Tag Archives: network literacy

Symposiums

Symposium week 5

1. Should network literacy be focused on in earlier education?

In the talk about how coding is very important in our day and age. I briefly mentioned this in the my previous blog post about the organisation code.org which primarily focused in the US but their aim is to have “Every student in every school have the opportunity to learn computer science”. I tested out the ‘write your own computer program’ lesson and I learnt about repeat-loops, conditionals (ifs and else) and basic algorithms. It uses the characters from popular games like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies to illustrate their lessons. You have to move the character to the end goal telling it instruments like ‘move forward’, ‘turn left’. It was only the first lesson so it was relatively straight forward but definitely introduced me to some of the basics. After you complete a level it show you the codes in JavaScript, which was helpful but I don’t think i remember any of them. It felt more like I was playing a game rather than learning basic coding techniques. I found out that coding relies a lot on problem solving big or small.

In this article, Joe O’Brien a CEO of EdgeCase, a company that specialises in software development.

“Even if a CEO never codes for her company, just understanding what is happening is going to be huge for her from a risk standpoint, from an understanding standpoint”

For students studying media, this would be even more crucial for us to learn how it works even if we don’t end up actually coding the next Facebook or Twitter. Last year in September, England was the first country to make computer programming a compulsory subject for all year levels. Furthermore, the US is expanding their reach but what about Australia?

Computer programming is overall increasing your network literacy. Even being able to understand it, you are giving yourself extra knowledge to equip yourself for the future.

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Other Blogs, Symposiums

Looking at other’s blogs

“As most computerised programs are a simulation of something real and physical, the blog is essentially a simulation of a diary or journal.”
This was a really interesting thought from Mia’s blog. She goes on to say how a blog is different because of hypertext and it can continually link to more information. I wonder if you suggest websites or other books for your readers to check out at the end of a book if that is still considered hypertext even though its not online.

Seonaid explored more about what it is to be network literate, which we also touched on in the lecture yesterday. Changing the themes on our blogs, is that bringing us closer to being network literate? Not really. They designed it for us to personally change at our convenience but the coders are the ones we have being doing all the hard work. In the Network Media blog, Adrian linked us to some websites, here and here, that are providing students with the skills working towards being network literate.

Code.org is an organisation that is aimed at giving access to all students to learn computer programming. They really emphasise the importance of learning basic coding for our generation.

Karlee brought up an interesting point on how hyperlinks don’t make books irrelevant “but rather, they will exist simultaneously and dependent on each other.” I also want books to be around for a long time even though I feel like it is slowly dying medium. There is definitely a shift towards e-books and online material opposed to buying/borrowing books. I think it will definitely be around for our generation since we grew up with books but perhaps the next generation won’t have that sentimental connection to it.

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