There was some significant ideas that stood out throughout this semester:
It is beneficial to be digital residents, but you have to be educated on how to use it responsibly and proactively.
Our class is composed of a great diversity of educators that provide refreshing perspectives on many topics.
Being critical and skeptical are integral parts of life online and offline.
While we can educate students who belong to a particular generation, we have to be aware of the role of parents and everyone else in society who possess different worldviews and perspectives than what the students are educated on. Everyone needs education.
Literacy is what all teachers are trying to accomplish regardless of whether or not it is digital, media, or scientific literacy.
Thanks for a great semester everyone!
– Logan Petlak My summary of learning video:
Lyrics:
Live critical lives,
In Digital reality.
Connected not alone
Online’s another part of me.
In ECI
We’re learning bout literacy
Old Facebook Logan, he was embarrassing
Because he didn’t ask, didn’t know.
Should I share? Should I post?
For science teachers though, maybe I will make policy
for literacy
Students, deconstruct this “fact”
Dig-Citizenship is what I want
It’s culturally significant.
Social, media and us are one.
But what about parents not in class todayyyy?
All of us, ooo
Can we all be digitally-wise?
To be digital residents for all tomorrows
Literallyyy everything, we consume matters.Oh hey, Ribble’s nine elements (“munts”)
Digital literacy emphasized?
Sharing anything seems like a crime.
Why didn’t anybody, fact-check this post?
Check your personal bias to find the truth.
Students, in my classroom (critically assess all news posts)
To truly live online
I’d be skeptical of everything I saw!
I made a comment on a post made by a man
He told me, he told me, I’m a liberal psycho!
He really just could not see, I’m helping soc-i-e-ty!
ALEC COUROS, ALEC COUROS
ALEC COUROS, ALEC COUROS
ALEC COUROS told me so – WORK WITH ME BRO
But fake news is all over the TV
It’s freaking everywhere, corrupting ideologies
Overcome this challenge fight cognitive ease!
Easy to, blindly follow, every single post
ARE CLAIMS VALID – What about this post?
(BOUT THIS POST)
WHY SAY THAT – What about this post? (BOUT THIS THOUGH)
NO I CAN’T – I will scroll past this post.
(ABOUT THIS THOUGH)
WON’T SCROLL PAST THIS POST (PAST THIS POST)
WILL SCROLL PAST THIS POST (PAST THIS POST)
HELP ME COUROS
PLEASE HELP ME AL-EC COUR-OS
OH MEDI-AH AH MEDI-AH AH MEDIA ACROSS THE GLOBE
MINING DATA IS A TERRIFYING THOUGHT TO ME
AND THEE
AND KITTIES
Teach responsible use in your teaching time!
Be proactive rather than reactive online
Oh Amy, thanks for computer commandments Amy!
Educate about, educate for all of these things.
Nice post – Nice post
Fellow EdTech classers Glad you could teach me
All we’re really after, all we’re ever after is literacy. (Thank you Alec Couros).
I normally wake up and go on some form of social media (either Facebook or Instagram), and probably log a minimum of two hours on it per day. Side note: This, like many other people, is normally how I get my news.
I check sports highlights (Crosby, wow),
friends’ activities and scroll through my feeds with the multitude of posts that people in my social network share parceled with advertisements specifically catered to my search histories and demographics I fill.
As I scroll through each post, I’m analyzing content consciously and unconsciously. Someone shares a politically-charged post about the latest Trump or Trudeau controversy, someone shares a post about the legalization of marijuana, or someone tags me (and it’s usually my fiancé) in a funny cat video or meme.
All the while there I am, looking at my electronically-powered, 5.1-inch screen of my phone, consuming and questioning in some combination, if not all, of the following (reflective of my video on Fake News):
Is this post valid or accurate? (Is it making claims that just aren’t true or promote opinion as fact?)
Why did they share that? (Was it funny? Intentionally offensive? For others’ benefit?)
Would I ever share that? (Yes? No? Did I ever? Why would/wouldn’t I now?)
What caused them to think that way? (What is causing me to think this way about it?)
Do they see how biased the source and article is? (Do they even care about that?)
Did they look into that claim before sharing? (Will I bother to look into it?)
Do they know that has no validity to it? (Do I actually know enough about this topic to provide validity?)
Why do I think that’s funny? (Is it something I agree with? Am I right in laughing about it?)
Why do I find that inappropriate? (Am I right in thinking so?)
Should I say anything about this? (Why should/would I?)
What do I do about this post?
After some combination of these thoughts and questions go through my head, it becomes a decision based on the final underlined questions. What do I do about this post? Like, share, comment, or ignore? Even more simplified, it’s ultimately one of two thoughts:
1. I’ll just scroll past.
OR
2. I can’t just scroll past this.
In the event I select option 2., a series of follow-up considerations will occur depending on the content of the piece, for the sake of this post – our exemplar content can be any of the following, all legitimate posts from people in my social network, several of which I felt “I can’t just scroll past this… I have to comment”:
Exhibit A and Exhibit B
CBD Oil via Cure for Life
“Some Thoughts for People who Live in Canada”
Exhibit C
Does it convey “fake news”, and what specifically about this post is “fake news”? Does it misinform people and who are the people who can see it? What message does it send? What about it specifically do I feel compelled to discuss?
And the big question, if one of my students shared this, would I address it and how would I address it if this was the case? Address it that way, because we are all learners:
Respect, be positive towards the individual and have empathy for the individual – treating them as a learner.
Address the specific issue of the content of the post.
Avoid getting emotional in your response or in reading theirs.
After making a post/comment, follow-up reflective questions surface:
Do I like what I posted? Could I have done better? Did I word it right? Will they understand what I’m trying to say? Will they listen to me? What if they don’t? Is it pointless to comment, then? What about the people who don’t comment, don’t like, but see it and consume it but leave no visible trace of acknowledgement for me? Am I doing a service to them?
My comments have been met with likes and dislikes.
Sometimes I’ve received insults. Other times the original person who shared the post doesn’t comment or their comment is strictly defensive and not open to what I have to say (maybe the way I wrote it was offensive?).
This is what daily social media consumption looks like for me in the worst-case scenario. Best-case scenario, I see pictures like this (my fiancé and two of our cats).
But best-case or worst-case, all scenarios are part of the deal.
How do you consume online?
Have you found yourself exposed to similar posts on your social media feed? What did or do you do?
As evidenced on my page, I believe we are all lifelong learners, so is it even a fair question to consider the notion that there exists a specific point in literacy that we officially “hit” and are considered “fully literate”?
Probably not, the idea of literacy seems too subjective.
Indicators exist in certain subject-areas that would serve as evidence to infer literacy-attainment, so in that sense we can create benchmarks for literacy. But when considering the ever-shifting development of subjects and or expanding knowledge on learning, benchmarks today may shift tomorrow. What is the next benchmark or desired milestone associated with grades and subjects?
Being literate today is a tall order (inadvertently implying that it was necessarily any easier at different points in history). I feel like becoming fully literate today has become synonymous with wisdom, utilitarianism and benevolence (or maybe that’s just my view on it). But you’d think the wise would know that you can never be fully literate (this is me thinking that I’m wise).
Literacy seems almost synonymous with learning (you have to learn to be literate). If you’re capable of continuous learning, consuming information, and improving in all dimensions of literacy (or perceived important ones of today), with certain benchmarks, maybe that’s the way!
BUT WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE WITH BARRIERS TO LEARNING AND INFORMATION CONSUMPTION?! IS THE SAME BENCHMARK OF “FULL LITERACY” STILL A SPECIFIC GOAL DESIRED?! HOW DOES “FULL LITERACY” APPLY THEN?!
This brings me back to my post about media literacy and, as Carter also said in his vlog, it is needed. And to me, social and media literacy almost seems to transcend specific subject literacies. But then I think of how important scientific literacy is and how passionate I am about it (so much so that I’m making a resource for it an media literacy) – and how that, too, is needed for citizens today. Yet it needs to be delivered in a non-Eurocentric way which requires some cultural literacy.
Aside: these are great considerations for the development of my science resource.
The considerations are making my head spin, though. We probably need some form of benchmark to provide students with skills to become “fully literate” in today’s society, yet don’t want to be so specific that it becomes constrictive or culturally-uniform (devoid of diversity). The reality is that there are many different forms of literacy that I haven’t listed yet that are important to the holistic growth of individuals (health and physical literacy, for example) and all need to be pursued when able. Especially when all of these forms of literacy depend on one another as an intricate web enhancing the impact of another.
If all forms of literacy are continuously pursued, beyond the benchmarks, we become the benevolent, wise, and “fully” (but not really, “fully”) literate. As educators we have to be pursuing this personally, regardless of the courses/subjects we instruct, to model this for our students as well.
Logan Petlak 