Reading+Log+for+New+Discoveries

Okay, some of this sutff maybe old hat to certain folks, but much of what is listed has been quite recent to my learning lexicon. Either I had a very rudimentary of the entry, or just had no clue whatsoever. Please feel free to add to this listing as I would like to make it has comprehenive and useful as possible!

__**June 8, 2009 - New Literacies, ch. 1**__ - Development of literacy as socioeconomic structure. - Literacy being paired with "new" to illustrate changing mindsets. - James Gee and big D, little d discourses - the literacy of status quo groups, and then sub-groups of individuals. - Literacy as social and cultural capital. - "Powerful" literacies and metalanguage for analyzing and reflecting on discourses. - Literacy as sometime synomyn for being proficient. - Possibility of digital divide between tech savvy and tech inept - Mindset 1.0, Mindset 2.0 ... Old Ethos, New Ethos


 * Mindset 1.0/2.0** - the idea of the first is that technology is a tool to create an end product. The process of production generally remains the same, and the cultural ideas of scarcity, ownership, fixity, etc., remain intact. The thoughts behind the second are that of sharing and collaboration, dispersion and distributed expertise.


 * Wikis** - edit-able website that is user friendly and Mindset 2.0 oriented. Content of the wiki site is determined by group members and able to be changed as knowledge grows and expands.


 * Ning** - site with the capabilties of a wiki and a blog combined. (Check out English Companion Ning.)


 * RSS** - feed or subscription to online websources; enables updates of new information in one spot (email updates, wiki page) without having to open various sites and applications.

__**June 10, 2009 - New Literacies, ch. 2; Jenkins report**__ - Bits and bytes as fundamental differences in how material and information is valued. (A notebook computer may technically cost only $1000, but the work contained it may be worth thousands of work hours and tens of thousands of dollars.) - Insiders/outsiders, digital natives versus digital immigrants. - Schools as keepers of Mindset 1.0 in approach to most technology. Keeping students safe from predators and other dangers rather than allowing for the exploration of creative cyberspaces. - Technology as industrial and commercial tool - mindset 1.0. - Web 1.0 (personal websites, online dictionaries, Netscape platform) versus Web 2.0 (Flickr, Wikipedia, blogging). - Power through collective knowledge and understanding. - Folksonomy as bottom-up, non expert management system with authors deciding how they want works categorized. - Old wine in new bottles to classify competing with Web and Mindset 1.0. //Jenkins Report// - Forms of participation: affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem-solving, circulations. - Concerns: participation gap, transparency problem, ethics challenge. - Skills for participatory culture: play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgement, transmedia navigation, networking, negotiation. - Most teens using internet are media creators. - Computers and technology do not operate in vacuums and must be injected into classroom learning for media-savvy students. - Affinity spaces as informal learning cultures, spots of deep and active engagement. - What skills and content information matter in digital-driven culture - and who gets to decide?

__**June 15 - New Literacies, ch. 3, 7; Gee "Affinity Spaces"; Hobbs, ch. 7-8**__ - Who or what defines meaningful content? - Memes as recurring stories or images that change and evolve into various incarnations with new interest and participation from groups and individuals. - Participating in different discourses as memberes of various groups and understanding the insider knowledge associated with each. - Flickr.com as photosharing and image classification website. - Machinema as player-driven video game applications, creating new game texts and animations. - Digital remixing as creating new media from found pieces of text, info, image, on the web. - Blogging as active participation with various individuals on specific topics. - Fanfiction and Wikipedia as participant-oriented, edited, and driven. - Creating or developing scenarios to inject creative problem-solving into learning experiences. - Open source or creative commons as public domain spaces, free of copyrights. - Tagging as meanings assigned to images or spaces as way of classification. - Memes functioning with fidelity, fecundity, and longevity. - How and why are memes successful; and does this depend on being an insider to certain information. - Humor and satire as being intergrally important to meme status. How does the meme comment on society or the happenings of everyday life? Who decides what should be shown/repeated; why does it take certain forms? - Counter-meming as means to combat initial meme; often promotes placement, leadership, and accolades in cyber communities. //Gee "Affinity Spaces"// - The ideas of community and membership being much different in digital spaces. - Space and content generators - how are spaces organized, how do people interact? - What are the portals through which people can enter in or engage the space? Portals can also be generators. - How is content shaped? - Affinity spaces as the opposite of groups and learning spaces formed in schools. - Affinity spaces as unromanticized communities with loyalty first to the interest. - Affinity spaces bring together all sorts of people, unlike classrooms which are divided and separated by grade, age. - Classrooms value individual knowledge and achievemnt over that of the group. //Hobbs, ch.7-8// - Looking at advertising media critically and understanding how image and sound is meant to influence. - What is the level of skepticism of teens towards advertising tactics? - Measuring level of students' knowledge of media production process. After discussions, reflections, analysis of various advertising techniques, students were better able to identify target audiences, tactics used to attract and hold attention, the ad's/author's purpose, and the subtext of the general message. - High school students are required to navigate a complicated world of complex texts. - Reconceptualize literacy to include forms of digital media and communication technologies. - Students needing to have ownership of their learning, with the teacher no longer being the sole propriator of knowledge. - Three major themes: 1. visual/digital/pop culture having just as important in learning as classics; 2. individuals interact with texts based upon their lived experiences, background, and developmental levels; 3. most effective educational approaches involve personally meaningful texts, hands-on media production, and authentic inquiry. - Critical literacy must be integral part of learning using various perspectives and points of view. - Students as information and idea generators, and able to interpret what was left out of stories and why. - Digital medias had greater connections to students and their lives and helped them to understand traditional print texts in more meaningful manner. -


 * EduBlog** - blogging site platform specifically set up for teachers and other educators as a safe space for students to share ideas and interact in a meaningful manner.

- World of the remix and copyright; writing (or low tech) remixes and digital remixes. - Lessig's ideas of creative common space and synthesizing information to create something new and original. - Fan fiction as complex remaking of original stories or continuation of stories that have previously ended (movie, tv show, etc). - Fan Manga (stylized Japanese comics) or fan anime as remixing. - Fanfiction often spawns its own additional artforms and followings - poetry, cover designs and fan art, screen plays, etc. - Photoshopping and other photo-editing and altering as forms of remix. Its intent may be humor, solidarity, political or social statement. Could take the form of meme evolution or culture jamming critique of advertisements. - Who are creators of news and news-worthy citations? - Blogs as forms of current media with interactive component allowing for questioning and discussion of topics and ideas on an immediate scale. - Blogging as representative of groups or certain social culturals circulating in digital spaces. - Meta-blogging as means of greater involvment with subjects or topics of interest. - Blogging as fiction for entertainment purposes (fictive blogs or blovels). - Hybrid blogs involving news reporting and commentary. - Quality of blog as determined by: purpose, point of view, and quality of presentation. - What is the quality of interaction of people on the blog site itself; what sort of participation is generated? - Mediacasting as audio and/or video means of interacting with audience through computer, cell phone, mp3 download. //Andrew Sullivan "Why I Blog"// - Explanation of etymology of the word blog and feeling of moving backwards through time - from most recent posts to the earliest. - Blogs are read as facts emerge instantaneously; writers having to answer and account for posts and oppinions on current topics. - Blogs are very personal and reflective of self. - Author being exposed to audience and having to interact with them, and they, in turn, with each other, creating community discussions and updating spaces with information as it occurs.
 * __June 22 - New Literacies, ch. 4-5, Andrew Sullivan "Why I Blog"__**


 * Twitter/Tweets** - site/application in which friends/family can subscribe to your page and be instantly updated as to daily goings on. Messages or Tweets are usually very short and to the point, giving quick snapshot of life.


 * File conversion software** - allows media of one form or another - audio, video - to be converter from original format (like flash-video, flv) to something that can be utilized or viewed from standard media program (audio-video interweave, avi). Examples are Zamzar, MediaConverter, Vixy.net. Many online converters that offer a free version tend to take an annoyingly long time to download or converter, with some sites being still in beta or experiemental form.


 * Commoncraft.com** - fun, low-tech animation site that explains the basics of new and emerging technologies and how to properly utilize them.


 * Fanedit.org** - well organized and expansive site that involves the editing and remixing of movies, videos, televisions shows, movie posters, etc., according to tastes and expertise of fans. Many projects look professionally edited or remixed, and members take their work, and that of their colleagues, extremely seriously. Some incredible pieces and works on this site.

__**June 22 - New Literacies, ch. 6; Albers & Harste //"The Arts, New Literacies, and Multimodality"//**__ - Mobile learning and wireless technologies to increase classroom experiences and where learning and information transfer takes place. - Rheingold's claim of digital divide by 2012, separating Mindset 1.0 and Mindset 2.0 and possession of technological skills. - Naismith's claim that learning will begin to leave the classroom and be had in virtual spaces and real spaces that call upon the learner's environment. - Bigum observation that for over 20 years educational institutions have struggled with what to do with technology in the classroom and how to fit it into Mindset 1.0. - Idea of ownership and who controls the network spaces within school situations. How does this promote learning and ownership of learning? - I-mod as mobile network able to be accessible from various points and portals. - MOOP, or mobile learning intitiative sparking authentic learning - but try not to insulate learner from enviroment or others. - Efficacious learning as educational moments that will benefir students and add to authenicity of meaningful discourses. - Integrated learning as that which occurs insider a practice, includes 'bits' of social information that make up Discourse, and more intregration with various areas of our lives, the less it will clash with certain discourses. - Production appropriation and extension in learning involves the process of intergration and building upon student prior knowledge to develop bigger picture. - Critical learning as developing spaces for negotiating differing points of view so that outsiders and insiders can participate effectively. - What is the purpose for school learning and how can it be authentic and significant if it removes mature Discourses from its lens? - Students help create experiences and determine what is important in knowledged-creating schools. //Albers & Harste "The Arts, New Literacies, and Multimodiality"// - Arts thought of as aesthetic, describing mode of experience created by encounters with works of art. - Perception "direct apprehension of some complex totality given and presented to viewing and listening consciousness. - Naivete as rejecting something that is not immediately appreciated or pleasing. - Disposition allows tolerance of ambiguties and exercise judgment free of personal taste. - Informed talk as critical discussion about art works with deeper imagination and articulation. - Imagination allows for exploration of new possibilities and experience of vicarious life. - Creating involves stabilization of artworks in semi-permenant form. - Multimodality suggests that sign systems carry meaning that social collective recognizes and understands, and entails complex relationships between different modes in constructed contexts. - Materiality as materials used to represent meaning to given cultures. - Framing as how elements of composition work together. - Design as how people make use of available resources at particular moment to represent their creation. - Production as both the creation and organization of representation - the product as well as the technical skills to create it. - New Literacy categories: 1. post typographical or digital electronic apparatus, 2. ad-hoc or emergent literacies just being recognized.

- Young or new teacher attempting to add digital literacy strategies into her classroom. - Classroom dominance shifting from teacher-centered to student centered when sources of information cannot be directly controlled. - New literacies building on old literacies. - Researcher as observer/participant - Findings summary: 1. new literacies as curriculum vehicle versus simply a hook; 2. students having greater ownershipe of learning in new literacies stance. - New literacies and multimodality should have greater involvement than tool for Mindset 1.0 work. - Engagement of embodied learning, constructing meaning in community of inquiry. - Learning through dialogic, collaborative activity, collective knowledge and social capital. - Learning through local and personal knowledge, priori experience to scaffold new connections. - Learning through projective identities, moving between multiple discourses to create meaning and build towards success. - Learning through multi-modal projects, using variety of literacies to create connections. - Teachers should realize that literact is social and cultural practice, influenced by many factors, and situated in local knowledge. - Teachers must be well-versed in new literacies theories and learning principles to better deliver instruction. - Multimodality as important cultural tool with many representational systems.
 * __June 29 - Bailey__ //__"Teaching New Literacies in a Secondary English Classroom"__//**


 * Codecs** - device or computer software program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital data stream or signal. No compression involved, just taking original audio analog to digital then computer digital sound to payable audio. An unhappy process to be sure.


 * Lulu.com** - online publishing platform that does not need traditional brick and mortar editorial layouts. All aspects of production are handled online.


 * Delicious** - social bookmarking site that allows for the classification storage or various online findings and allows other members to view each others' bookmarking or tagging for greater dispersion of knowledge.


 * Flash Mob** - seemingly random (and sometimes they are) group of people that assemble for unusual task or production and then quickly disperse. An example might be a spontaneous musical scene in a food court.

- New literacies should not seek to take over or diminish older and established ways of learning but to add to the lexicon. - Applying both new and old literacies without destroying the integrity of each. - Seek to become an insider with outsider questioning and objectivity. - US teens and young people as capable of sophisticated and complex digital tasks and projects. - Teachers should be able to justify the importance of techology in the classroom and understand know some of the reseach behind these theories. - School is over-emphasizing content and underestimating tools and skills. Teacher given extensive training with management and various discipline techniques and not learning in discourses and contemporary learning and working conditions. - Authors highly recommend involvement affinity space such as fan fiction sites to better understand online communities, collaborative discourses, and shared knowledge. - Actively involve students with digital learning and stance of inquiry, use technology to be innovative and create authentic learning.
 * __July 13 - New Literacies, ch. 8__**