LITERACY WITH ICT

This week we were visited by a promoter of  Literacy with ICT.  ICT stands for Information and Communication Technologies which include all sorts of electronics: digital devices, gps's, and the internet.  Literacy  with ICT is choosing and using ICT, responsibly and ethically, to support critical and creative thinking about information and about communication.  Broken into three categories of
     1) critical and creative thinking
     2) ethics and responsibility
     3) ICT literacy

It questions how students develop their literacy with ICT.  Through parent or school supports.  Who offers that support?  If schools ban the equipment and students are doing it anyway who is teaching the ethics?  If students are more capable as users than their parents can their parents teach them ethics or will they anyway?

How are students developing ICT literacy?  The presenter suggests that only schools teach it most effectively.

 The process of a learning continuum is when a student learns from the early stages to a progressively more advance stage.  This means that ICT literacy has to begin at home with toy computers, televisions, phones, and electronic games.  As the bike example beginning with the push toy for balance and step increases of independence, so to does ICT begin at home at an early age.  Many of our habits are created out of observation,  more directly children observing home procedures.  How often do parents watch television, play with blackberries, talk on the phone, sit on the computer.  Children start off watching parents and mimicking parents through toys.  V-tech has a computer toy for 18 month old children.  How loud do they play the toy?  How long does it hold the childs attention?  What happens when you take the toy away?  How children interact with relations to toys and parents begins long before they attend school.  How many children know how to work a personal game system?  Many children play video games long before they learn how to read.  Are they limiting their time?  Are they play age appropriate games?  Are parents interacting with the children and instructing them on ediquette?  This learning continuum is strongly in place long before students reach school.

To suggest that students will then take the strong, ethical advise from a educator simply because it is right is a little euphoric.  If students are used to spending 4 - 6 hours a night on electronics then they certainly are going to do it anyway no matter what the teachers say.  If they are already knowledgable about Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, are they going to quit because it is not used appropriately?  I don't think so.

Take the example of cell phones.  Everyone bans cell phones yet at least one in three students is texting in class.  Teachers are not willing to go on the limb and remove the phone or the student who are using them in class. Our own classes ban cells yet we still receive calls, text, and entertain ourselves in class with phones.  If teachers know the students have cell phones, but are not taking steps to ensure the removal of them in classrooms; are they going to tell them to use technology ethically and respectfully and have them listen?

The learning continuum started at home and Teachers can only be a stepping stone that students choose to utilize or ignore.

Definitions

Artful reading

http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/eLearning/TTC_Video_Art_of_Reading.html


Close reading

http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/09/14/what-is-close-reading-guidance-notes/


Content

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_%28media%29


Context

http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/contextterm.htm


Metatext

http://pirate.shu.edu/~jonesedm/0150Summer2000/metatext.htm


Subtext

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtext



technological Determinism

By Kevin Huster

joke of the day

Spell Checker

I halve a spelling checker,
It came with my pea see.
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I dew knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait aweigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the era rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

I've scent this massage threw it,
And I'm shore your pleased too no
Its letter prefect in every weigh;
My checker tolled me sew.

LINK
Joke of the Day

comments on "Opening Speech"

Follow the link to find our more about Norman McLaren. It is a short write up summarizing his work. You may delve deeper into this inspiration if you wish.

the Canadian Encyclopedia

This second link is an actual film clip of McLaren drawing directly onto the film without the use of a camera. He has drawn each movement. This must have taken an incredible amount of time. I love the way the screen dances around; the movement is not a fluent flow. There are other films if you don't like this one, but this was my favourite.

Hen Hop

I thought the film “Opening Speech” was funny.  More intellectually I thought the movie was about how new technology is better performing than older technology.  The paper notes were very annoying to listen to and he was not very organized with them.  They were not in order and he had too many pieces of paper.  However, the mike was an improvement over the paper. We also know how annoying mikes can be with their whining noises and never in the right place. Some people can't hear them and you have to speak directly into them. If you don't speak into them then the speaker will fade in and out.    However, when he portrayed the animation it flowed smoothly.  He was able to be creative with different languages with a visually pleasing demonstration.  Nothing went wrong with the new technology giving people the feeling that it was more easy to organize and an improvement over the other two older technologies.    

Lets look at the same film from different views. The content of the film was to welcome everyone to the 1960 Montreal Film Festival, which I feel he did. Norman McLaren was an innovative film maker, so why not make it spectacular. Was his context the same as the content? I think not. You have to look at who he made the film for and why did he make that film in that way. His audience was personal from the film industries, directors, producers, actors, and audiences. He wanted to welcome everyone in a unique way that personalized it from all different countries. His choice of technological steps, each step improving from the previous one. He showed his media as being flawless, flowing, imaginative. He exaggerated the flaws in the previous two outlets. Which happens to also be the subtext, the hidden meanings. McLaren's uses technological determinism through creative processes to add to the original content. The meta-text of the short film was to show himself as the creator of this new technology of jumping into the film and using film as a innovative and captivating beginning.

My new blog about technology

I am new to blogging.  I found it a little confusing.  I needed to set up a new google account which happens to be my netscape account. 

So now that I have my blog up and running, I can more intelligently comment on blogging. It is so easy to add links now, but boy it was frustrating to start. I must have missed that part of the lecture that told me how to do it. I had to beg an experienced blogger to tell me what my issue was. You see I am not a techy. I get frustrated easily and give up. Maybe too early in my learning stage. But I would rather write a letter than a blog. But links are an awesome tool. I love adding pictures to my stories. I like linking to words I don't understand. Linking makes for such an more impressive learning tool. I feel that if it was more user friendly more people would get on line.

I do like to be able just post everything in one site and have it on hand for reference sake. Maybe I will reference other students blogs to mine and I won't have to be an expert on everything. If I agree with their opinions I just have to link to them and that makes my blog easier. If I like a site I can reference that. I think I could get into blogging but I just don't have the time. When I think of all the time spent on Mankato I am awed. I do like my tiny blog. I have fun posting definitions, finding out about people mentioned in class, and putting out the joke page.

I also think it is better than facebook. If everyone knew my blog name, they would only have to search for a topic not a thread. I could start a daily log, a post on each class I have, a diary, a calendar of events. Maybe I will keep the blog after I am done with this class and then everyone could keep in touch.