics book has been published by the MIT Press. At their request, we have taken down some of the chapters. Even with one of the most enlightened publishers, it was impossible to convince them of the virtues of free information.”  This is cited from a blog on the Networked Publics website. (http://networkedpublics.org/node) .   We must move to a new era of true access to information.  A place we all knowledge and information as accessible to all equally.   

People talk about teaching pour students the skills of tomorrow.  I say let’s prepare them for today.  “Our economy, public sphere, culture, and even our subjectivity are mutating rapidly and show little evidence of slowing down the pace of their evolution.” (Varnelis, 2006).  This alone is a sign that we cannot teach the skills of tomorrow because we do not yet know what they will be.  Today skills we do know.  We must teach our children not fixed curriculums that were created two and three generations ago, but an ever evolving curriculum that meets the needs of today; a curriculum that is not limited by publishing houses, policy makers or politicians, but one that is free, not limited by money or physical space.

  Henry Jenkins list what some of these skills are in Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture:Media Education for the 21st Century:

Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving

Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation

and discovery

Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world

processes

Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient

details.

Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand

mental capacities

Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with

others toward a common goal

Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information

sources

Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information

across multiple modalities

Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting

multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

These are the essential skills we need to include in today’s curriculums.  Mastering these skills will provide our students with a better chance a sucking in today’s global economy and culture. 

What counts as literacy?How literacy changes in response to the new media landscape?

Literacy is the ability to read and write (Merrian-Webster’s,2013). In order to move forward we must break apart and dissect the definition of literacy according to the dictionary.  There are three key words in the definition.  The first, ability, can be represented as having the skills to do something (Merrian-Webster’s,2013).   With this definition we can take away that literacy involves having the skills to read and write.  The second key word in the definition of literacy is read, which definition is, to look at and understand the meaning of letters, words, and symbols (Merrian-Webster’s,2013).  Now we can rewrite the original definition of literacy as, having the skills to look at and understand the meaning of letters, words, and symbols, and write.  This leads us to the third and final key word, write, which is define as, to form (as characters or symbols) on a surface with an instrument (Merrian-Webster’s,2013).  With a further understanding of all the key words in the definition of literacy, we can now, summarize literacy as, having the skills to, look at and understand the meaning of letters words, symbols, and forming characters or symbols on a surface with an instrument.  Therefore, any piece that was written using any set of characters, that someone can understand and make sense of is consider literacy.  It does not matter whether it is formal English or newer versions of electronic language.

The internet has brought a great deal of changes to our lives.  We no longer need to write letters to communicate messages across continents, a simple email or text message suffice. We do not need to visit a library to find rich texts, now we simply download them from the comfort of our homes. Along these changes have also come simpler forms of literacy.  These simpler forms of literacy did not happen overnight as some claim, they have happened over a period of nearly 20 years, since the exposure to emails, text messages, and ereaders.  Many scholars are outraged by these adaptations of the English language. In my opinion they are just natural progressions of the language. These changes lead to a simpler more accessible language for all. Whereas before the more formal aspects of the language where only open to does with high levels of education. These new ways we write have opened the door to access of information to those who were previously labeled as illiterate.  Some of the people involved in the argument about literacy seem to forget the purpose of literacy is one of encouraging communication.  New literacies create a space where the formally educated and the informally educated can communicate.

In conclusion, literacy involves the skills of being able to communicate with others using some form of writing.  Literacy has been adapted throughout time to meet the needs of those who want to communicate with others. Whether we agree or not with modern changes, we must embrace them because they are the future.  “literacy is a process which continues throughout life. To be literate is not to have arrived at some pre-determined destination, but to utilize reading, writing and speaking skills so that our understanding of the world is progressively enhanced.”(Mackie,1980) 

"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)

Wilber (2010) describes today’s world as “a place and space that is constantly changing with the development of new technologies and the current rise of complementary new languages and literacy practices.”   As a high school teacher, I witness firsthand how technology influences today’s youth.  At times I feel I can relate to my students in the use of current technologies to more efficiently communicate with others.  I remember when I was in high school, a teacher would either call home or send a letter home with the student or via mail, when he or she wanted to communicate a message to the parent or guardian of a student.  This process was lengthy and at times very inefficient.  Today by contrast, social networking and other technological advances such as email and text messages, provide a more efficient and less time consuming form of communication.  With changes comes adjustment periods, while our technology changes in the blink of an eye, we must be committed to adapt to such changes in a hasty manner.

Changes in technology affect the way we communicate.  Years back it was very common for people to communicate using hand written formal methods.  Such method followed an established format and etiquette.  Such format and etiquette restricted the use of the hand written methods to only those who knew them.  Today we see how format and etiquette have taken a secondary role in our communication.   By the reduction of the strictness of format and etiquette we have been able to open the channels of communication to those who don’t know or are not aware of such practices.  In the present we see how a 150 character micro blog carries powerful messages across borders, how a text message carries news worth knowing, and how a status on a social network can communicate ones views on a topic.  Furthermore, it is not the how we communicate, but the mere fact that we are communicating that now matters the most.

“Children, adolescents, and adults alike may find that stories help in understanding the world around them, and create or sustain relationships and contexts among peers.” (Denning, 2001)  Today we no longer need novels by famous and distinguish authors to communicate messages or relay past travesties.  Today, many take on social networks and blogs to publish their views of their world, tell their stories, and publish their version of today’s events.  At the moment many individuals are choosing to create their own realities, their own worlds, and sharing them with the rest of the world.

 
I am a passive participant of the changes happening with technology and literacy today.  I choose to communicate with friends, relatives, and acquaintances using Facebook.  Twitter provides me the opportunity to share current events with those who follow me.  A short text message allows my wife to know that I’m safe.  Wikipedia provides me all the information I need (with supporting sources).  Thus, I chose to be a participant of modern literacy and technology, I understand that these are not the only venues for the furthering of my knowledge.  I still resort to newspapers to obtain most of my news, a good novel to read on my free time, and traditional correspondence to share pictures with my love ones. In conclusion, as quickly as everything around us changes, it is important for us to adapt those new technologies to our needs.