WEEK 1: BLOGGING (Word count: 220)
Miles, Adrian. “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning.” Australian Screen Ed 41 (2006): 66–9. Print.
Adrian Miles’ article “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning” is an insight into how the use of blogging can easily become very beneficial to the education of young children and adults. Miles begins his article by describing his past with the use of blogging, stating that he has “maintained an academic blog since [the year] 2000” (Miles, 2006. p 66). By describing his own experiences in the past with blogging, Miles has allowed himself the chance to demonstrate his knowledge of how exactly blogs are in fact, beneficial in education.
Miles briefly explains that blogs are able to be used to promote reflective and processed learning, encourage collaboration work, record achievements and further push for the creation of new ideas. By maintaining a blog online, the student has the opportunity to expose their work to the general public and are forced to write in a way that is clear enough for readers with no prior knowledge of the topic are capable of comprehending the work.
The learning opportunities that arise when using an online blog are simple ways to give evidence to how beneficial they can become in educational circumstances. However, Miles’ persistence to use blogs throughout education is not completely bulletproof. The students that are completely unfamiliar with the general public’s criticisms may struggle due to never have their work so exposed before.
WEEK 2: AFFORDANCES (WORD COUNT: 282)
Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things, Basic Book, New York (Sections: Preface vii-xv; Chapter one 1-13; Chapter 4 (constraints) 81-87; (computers) 177-186).
‘The Design of Everyday Things’ by Donald Norman is quite humorous . “You would need an engineering degree from MIT to work this” (Norman, 1998. p 1) is a line someone once told him while trying to work out how to use a digital watch. Norman states that he actually has an engineering degree and yet he still doesn’t understand how to function things that can often be seen as simple gadgets. Microwaves, washing machines, cameras sewing machines and so on. Almost all of these pieces of technology can be found in your average households, however to most people they really are quite difficult to function. Norman is putting forward the idea that whether you’re a professional engineer or not, there will always gadgets that seem merely impossible to use.
By then moving onto the concept of affordances, Norman explains why exactly objects are used in such specific ways. The term ‘affordance is described as “the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine how the thing could be possibly used” (Norman 1998, 9). Essentially, what this means is that the relationship between the object and the person can determine what the person can do with said object. If a block was sitting in a room it could be used as a chair, a step, a weight or even be used as protection from the sun. It is up to the person and whether or not they can think of new things to do with the object. That specific block may have been created for sitting however it can afford to be used as all those previous examples because the user thought of them and the object had the correct potential.
WEEK 4: SOCIAL MEDIA (WORD COUNT : 264)
Siapera, Eugene. Understanding New Media. SAGE Publications, London 2013.(pp.1-16 )
Knowledge of what exactly is ‘new media’ is uncovered throughout Eugene Siapera’s informative book. ‘Understanding New Media’ is split into sections. What new media is and the terminology of digital and online media.
New media is something that can be found almost everywhere. Each and every household contains multiple versions of new media. Siapera’s thoughts on new media consist of new media being associated with a new world. By constantly having new media all around us, we have changed the ways in which we live our lives. Social media has easily become a part of a very large portion of our societies everyday lives. Technologies such as televisions can be found in many more rooms of a house instead of just a living room; bedrooms have televisions, offices, even stores and schools.
The term digital media is something that can easily be compressed, such as online books, and things that can be loaded onto USB sticks and hard-drives. Digit media can be accessed very quickly and easily by anyone that has some form of laptop/phone technology system.
The term online media is however, a direct reference to the internet. “Connectivity is crucially attribute” (Siapera, 2013. p 4), without it you are unable to link with other users to widen your availability of information.
Although a world of new media is exciting to some, it affords us the opportunity to use these things (such as social media) in ways that were not intended. Bullying and abusing online has become easier than ever to do. Even with new media constantly evolving, it may not always be entirely for the better.
TOTAL WORD COUNT: 766 WORDS