One of my friends from high school Andrew Moloney has recently won gold at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
Makes me think, what the heck have I achieved since high school? A half finished university degree and a coffee addiction.
Puntastic
Because it’s Punday
Networked Literacy: “Yes, it’s difficult”
In an interesting piece by Adrian Miles “Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge” he looks at the communications sphere known at networked literacy.
He begins by looking at a comparison between print literacy and networked literacy using Penny (a student) and how she visits a library to get out a book.
Miles begins to explain that to be network literate is not the same as, being computer literate.
This can be seen in the same way that we understand print literate is much more than just being able to read and write.
Miles goes on to define network literacy as 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.
While this definition still has a tendency to confuse me on multiple levels, the example he gave of his daily works began to unravel the given definition.
On a daily basis he might read something online that is relevant to his teaching. “I will write about this in my blog, providing a link to this content. I will also bookmark this site via my del.icio.us account so that I can find it again and so that others may also find it. Meanwhile, I’ve also added some academic references to CiteULike, and I know my students and others can get this information because each service provides custom RSS feeds that can be subscribed to. Next, I move two photographs from my mobile phone to Flickr, one of which I’ll be publishing into my blog and the other will be shared with some colleagues for a paper we’re writing together.” etc etc.
What I have come to understand from the piece is that networked literacy is the ability to weave together multiple media platforms (web pages, blogs, photo’s, video’s etc) and distribute them across the network in a simple manner.
Or as Jill Walker has defined it:
“Network literacy means linking to what other people have written and inviting comments from others, it means understanding a kind of writing that is a social, collaborative process rather than an act of an individual in solitary. It means learning how to write with an awareness that anyone may read it: your mother, a future employer or the person whose work you’re writing about.”
I think I like her definition better.
Essayer: to try
The humble essay, derived from the French verb Essayer, meaning to try. As highlighted in Paul Graham’s The Age of the Essay, the aim of any essay should be to ‘try and find the answer’.
This definition, along with many other aspects of the much loved ‘modern’ essay, has been lost in today’s schooling system. Instead of searching for answers in our essays, we are simply imitating “English professors, who are imitating classical scholars, who are merely the inheritors of a tradition growing out of what was, 700 years ago, fascinating and urgently needed work.” Graham kindly suggests that this is simply a waste of time. (MIND BLOWN)
Graham instead suggests that an essay doesn’t begin with a statement, but with a question. In the schooling system I, and many of my fellow students, were brought up in we were taught to take a position and defend it. Instead what we must be searching for is a door that’s ajar and proceed to walk inside and explore the contents.
However, it’s true that questions aren’t enough and an essay has to try and come up with some answers. Although we must not always succeed, best to think of these as “experiments with inconclusive results”. These ‘inconclusive’ essays will not be published but those essays that are published should ideally tell the reader something he didn’t already know.
It was heartwarming to know that Graham also shares my frustrating habit of meandering his way through essays. When he explained that this was a good thing, I practically jumped for joy. He explains that an essay is supposed to be a search for truth and any essay that didn’t twist and turn, meandering through the information, would simply be suspicious.
Networked Media
Interesting lecture. So I am at uni, not to learn how to do a job, but to learn how to learn to do a job?
