PH COR100

(Readings at Bottom) In watching the TED talk, one thing struck me about his examples of a communal value and civic value, with the LOLcats and Ushahidi, respectively. The speaker stated that communal value is created by its participants for each other, whereas civic value is created by its participants but for the whole of society to benefit as a whole. A major distinction I noticed between the two ‘projects,’ for lack of a better word, was that LOLcats are often created by individuals, whereas Ushahidi was created by a group of individuals working together. I don’t think that the speaker was saying it outright in his presentation, but I think this was a point he was getting at. It is not only LOLcats. A lot of things that I would classify as having purely communal value are all created by individuals or maybe a very small group of individuals. Examples would include gamer YouTube channels, someone drawing comics for Tumblr, or people posting funny quotes on Twitter. Similarly, t...

(Readings found at bottom of post)             What I found very accurate in Will Richardson’s piece about our digital footprints was the idea that “students have the potential to own their own learning---and we [adults] have to help them seize that potential.” (WR) This says to me that in the modern world, it is no longer the teachers teaching the students new knowledge and the students then later going on to apply that knowledge. Instead, with all the resources online on the Internet, students have the potential to become what I call ‘fluid learners’ through the connections they can make with others that share their passions online. I see the new world as all about connections made with others in terms of how we learn. That connection may just be with our teachers, as it used to be in the ‘old days,’ but with the Internet at our fingertips, the connections we can make with others are limitless, and the sorts of things we can ...

(Reading found at bottom) According to the article, “young adults are the most active online reputation managers in several dimensions. When compared with older users, they more often customize what they share and whom they share it with,” (PIP p.2) and “are not only the most attentive to customizing their privacy settings and limiting what they share via their profiles, but they are also generally less trusting of the sites that host their content.” (PIP p.2) Throughout the rest of the paper, various stats and percentages are given that support this generalization, based on the surveys done. But most important to me is this interpretation of the numbers. The quotes are a lot to unpack, but overall, they say that young people (specifically ages 18-29) are more active and more careful than those older than them in managing their online presence. That brings up the question of why this is the case. After all, younger people are typically viewed as the ones that take more risks in th...

(Readings found at bottom of post)                These readings discussed the new literacies developing here in this 21 st century world as well as identifying some skills that are needed by students in this world in order to be successful. What I found surprising was the fact that NCTE and especially P21 brought up the need for what I call ‘ethical skills.’ It states in NCTE that people need to “attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments” (NCTE) if they want to be successful in this new world. P21 repeatedly brought up the topic of ethics as part of the skills, noting that students need to understand “the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information,” “the access and use of media,” and “the access and use of information technologies” (P21) under Information and media literacy. It also mentions ethics under Productivity and Accountability, as well as Le...