Social Media & Me: #fail

So, since I pledged to take the plunge into technology exploration instead of just standing on the side and dipping my toes in the water, I decided to sign up for a Twitter account.  "Really, how hard could it be?" I thought to myself as I typed in my info to sign up.  It seems a lot like facebook when you first start.  My question is, how the heck to you find twitter chats to participate in???  I spent like 20 minutes fooling around on Twitter before I finally decided to Google it.  Then I probably spent 30 more minutes trying to get somewhere with the info I found on Google.  Verdict:  I give up.  I'm positive it can't be this difficult to find a chat to participate in - it looks so simple.  I want to analyze a twitter conversation about something that matters (part of the participatory culture right?), but I don't want to spend hours figuring out how to do it.  So......I will leave it at #fail for now and try again another day - and maybe after a lesson...

Participatory Culture

As I read our module 2 assignments, I was struck by how much I saw my children described in the articles.  My children are definitely a part of a Participatory Culture, described in Henry Jenkins’ article, “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century.”  

Just like the young entrepreneurs in the article, my son is easily frustrated with school, often learning more from his games than from his teachers.  He will spout some interesting fact to impress me, I ask him where he learned it at, and he informs me he learned it from his game.  Very rarely does he get excited about what he learns (or doesn’t learn) in school.  My daughter will show me her newest animated creation she made for “her group” in the latest Roblox game, and I can’t help but be fascinated.  I ask her where she learned how to do that, she informs me she watched a video on YouTube.  Participatory culture is defined by Jenkins as having “relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing creations with others, some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices, members who believe that their contributions matter, and members who feel some degree of social connection with one another” (5).  Furthermore, “all must be free to contribute […and…] they must believe that what they contribute will be appropriately valued” (6).  

My children’s participation in the online games they play meet all of these requirements – they are constantly creating their own worlds.  They learn how to create their real life friends or from friends in the game.  My son learns about the workings of an Army from “mentors” in the American Revolutionary War Roblox game he plays.  They feel as if they have some kind of connection to the people who are in their groups, often referring to them as friends and seeking these same players out in other versions of Roblox.  My daughter feels that the creations she puts together for her group will improve their playtime.  They contribute without hesitation and feel their “presence” within the game is essential to the well-being of the other online players.  

Of course, the fact that my children are a part of this participatory culture brings on a variety of issues and challenges, many of which Jenkins goes on to discuss in his article.  However, my feelings towards them participating in this online world have been altered greatly since they first discovered it.  As long as I put the appropriate boundaries in place and provide the needed guidance, this online world – this Particpatory culture – functions as an important part of their growing process.  

Innovations That Excite

As I think back over the history of literacy, I am amazed at how far we have come, but maybe even more amazed at the entire process as a whole.  We take for granted all of this technology that surrounds us, ignoring the long road it took us to get to where we are today.  From communicating through pictorial representations that required painstaking methods to record whatever needed to be recorded, to being able to write a whole blog at a rate of 70 words per minute, almost keeping up with your thoughts as they tumble out of your brain.  New technology spills out at almost the same rate.  You buy a phone or laptop one month, and by the next month, its "old" technology.  I made a timeline on the history of literacy, and as the years advanced, the timeline became more crowded.  It went from just a few innovations within the span of hundreds of years, to new innovations every decade, to so much new technology that if I were to put every single new one on the timeline I wouldn't have room to fit them all.  The thought of the next phase on the "cutting edge list" both excites me and makes me nervous at the same time.  The human race is one of big imaginations.  We must be to have come so far and invented so much.  We have "imagined" so many movies about what new technology can bring - both good and bad.  But no worries - the good guy always wins....right?
 

Social Media and Me: bff's

Social media and I are best friends.  Ok, well not really.  I grew up before social media was popular. Even before computers were the norm in most households.  Oh of course they existed, but they were more the exception - found mostly in the computer labs at school as opposed to at home on a desk. I still remember when apple computers were the norm.  When face to face conversations were the norm.  When you used a pay phone to call your mom if you were gonna be late.  When you hoped your phone cord was long enough to sneak the phone into bed and under the covers with you because the cordless phone wasn't reliable enough for the late night conversations you weren't supposed to be having.  Our social media was hanging out after school - till the street lights went on.  Then our social time ended...until the next day.  I watched as technology slowly changed - slowly became more prevalent in every aspect of our lives.  I used to be able to live without a cell phone.  Now I feel practically naked without it.  I must say that I love having the internet at my beck and call whenever and wherever I need/want it.  But I'm still not so sure about the social media part of it.  Yes, I have a Facebook account.  But I definitely don't get that "practically naked" feeling if I don't have access to it.  It does help me keep up with friends and family when I get busy, but I feel more like it enables me to have less personal relationships and more superficial ones.  I get to see what goes on in everyone's lives, but I don't get to participate in it just because I see it on Facebook - I miss that face-to-face connection that so easily gets pushed to the back burner.  I stay far away from twitter, though I do have an Instagram account. However, I've posted very few pictures to it.  Most of what I see on Instagram is a repeat of what's on Facebook anyway so what's the point?  I guess the point is, the children in my classroom are, and will continue to be, connected in ways that I am unfamiliar with.  In order to better understand them and their world, I must evolve, just as the technology has evolved.

Admittedly, I have dragged my feet, only using the bare necessities in order to stay connected. But in taking this class, I have decided to stop dipping my toes in the water and just jump in instead. So....here goes nothing....