The reading for week three was by our lecturer, Adrian Miles. “Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge”, explaining what Network Literacy (who woulda thought?!) is and how it is used in society today.

Miles uses an example of a student ‘Penny’ going to the library to find a book to demonstrate how we go about finding information and our thought process. He states, “Network literacy is, in a nutshell, being able to participate as a peer within the emerging knowledge networks that are now the product of the Internet, and to have as ‘deep’ an understanding of the logics or protocols of these networks as we do of print.” After reading this, I realised that even though I thought I had a good grasp on what is network literacy, there is much more to know. To me, print literacy seems clearer and easier because everything that you need is printed in a hardcopy and is right there in front of you, where as anyone can post anything on the internet, and you need to recognise that the “content and its containers […] are distributed across the network”.

He also explains what an RSS feed is which I found extremely helpful/interesting because although I see RSS nearly everyday, I had no idea what it was until this reading. I really like the idea of having a page that collects everything that you’re interested in and creates its own feed – this would be way easier than having to go through all my different bookmarks each morning!