This has been an interesting semester for me. I claim to not be a fine arts person, but yet I love to create videos for instructional and personal purposes. Participatory culture seems to come somewhat naturally to me. I am not as participatory and some, but I’m trying.
I am understanding semiotics more and before this class I had no idea what it was. Now I hear about it everywhere. It was the Kress and van Leeuwen book that really changed a lot about what I see when I look at advertisements, billboards, even what I see in TV shows.
Seems being a digital immigrant has not affected me much. I can still hang with the digital natives and even teach them a few things about internet safety and cool technology. Crystal’s book reminded me that there is a lot of Internet language that I take for granted. I use certain terms and expect people to always know what I am talking about. It was also a nice refresher for some of the terms that I no longer use.
Literacies are as important as ever in the digital world. What do we need to stay abreast of the flow of information? It’s a big world out there and understanding the needs of ourselves and of others beyond the traditional literacies is not only essential to compete, but is a form of obligation as educators to make sure everyone understands the technologies, the strengths and weaknesses, and he the technology is going.
Overall, still not being a fine arts student, I think the texts were helpful as well as the videos and additional readings. I learned a lot from my classmates as well and I think them for engaging us all in inventive and creative ways.
Thanks!
Crystal, D. (2004). Language and the Internet. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://irenechc89ukm.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/david-crystal.pdf
Jenkins, H.L. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Retrieved from http://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.
