Media literacy is a repertoire of competencies that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and formats.

Media Education is the process of teaching and learning about media. It is about developing young people’s critical and creative abilities when it comes to the media. Media education should not be confused with educational technology or with educational media. Surveys repeatedly show that, in most industrialized countries, children now spend more time watching television than they do in school, or also on any other activity apart from sleeping. Media Education has no fixed location, no clear ideology and no definitive recipients; it is subject to whims of a financial market bigger than itself. Being able to understand the media enables people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of mediums, genres, and forms. A person who is media literate is informed. There are many reasons why media studies are absent from the primary and secondary school curricula, including cuts in budgets and social services as well as over-packed schedules and expectations.

During this week’s workshop, we continued our discussion regarding our Niki Writing. For the most part, it was spent on researching about Howard Rhiengold, and reading of one of his book’s which is NetSmart: How to thrive online. During this time we came up with questions on how would his book or his reflect on his life and how media literacy has changed online media.

This week’s reading regarding Landow  hypertext by Adrian Miles was pretty hard and complex. The main point about hypertext is that, although some distant, or not so distant, future all individuals will electronically link to one another, thus creating metatexts and metametatexts of a kind partly imaginable at present, less far-reaching forms of hypetextuality form have already appeared.

Day 4 of the Australian Open has been really HOT. So much so that several matches having to be suspended not only in the afternoon, but also at night due to the lightning. The roof tops at Rod Laver and Hisense Arena were also closed as a safety precaution. Temperatures have reached a top of 44 degree celcius since Day 1, and is showing no signs of cooling down for the next few days. Looks like the best seats in the house for the moment would be at the comfort of your own home.

In terms of the workshop in week 2.1, it was pretty much normal as usual. We talked more in depth more about the niki writing. We were split into groups and talked about an individual in writing industry. My group talked about Howard Rhiengold. He was a critic, writer, and teacher; his specialties are on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing). I’d also like to credit Dana for helping me set up my blogroll and adding them to the sidebar.

This week’s reading was by Vaneevar Bush on “As we may think”. Another process now in use is also slow, and more or less clumsy. For fifty years impregnated papers have been used which turn dark at every point where an electrical contact touches them, by reason of the chemical change thus produced in an iodine compound included in the paper. They have been used to make records, for a pointer moving across them can leave a trail behind. If the electrical potential on the pointer is varied as it moves, the line becomes light or dark in accordance with the potential.

This scheme is now used in facsimile transmission. The pointer draws a set of closely spaced lines across the paper one after another. As it moves, its potential is varied in accordance with a varying current received over wires from a distant station, where these variations are produced by a photocell which is similarly scanning a picture. At every instant the darkness of the line being drawn is made equal to the darkness of the point on the picture being observed by the photocell. Thus, when the whole picture has been covered, a replica appears at the receiving end.

A scene itself can be just as well looked over line by line by the photocell in this way as can a photograph of the scene. This whole apparatus constitutes a camera, with the added feature, which can be dispensed with if desired, of making its picture at a distance. It is slow, and the picture is poor in detail. Still, it does give another process of dry photography, in which the picture is finished as soon as it is taken.

Australian Open 2014 was officially begun 2 days ago. It’s my first time catching the tournament live here and I have to say, it’s been an eye opening experience. I grew up watching it on TV and I’ve been dying to catch the tournament live here for ages but haven’t had the chance. So its a dream come true finally being here watch these tennis stars here in the flesh. Sad to see local favourite Bernard Tomic withdraw through injury after the first set against his much anticipated first round tie with Rafael Nadal, such was the expectation building up to the match. But nevertheless, it was good to see him on court. Apart from that, it was pretty much business as usual for the other players. Defending champions Novak and Victoria, as well as other favourites Roger, Serena, Andy Murray all breeze through their first round ties. I also really admired the way in which how the players handled themselves in this extreme hot conditions. I got a few sunburned myself. Not to mention, managed to get a few autographs and pictures with some of the players as well during autograph sessions around Crown Entertainment Complex, some of which include Maria Sharapova, Li Na, David Ferrer.

Another reading on design fiction, this time by Matthew Ward on “Design Fiction as Pedagogic Practice.

Below is the beginning of a manifesto towards an education that embraces and interrogates the role of fiction in design:

1. All design is ideological

The social, cultural and political basis of those ideologies need to be exposed, interpreted and explored. In DF the ideological drive is laid bare for all to see. Deconstructing the economic and political underpinning of design is an essential skill to develop.

2. Fiction as a testing ground for reality

As with any practice where contingency is mapped and explored, future ‘scenarios’ lay a framework for possibility. Once represented and articulated they can become a space of shared imagination and language.

3. Re-inscribing behaviour and responsibility

In imagining the norms, morals and aspirations of our fictional protagonists, we set up behavioural trajectories for action. By scripting use, designers frame expectations and opportunity. If Madeleine Akrich is right in her assertion that ‘technical objects contain and produce a specific geography of responsibilities’, then the opportunity to re-assign these responsibilities is an exciting possibility.

4. The decisions you make have consequences: prototype them in the stories you tell

What first seems like a good idea, can have unexpected, unintended and undesirable consequences. Use fiction as a way to think through a full range of possible consequences. The interesting (and often dangerous) impacts of objects happen on the outskirts of intention, like a ripple effect on reality. Pretend before you mess the world up.

This week’s reading was about the intriguing concept new concept of design fiction by Sci-Fi writer Bruce Sterling. Bruce Sterling is a Hugo Award-winning science-fiction writer, has been one of the most vocal advocates of design fictions. According to Bruce, One intriguing new way to think about the future is through the concept of “design fiction.” When you first hear the phrase, it sounds slightly nebulous. One useful definition calls design fiction “an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.”

In terms of the workshop, it was pretty much normal as usual. We basically went more in depth about setting up our blog. We had more chances to do more exercise like embedding videos, pictures, how to use hyperlink and so on.   Apart from that, I also found particularly found Tim Chapman’ short tutorial on embedding images and videos into our blog posts to be helpful.

Double loop learning by Chris Argyris was particularly interesting. To begin with a brief background on Chris Argyris, he was born in Newark, New Jersey on July 16, 1923 and grew up in Irvington, New Jersey. During the Second World War he joined the Signal Corps in the U.S. Army eventually becoming a Second Lieutenant (Elkjaer 2000). He went to university at Clark, where he came into contact with Kurt Lewin (Lewin had begun the Research Center for Group Dynamics at M.I.T.). He graduated with a degree in Psychology (1947). He went on to gain an MA in Psychology and Economics from Kansas University (1949), and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Cornell University (he was supervised by William F. Whyte) in 1951

Chris Argyris has made a significant contribution to the development of our appreciation of organizational learning, and, almost in passing, deepened our understanding of experiential learning. His early research explored the impact of formal organizational structures, control systems, and management on individuals (and how they responded and adapted to them). This research resulted in the books Personality and Organization (1957) and Integrating the Individual and the Organization (1964). He then shifted his focus to organizational change, in particular exploring the behaviour of senior executives in organizations (Interpersonal Competence and Organizational Ef ectiveness, 1962; Organization and Innovation, 1965).