I did not have to get too far into the reading to start scratching my head. I may had been reading with the wrong hat on. I was reading with my mom hate on. I spend most of my time as mom on the weekends cleaning cuts and chasing around my kids. I have mentioned before we are technology people and I am tied to my phone... maybe a little bit too much but my kids. I encourage books and imagination and being outside. There is plenty of time to "play" on the internet but that can be "tomorrow". I guess I am allowing my kids to use the technology too much in the fun ways. The reading really opened my eyes to my lack of encouragement in this area.
First what stuck out on page 3 (Jenkins, 2006) was that about 50% of students use the internet and my feeling is that number is much higher today from 2006. With my mom hat on all I could think of is cyber-bullying, something in its infancy if at all an issue in 2006. While this is not literacy it impedes it. Bullying at school makes kids withdraw and not participate in school. Today we have things like facebook and instagram and twitter and myyearbook... Since most parents are not as tech savvy as their children, it is easy for things to get out of hand. It is why I feel teaching things like safety with the new literacy such as the internet need to be taught in school, as well as to the parents. A child who shares too much can find themselves in trouble or being bullied by classmates. This will greatly impact the student's ability to participate in learning as well as continue to be comfortable with the new media and literacy.
The problems with the internet were not something I was surprised by but I get students regularly telling me they are using a primary source in wikipedia but I really did enjoy reading all of the positive examples even if there were some hiccups with the way things were being done. Such as the Hogwarts paper on page 5 (Jenkins, 2006).
I also feel the participation gap is less of an issue. While there are still people without internet at home, there are many places you can get "free" internet.
Overall I enjoyed the reading and video. I would also be interested to see some of the statistics to be updated from 2006 and see if as a nation we are still around the same as 2006 or it has grown. My experience here in the Capital District of NY, the participation gap is not as big as it once was and more then 50% of teenagers are on media and sharing on sites. The growth I believe is part of what we need to consider on how to take our next steps. Ethically whose responsibility is it to help teach the children things like internet safety? I take this as my responsibility as a tech savvy parent but I have friends who are not nearly as tech savvy. If we do not work at this as a team I believe the participation gap will never get better.
Jenkins, H.J. (2006)., Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
Very interesting point about cyber-bullying. I completely agree. Unfortunately cyber-bullying is getting very common because kids find it convenient to be mean over the internet because they aren't face to face. This actually brings to me a situation I came across before summer started. I participate in Facebook and one morning my feed consisted of a screen shot of a friend request that a male took of a female requesting to be his friend and the screen shot accompanied a paragraph of this male making fun of this female and insulting her, posting this on his page in which over 100 people commented, continuing to insult this girl and liking his status. This literally disgusted me. I had no idea who any of these people were but someone I was friends with on the social network, liked his disturbing status and that’s how it showed up on my feed. This made me so upset because it made me realize that if this came up on my feed it most likely came up on the feed of all of the friends of the 100 students that liked it. That’s over 1000 people assuming those people roughly have 100 friends each. I was so upset I found each the male's and female's page and contacted the school that their info listed. The public humiliation was so overwhelming and completely uncalled for. I just couldn't sit back. If I was that disgusted as a complete stranger, I can’t imagine how the female felt. I’m not a mom, but I can imagine how you worry as one when it comes to cyber-bullying.
ReplyDeleteCourtney I am glad you stood up for those kids. That doesn't always happen! My daughter is in 4th grade and does not have instagram or facebook but her friends do and their mothers are always telling me about the bullying they see and the comments on pictures that are completely inappropriate and out of line. It is such a new thing and the kids just know technology. It is literally part of their life from day 1.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I am in the process of prepping the update of the study this summer. I often find that it is you guys, the students who give and share great legit research and materials that I will incorporate!!
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