#UWinDig

What’s that you say? We can connect with anybody in the world and even have continuous dialogue that doesn’t confine us to the four walls we are sitting between?!

For my second multimedia reflection, I read Dr. Michele Jacobson’s article and watch Henry Jenkins’ video. You will have to forgive me because I am in NO WAY an artist, but I, hesitantly, decided to try my hand at a sketch-note/mindmap hybrid:

I really enjoyed reading Dr. Jacobson’s article, and I agree with most, if not all, of it. We have grown up during the growth and expansion of the Internet (please see my little teenager Chrome stick figure on the bottom right of my picture) and it has developed, probably exponentially, since we were kids. I definitely agree that technology, social media (maybe not all social media), and the Web 2.0 initiatives have a place in education to come capacity.

I am the first person to admit that I prefer working face-to-face with someone rather than online, but in a world where people are insanely busy with school, work, family life, etc., getting together to work on an assignment or project often falls by the wayside. That is when the participatory digital world comes in. This digital world allows us to stay connected, and continue conversations or brainstorming that would not have taken place if we did not have participatory platforms. Every single group project or assignment I have had in the first two months of this degree has taken place on a Google Doc. It was the most practical way to work on things, and I was able to work on my portion away from school, just like my other group members.

I think that we, as future teachers, should start exploring now, kind of like what we did last week with our Twitter chat, and see how we can implement certain platforms, emphasis on the participatory nature of them, into our future classrooms. Using the participatory digital world, quite literally, has global outreach (hence the not-drawn-to-scale globe in the top right corner of my artifact). I was tweeting with a person in Egypt last week about the topic of algorithms and privacy, or lack thereof. When I was in high school, that would not have even been a possibility because digital tech and social media were banned in classrooms. Now they are welcome, to a degree, and I think that that is the future of education and that as long as used responsibly, digital technologies and Web 2.0 platforms will be extremely beneficial to the future of education.

– Courtney M.

Here we go again! My second multimedia assignment may lack sticky notes, but it still maintains an ample amount of colour and creativity. This time around I created a Venn diagram because Dr. Jacobson’s article, ‘Teaching in a Participatory Digital World‘, explains how both students and teachers utilize technology to motivate and adapt their ongoing learning experiences in the classroom. Since I already made a sketch note with my first multimedia assignment, I figured a Venn diagram would be the next best thing because it visually represents how students and teachers collaborate with each other and/or technology to benefit their educational lives. Each circle represents the roles of what students, teachers, and technology contribute and are expected of in the participatory digital learning world.

While I found this article to be a bit repetitive, I used that as inspiration to create the Venn diagram. Since so many of Dr. Jacobson’s ideas and comments were similar to each other or inter-connected, I used that to my advantage. Personally, I’m more of a pencil and paper kind of person, but I can definitely see the benefit of incorporating digital media in the classroom. There are so many fantastic resources and teaching tools online that can be used to really enhance the classroom learning environment. As teachers-in-training, it’s important to pay attention to this quote, “we cannot shut down the education system while teachers retool their practices and jurisdictions bring technological infrastructures up to standard.” With that being the case, it’s a great idea to start exploring online teaching forums and resources now to be prepared before we become permanent educators. However, my only concern regarding digital learning is the legitimacy of knowledge and information being shared. I’m surprised that Dr. Jacobsen barely touched upon teaching students how to critique digital learning practices; especially when “fake news” is extremely common in today’s world. Also, sometimes learning from your peers doesn’t always result in academic inquiry; especially if you and your peers are younger students. There are lot of online distractions that teachers must be aware of before allowing their students to utilize the digital world.

Considering this Venn diagram is hand-written, I still wanted to incorporate the participatory aspect of the article using online sources. Therefore, I created a Facebook group called ‘Memes for Education’ and invited 13 of my friends to participate. Their goal was to react only using gifs or memes to my comments/quotes/questions I had from the article. I also included a few posts that had them communicate and react to each other’s comments and it turned out to be a hilarious and insightful project. I chose to film their responses because it will showcase the gifs and I cannot post the discussion without adding everyone in the class into the group. (A few videos posted below).

The most challenging part about this assignment was organizing the roles and connections stated throughout the article and where (and how) they fit on the diagram. I didn’t have as much space as my previous sketch note so I had to condense my summaries while making sure I still got the point across. I also had to make sure I kept this neat, yet still appealing to look at. The information outside of the diagram represents some of the benefits and skills you’ll learn/need after participating in a digital learning environment.

Overall, I really enjoyed this article and believes it advocates for digital learning practices in a positive way. I think it’s important for students and teachers to stay up to date with real world situations and technical advancements. Learning about and utilizing them in an education setting is a great (and safe) place to start in the ongoing learning process.

Left side:

Bottom and connections:

      <— Tech and students <—-tech and teachers   <– all three

Right:

Before this article, I was familiar with the practice of redlining as a historical concept. It is one of the least talked about and most damaging policies from the era of a segregationist America. Today we are now seeing a new form of virtual redlining, restricting access to knowledge for students. The most common reason to restrict and ban certain topics from being seen is for moral reasons. There are perfectly good reasons to ban and restrict certain content on network computers in schools. Illegal activities such as child pornography, and drug dealing are things which are unacceptable in any context. It is when institutions have to decide on something that is legal, but taboo to many people. The example of revenge porn is an excellent one. Sometimes in higher learning institutions students must do research on taboo topics. This isn’t just limited to porn though. If you wanted to do a study on alt-right or explicitly neo-Nazi groups, it might be helpful to go on websites such as 4chan, or Stormfront. These websites are vile places with some of the worst opinions of humanity being expressed. To do a thorough study on them though you must wade into the mud. I would guarantee that 4chan is banned on almost every institutional network and Stormfront on a good portion of them.

The obvious solution to this problem (especially in community colleges) is to have a more open attitude when either choosing what sites go on a banned list, or designing algorithms which are more open. This is the easy technical solution. The societal solutions are much harder. Community Colleges see more of these restrictions due to the opinion that their purpose is more about job training than abstract intellectual thought. The attitude being that why would they need to look up such taboo topics in such a setting? This brings up the fact that those in the ruling classes often feel a moral paternalism for the working classes. It has existed since the earliest days of progressivist politics in the late 19^thand early 20^thcenturies.

The most concerning thing about this article though is that it might be a bellwether for something more sinister in the coming years. The concept of the digital divide is not new and something we have explored already. Chris Gilliard in his article is explicit in stating that digital redlining is not the same as the digital divide. The two though I think will become more and more linked in the future. As laws surrounding net neutrality fall in the United States and are under threat in Canada, it is possible to see a future of the internet which divides what can be accessed easily and what cannot be based on your income. If you pay for an internet or data package which fast lanes certain popular websites, but leaves others behind a “throttle wall” then the information people will be able to access will be dependent on income. This is reintroducing the “gatekeeper” effect which plagued old style media institutions of the past. The beauty of the internet was that you had essentially the same amount of “digital square footage” that the New York Times had. The openness and democratic nature that we value in the internet will be lost.

The article Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy by Chris Gilliard proved to a piece that pushed the idea of access to information at the post-secondary level.

This article was a well-done piece that provides the origins of the word redlining and why it is critical to understand this concept to grasp the overall discussion of the article. Through student experience, there is a deep insight into this idea because of our greater access to information than the average citizen. This relevant because the modern student is a digital native and therefore fluent in the access information, but this proves problematic through limiting their access to knowledge. This plays a critical role within the modern digital academic landscape because there is large contention with freedom of speech and freedom of information being presented as a major issue on campuses. This is ironic because schools will not acknowledge digital redlining as a problem however they will acknowledge the limiting of speech and information as a forefront problem in post-secondary education. The irony continues because the article states that there are students who are paying to expand their knowledge but are attending institutions that limit the information they have and therefore becoming counter-intuitive with community colleges being at the forefront of this.

Being in the role of an educator this proves problematic because those students in a secondary school are just starting to learn academic digital literacy. If they go to schools that will limit this or digital reline them then this stunts their digital literary growth and causes these individuals to not only get a limited education but be misled into thinking that community colleges are wells of knowledge that train them for the future.

_Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy

https://www.powtoon.com/c/bmXdWPt8k37/1/m

In my second multimedia reflection, I have chosen to focus on the Tufekci article titled How Social Media Took us From Tahrir Square to Donald Trump. This article focused heavily on the way in which social media had experienced major transformations since its creation. More specifically, this article examined how social media had originally been used by the youth during uprisings to communicate and connect with one another, but had transformed in to a way for oppression to spread throughout the media sphere. This article often goes into the gritty details of some of these uprisings, and allows the reader to vividly picture themselves in the situations described by Tufecki. As a student who has grown up around a number of forms of social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), this article resonated with me because I could very much imagine myself in situations where I was able to use the beneficial aspects of social media to keep in touch with others who are not directly connected to me in the physical world. That being said, I was also unfortunately able to connect with some of the less-idealistic aspects of social media that people can often encounter when using these platforms. More specifically, I recently encountered one of the more frustrating (and quite frankly disturbing) aspects of social media; targeted marketing. In this situation, a product that I had been discussing with a couple of my family members suddenly appeared in the advertisement bar on both my personal Facebook and Instagram accounts overnight. Not only was this a little unsettling (especially because I know I had not searched this product previously), but it made it clear that many of what we consider “offline” daily conversations are actually being monitored or studied by any number of our social media accounts. This was all the more concerning because of something I had recently witnessed while out on my practicum. One of the first things that I noticed when arriving to placement was how massively digitally connected high school students are in our society today. While it is only a rough estimate, I would say that well over 95% of students I encountered on practicum not only had a smartphone, but also used it multiple times throughout the course of each class. This constant monitoring goes against my own personal views as far as the way in which our constantly increasing levels of technological connection should be used. More specifically, I would say that I subscribe to a more classical sense of the use of technology, meaning that I am happy to use the latest and greatest forms of information technology, but would like to do so without being constantly tracked by “big data” companies. After reading this article and completing the Canva infographic, I would say that these personal beliefs have only been strengthened, as it becomes more and more clear that we are losing online privacy by the day. As far as new information provided by the article, I found it interesting just how many different organisations and individuals were using social media to help further their personal causes. While I know this may sound confusing when we consider how prevalent social media is in our daily lives, I personally have been guilty of only focusing on daily updates or news from within my own personal sphere of information and perspective. Considering the way in which digital media platforms and large organisations are currently able to target individuals with specific products they might find interesting, it is quite concerning how susceptible our younger students are to these practices.

That being said, I feel as though the actual creation of the Canva infographic went much more smoothly during my second multimedia reflection. Having been able to practice with this platform throughout my first multimedia reflection, I feel as though the end product I was able to produce was of much higher quality than the final product from my first reflection. While I was able to credit most of this increased output to more experience using the actual Canva site, I also felt that this article was much more interesting than the first, and thus left more of a lasting impression after my first read of the article. On the infographic, I have used the main ideas that I was able to take from the article and include them in large font to ensure the eye of the viewer was drawn to these critical aspects of the article. From there, I have broken down each of these main ideas with a smaller, more specific write-up regarding each topic. I have used different colours to move the eye throughout the infographic, as well as to draw attention to the main points within the article. Finally, as consumers and social media users, we must be conscious of the way in which the information we knowing (or often unknowingly) provide to large corporations is being used. In turn, this means we must be willing to demand quality policing of digital media platforms in both the political and economic realms. Overall, this article was eye opening as well as concerning, and I feel that it is relevant to almost everyone within in our digitally connected society.

The Jacobsen Article and the Henry Jenkins video both provide a call to action in regards to how we educate the youth and prepare them for the future workforce of tomorrow. Both the video and the article have a standpoint of providing and integrating more mobile technology into the realm of education. Major shifts need to occur from our outdated 20^th Century education model which is meant for standardization, individualization, and memorization. Education must evolve into a more communal and interactive class structures which is filled with rich meaningful learning experiences. Education must be engaging and provide authentic work for students to truly understand the material provided. Education must also evolve to develop the competencies needed for future adult performance in the workplace. Skills such as networking, team work, question-posing, and critical assessment must be taught and imparted on students to ensure they are ready to be functioning and successful adults in the workplace of the future. In order for this type of educational shift to occur, it is not just a matter of teachers teaching harder. It is imperative that the educational structure goes through a top down deconstruction and reconstruction. It also requires teachers who are engaging and skilled in the material they are presenting to students and also in the craft of teaching. This is where the technology integration comes to the forefront. The internet is not used the same way it was 10 years ago. The internet has become a place of interconnectivity and special interaction. Things such as social media, Google, Wikipedia, Blogger, the iphone and ipad, are all mobile tools which constantly keep students connected to each other and different resources and opinions around the world. New concepts and new ideas present themselves continuously on the internet and with the mobile and hand-held technology of students every day. It is absolutely crucial education systems use and embrace these technologies to the fullest extent to help mold and create an enhanced 21^st Century education model.

In reflection to these two media outlets, I have decided to design a sketchnote. The first thing I wanted to start with was my beginning and end. In the Jacobsen Article, it made a point of saying our 20^th Century education system must evolve and change using the technology available to us as teachers. This made sense for me to start my sketchnote with 20^th Century education. The article also made a point of stating how the internet and computing as a whole have changed. This has created 21^st century learning and work spaces. It made sense to me to make my endpoint a greater 21^st Century education model.  The major points I used to follow in order to get from my start point to my end point were; Major Shifts, Rich & Meaningful Learning, Develop the Competencies they Need for Expert Adult Performance, Engaged and Skilled Teachers, Enhanced Learning Experience, Active Participation in Knowledge Construction, and finally Technology Integration. I chose these because I felt these themes had the most significant meaning to the overall point of the article and video. I also integrated quotes relating to each major theme which were either found in the article or the video. A major aspect of my sketchnote reflection which I would like to point out is the placement of the theme Engaged & Skilled Teachers. This was placed specifically in the middle of the sketchnote because I felt this was the most important part of the both the video and the article. Without Engaged & Skilled Teachers in the education system, this reconstruction of education is not possible. All the great and innovative ideas and technology can be presented but with an absence of these teachers, the material cannot be presented to students in an effective way. The technology available cannot be organized and structured in an effective manner and the material provided to the students cannot be meaningful, engaging, and structured in a way that prepares students for the workplace of the future.  #UWinDig