Digital Literacy

Part One – Name searched: Marco Germinario

1) What does your partner’s current digital footprint says about him/her, does it say anything about their new media creative abilities or interests?
Well, when searching up for any information about Marco Germinario, one will find that there really isn’t very much to find. The only link that I found that was tied back to Marco was the link to his Facebook page (assuming that he wasn’t the Artistic Director and Founder of the Ragnarok Nordic Festival in 2010). Through his Facebook page, you can see that aside from being a normal kid, he has a photo album displaying a few of the paintings art pieces that he created, which are certainly impressive. The paintings show his ability to be creative and communicate his ideas and concepts, which is a key element for the creation of new media art pieces.

2) Do you think an  employer or teacher should be able to see that?
I would think that an employer or teacher should be able to see the work that Marco has done. It would give other people a good idea of what he is capable of in terms of artistic creation. In terms of the other photos and information that can be found about him on his Facebook page, there really isn’t anything there to show that he’s anything but a normal kid.

3) Where is the information coming from?  A blog, a website, Facebook, etc.
As stated earlier, the information I gathered came from Facebook.

 

Part Two

How to establish your digital footprint using web 2.0 technologies (Julia)

• Create personal profiles pages on social networking websites
• Comment on other people’s blog, profile pages, websites, etc
• Tag yourself in blog posts, videos, photos, etc
• Subscribe to other people’s posts
• Keep on top of what is being said about you and your own posts

How to create a data trail that can be searched and found via specific keywords (Julia)

• Add as many keywords and tags as your possibly can
• Be specific with your key-words, or be vague when you want to reach a wide audience
• Limit where each unit of information can lead- if you let them free, the trail can’t be followed
• Use unique keywords
• Try to think like your target audience – use the keywords that they would use.

A strategy would best serve the purpose of creating a digital identity that serves to inform teachers and potential employers of who you are as a new media creative professional (Marco)

Your identity in life is one perceived by others through your words and actions in the moment. Now image being able to sit down at your computer with that moment and tweak every aspect of your produced information. I’m pretty sure you would not only be the best but would look the best all the time, come on we’re all a little conceited. Well as crazy as that might sound its possible, how you say, well through something called your digital identity. The main purpose of which is to outsource your information as it suits you through a multitude of mediums. This information can be descriptive and beneficial to your social image as well as a way to inform teachers and potential employers of how you see yourself. As for a new media student it shows ones creative potential and professional caliber. Though the words you write, videos and photos you post it also helps familiarize yourself to your superiors and points out your creative abilities and interests, something very advantageous when yearning to get ahead of the rest. Altogether its a quick and easy way to outsource your information, like an ongoing, digital resume with and the space and customization for you to fill it with.

Web Literacy

So I’m pretty sure we were here before. Remember my 21st century skills post and the section about blue skies and dogs? I guess this is basically an extension of that.

Web literacy: It’s defined as “the ability to make critical use of the Web to access information, and to prepare documents and Web sites that make effective and appropriate use of this medium” (thanks http://dp.biology.dal.ca).

Basically, it means sorting out the good stuff from the crap.

I find that I’ve been a fairly decent judge of what is good and bad information. Having to do many research papers and such in my high school days, I’ve learned how to figure out how legitimate the information is on a website by analyzing who wrote it, what organization they work for, and the sources they used. It’s fairly simple, you ask yourself the following questions:

• Who wrote the information?
• Do they have the credentials that prove they know what they’re talking about?
• Can you verify the credentials?
• Is there contact information for the author?
• Where is the website being hosted?
• What organization is sponsoring the webpage?

By asking these questions, you can start to formulate an idea of who wrote the information, any bias they might be holding based on their personal beliefs or their company’s beliefs, and the legitimacy of the information.

Having grown up as someone who has known the Internet for their entire life, I consider myself someone who knows how to use it for my own benefit. As I grow with the technology, I will discover new and more effective ways of finding the information I need….I hope.

 

Signing off in 3…2…1…

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Self Directed Learning

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to talk about here. I mean, I’ve skimmed through the readings I’m supposed to do (they’re big and scary) and I’ve found some charts with items that can potentially be called “skills” related to this topic, but I’m not quite sure how to approach discussing them. Most of the items remind me of things that I would see on a rubric for a high school project. “Students identify, determine, and articulate their own learning goals”…what am I supposed to say about this? “Yes, of course I identify, determine, and articulate my own learning goals, professor. Every good, focused, and determined student does this on a daily basis.” No, of course I don’t say this. To be even more honest, I don’t think I even do this kind of thing for school. I basically follow the format of “this is your assignment, learn this then do that”, in which my learning goals are articulated, determined, and identified already for me.

Instead of going through every single item that I found in this huge PDF file and complaining about how much it sounds like a high school rubric, I shall list them all for you here:

• Students identify learning tasks to achieve the goals
• Students chart their learning processes
• Students challenge themselves and set the standards for the achievement of their learning goals
• Students formulate questions and generate relevant inquiries
• Students explore a range of possibilities and make sound decisions
• Students self‐plan and self‐manage their time
• Students critically reflect on their learning and initiate gathering of feedback from teachers and peers to achieve their learning goal
• Students apply what they have learnt to new contexts
• Students utilize the skills that they have acquired to learn beyond the curriculum contents

See what I mean??? High school all over again! But now that I’ve taken a second to read over the items again, I realize that I do this on a daily basis (when I have school work to do) without stopping to realize that I’m ACTUALLY doing it. Let’s see if I can apply this idea to the blog post I’m currently writing.

1. I was told to write a blog post about the skills I possessed regarding self directed learning. (There’s my learning goal, articulated, identified and determined)
2. I realized that I didn’t know what skills and attributes were associated with self directed learning (I’m going to shorten this to SDL) so I conducted some online research. (That would be me identifying my learning tasks)
3. I started writing a blog post in hopes of communicating the skills I have regarding SDL. (Here I set the standards for achievement)
4. As I was writing the post, I started wondering exactly what I was writing about. (Formulating questions and generating inquiries)
5. I began to think what would happen if I just wrote down exactly what I was thinking, as per most of my other blog posts…and here I am doing just that. (Exploring the range of possibilities, making decisions)
6. I currently have nothing to do for two hours. Seems like a good time to do some school work. (Self – planning and self – managing my time)
7. It has come to my attention that my classmates have been reading my blog posts. If you read this post, please come talk to me about it. I have no idea what I’m talking about, and I want to know who was in the same boat. (Gathering feedback from peers to achieve my goals)
8. I’m actually having a lot of fun making blog posts. I think I might start up my own blog in the future. (That’s probably as close as I can get to utilizing the skills I’ve acquired)

Well, perhaps that made sense. I know it at least made a little sense to me. I think I went off topic approximately eighteen times, but who’s counting? So I guess, in some kind of conclusion, that if we’ve all made it this far, then we all possess some degree of these self directed learning skills. Especially in a course like this, we have to know how to learn on our own.

 

RANDOM OFF-TOPIC MOMENT (#19 I guess?)

I jumped out of a plane on September 30th. It was freaking awesome. When I get the video I will post it so I can share my experience with you. It was definitely life-changing.

BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED SIGN-OFF

WHITE TEXT MOMENT

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Participation

This comic has nothing to do with the post. I just thought it was funny.

 

I honestly don’t have anything remotely clever to say for this topic whatsoever. I swear. Buckle your seat belts….this may get boring. I’ll put another comic at the end to reward you for making it through the whole post.

I’ve never really had a problem participating in class. I find it to be second nature. Teacher asks a question, I answer it. We’re having a discussion, I add my thoughts and opinions. I’m confused, I ask a question. Simple. Obviously of course you have some lazy or boring days where you really just don’t feel like talking or you didn’t get enough sleep last night so you’re struggling for consciousness. These kinds of days can’t be avoided because we’re all human…I think.

Anyway. If anyone happens to be reading this and they believe they struggle with participation in class, here’s some tips from this website.

• Simply agree with what someone has said. It can be as easy as “Oh yeah! I agree with that.”. It gets the ball rolling.
• Ask someone to clarify their point, or ask for an example. This can make sure you understand and that everyone else understands. Also, it puts you into the conversation.
• Provide your own examples relating to the current topic. Adding in your own story or thought shows that you understand the topic and shows that you’re making connections.
• Don’t be afraid to outwardly disagree with someone. Differing viewpoints make for the best conversations, and with a good supervisor you can turn it into a fairly decent debate.
• Answer the questions that are asked of the entire group. Don’t be scared that someone won’t agree with you or that you have the wrong answer. First of all, someone is obviously going to disagree, but this can lead to those debates that I just mentioned. Secondly, there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes. It helps you and the others around you learn.
• Connect earlier made points with the points being made presently. This helps the conversation avoid getting out of hand and it helps conclude the conversation you’re participating in.
• Try and play the devil’s advocate. Sometimes this can be fun, and it gets a good conversation going.

 

There you go. That’s all I’ve got for you. Good job getting through it all. Here’s your comic as your reward.

 

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Time Management

 

Well, I was afraid I would have to talk about this at some point.
TIME MANAGEMENT

It’s something I like to pretend I’m good at, but I’m really not very good at it at all. I’m not even going to try and give my own advice this time. This is going to be purely taken from this website. Whoever wrote it seems to know what they are talking about.

Apparently the first and most important thing to do is prioritize your tasks. Well I can safely say that I suck at this. I got through five episodes of Community (it’s a good show!) before I even remembered that I should be doing blog posts. The best way to do this is to develop long term time management plans. This sounds like it would be a good idea, but my brain says that this is too much work.

When I was reading through the webpage the next bullet point raised my spirits a bit. A good method of time management is to complete the small tasks first. I’m actually really good at this because I have no issue getting small little tasks out of the way. It doesn’t take much time, so it doesn’t matter as much to me.

Another good time management skill is to break the boring stuff into sections. Quite frankly, I’d rather get it all out of the way as quickly as possible, which it what I usually try to do. Which completely counteracts the next good time management skill….

Don’t try to complete an entire assignment all at once. Oops.

So to sum this all up. I’m not very good with time management. Since I had an easy and laid back fifth year of high school, I think I lost the small fraction of time management skills that I possessed. Regardless, I still get everything (mostly) done on time. Now that I’ve started University, I REALLY should learn how to better manage my time. It’s not really going so well at the moment though. I guess that could be one of my goals for the year: work first – watch Community later.

White text for nice spacing. I really need to learn how to fix this.

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Problem Solving

Well…I suppose that’s ONE way to solve the problem!

Problem solving skills seem to be a big thing in…well…the world. Problem solving created the new inventions and innovations that forward our world. Think about it. We couldn’t see at night? Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. We wanted to travel long distances quickly? Karl Benz invented the automobile. These two men solved their problems and created new movements in the world.

In terms of the specific skills associated with problem solving…here’s a pretty picture:

To compress that into simpler terms, the ability to problem solve depends on your effectiveness to:

a) Know what your problem is

b) Gather information surrounding your problem

c) Develop ideas for solving the problem, and critique them

d) Decide on the best course of action

e) Carry out the solution

Seems pretty simple, right?

White text to make sure my spacing is nice.

In terms of knowing what your problem is, I can safely say that I’ve always found this fairly straightforward.
What is the problem?
I can’t find my glasses.
I need a job.
I’m thirsty.
You get my point.

The next step is basically elaborating on the problem, figuring out what specifically is the issue. This will help you better understand what kind of solution you need. This again has never really been an issue for me. I like to elaborate, as you may have noticed from my blogs that go on far too long.
Explain the problem:
I can’t find my glasses because I currently cannot see clearly and everything around me is blurry. I know I put them down somewhere in my room, but I can’t exactly remember where it was. I know that nobody could have taken them because I haven’t left my room in six hours.

This next part is probably my favourite, because it’s where the brainstorming comes in. Developing solutions to your problem can be amusing sometimes because you can imagine both the simplest and the most outlandish of solutions. Again, I’ve had a fairly easy time with this because I tend to have quite the imagination.
What are the solutions to my problem?
#1: I could painstakingly examine every inch of my room in my blurry haze of impaired vision.
#2: I could go the rest of the day without wearing glasses.
#3: Heck, I could go for the rest of my life without wearing glasses…who needs vision?
#4: I could purchase contacts so I wouldn’t have to worry about losing my glasses.
#5: I could find a friend that can see clearly and ask them to help me out.

The next step can be disappointing, because it can throw away some of your best and most brilliant ideas.  I can sometimes have trouble with this because I don’t enjoy critiquing my own ideas. I find it very easy to critique others, but it’s hard having to throw away your own ideas because you’d like to believe that they’re amazingly genius. However, this is usually NOT the case.
What are the issues with my solutions?
#1: Seriously? I don’t have time for this.
#2: Really Julia? I think you’d like to be able to see what you’re doing.
#3: I can’t believe you wrote that one down. It’s stupid.
#4: I already own contacts, but I can’t find them because I can’t see!
#5: This doesn’t seem like a terrible idea. I might not have any friends that are home though!

Finally, it gets to the part that you’ve been working for: the decision regarding what you’re actually going to do to solve this problem. Sometimes it’s easy, and sometimes not so much. As most people probably do, I have trouble with this, especially when I’ve narrowed it down to two good ideas. I find that in a case like this, I just bite the bullet and pick one. In the case of my imaginary scenario, it’s a fairly easy solution.
Which solution is the best solution for my problem?
#5 obviously.

And then, you carry that solution out. Easiest part of the whole process.
*knocks on friend’s door*
“Hey Sam! Could you help me look for my glasses please?”
“They’re on your head, silly”
“Oh….thank you…”
*walks away in shame*

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Group Work

Always the best part of group work, right?

Back in high school, I used to HATE group work because I would always get stuck in those groups where everyone would look at me and say “Well Julia, what do we do?”, or even worse, they would just sit there and wait until someone told them what they were going to be doing. I would always despise this because it turned into a project that I was running that everyone else would get credit for. Since I myself wanted a good mark, I would end up doing most of the work anyway. Don’t say I didn’t try, either. I would always ask the other group members if they had any ideas, input, etc. and I would continue to get blank stares. Then I was right back where I started. Doing the majority of the project solo. Grrrr…….

ANYWAY…throughout the years of strenuous group work, I developed some skills for getting other people to contribute to these group projects. I believe the main ones are taking control, listening, and asking questions.

If no-one stepped up to take control, I fulfilled this role. I find that it’s hard for a group to function without some form of control. If there is no-one starting things off, bringing up discussions, asking questions, etc. then nothing gets done. Due to the fact that I was in crappy groups in high school, I have a lot of experience with this to the point where it almost becomes second nature to me.

Hearing what other people in the group have to say (if they say anything at all) is key because that’s what makes it GROUP work, not YOU work. To be clear, I don’t mean just listening to the other people talk, I mean actively listening. This involves hearing what the other person has to contribute, understanding what they mean, and responding. Initially, I had issues with listening because I was in so many unfortunate situations that I started to believe that no-one had anything intelligent to contribute and I was going to be forced to do it all myself anyway. Yes, I recognize that this isn’t exactly a nice way of thinking, but believe me, I was in a LOT of s***ty groups. As my peers grew older and a bit more mature, their ideas began to appear and I discovered that these people actually had really good ideas!

When you ask a question, it opens the floor for the rest of the group to contribute. This is super important, like listening, because it almost forces the other group members to speak. When you ask a question and nobody answers, everyone starts to feel awkward so someone speaks to break the silence. Sometimes you end up in groups where no-one breaks that awkward silence. That’s fun. Most of the time, asking questions is a great facilitator and I’ve learned how to use this tactic for getting other group members to speak. I think it works pretty well.

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Bloom’s Taxonomy

Alright, long story short here:

Once upon a time there was this guy named Benjamin Bloom and he developed something called “Bloom’s Taxonomy” which basically explains the stages and requirements of the thinking process. Then later, two of his students came along and decided it wasn’t good enough, so they revised it. The end.

Oh yes, I should probably mention what those stages of the thinking process were. In order from lowest to highest, they are:

Remembering
Understanding
Applying
Analyzing
Evaluating
Creating

If you would like a pretty picture of the subdivisions and such, please look below.

So, I see no issue with any of these categories. I fully agree with the revision that his students made. The reason for the ordering of the specific skills or stages is that you cannot move onto one without first conquering the previous stage. So basically if you can’t remember anything, you’re screwed.

Personally I find that I have no issue getting through the first three stages. I have a pretty decent memory that likes to remember the most random things, I possess the ability to understand the information by making connections, and I have no issue applying the knowledge to area of my life. However, I find myself a bit stuck once I reach the analysis portion. I find that I sometimes require a bit of help from someone else in order to properly and fully analyze a piece of knowledge. This may be due to the fact that I can doubt myself sometimes. I may believe that my own personal analysis is not appropriate or totally off the beaten path (which has been the case on more than one occasion), so I seek the assistance of other minds to help me fully analyze something. I don’t, however, view this as an entirely bad thing because when two or more minds collaborate, you get a full rounded picture as opposed to a narrow minded portion of it.

After the whole process of analyzing is complete, I have little issue advancing through the next stages. I have a (bad?) habit of always seeking perfection, so I am constantly critiquing, checking, and judging my own thoughts, knowledge, and creations. After I have attained as close to perfection as I can, I get to move on to my favourite part, which is the creating. Sometimes I rush just to get to this part because I like it so much.

I’m still not good with conclusions…so I’m just going to end it riiiiiigggggght…..

now.

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21st Century Skills

As a digital native, there has never been a point in my life where computers and the internet did not exist. With that being said, I have should developed a set of what we can call “21st Century Skills” when it comes to technology usage. Let’s make a list, shall we?

KNOWING WHAT TO PAY ATTENTION TO

You can imagine how important this is. Lets pretend you are writing a multiple page assignment on cats (yes, we are back to cats again) and you are browsing through many web pages looking for the information you need. When reading through all these websites about cats, you need to be aware of what you are looking for. Are you needing to know how to train a cat? Care for a cat? Breed cats? By knowing exactly what you are looking for, you will be able to determine what information is useful when you come across it. I find I can have some trouble with this sometimes, but I think that is because there are times when I do not know exactly what I’m looking for.

ABILITY TO DISTINGUISH GOOD INFORMATION FROM CRAP INFORMATION

Let’s play a game. Just a small game. It won’t take much of your time, I promise.
Which website will give you good information and which one will give you crap information?

#1: Why is the sky blue?
#2: Why is the sky blue?

Okay…so that one was easy. But what about this one?

#1: Why do dogs spin in circles before they lie down?
#2: Why do dogs spin in circles before they lie down?

Not so easy, right? It’s hard to know what information is actually credible. The way that I have been able to work through this problem is by looking at multiple websites. Have you ever been told the same thing a bunch of times by many different people? This is taking the same approach. By seeing what other people think, write down, or believe, you can start to build an understanding of what is mostly true. I say “mostly true” because we cannot always believe what the majority of people say. Thinking back to my example, many of your friends could say that so-and-so did this with this other person (yes…remember those high school rumours?) but does that make it true?

Another way to help sort out the crap from the good stuff is to check the credibility of the authors, which I find I usually do. What is more reliable: a University professor’s thesis or a 12-year-old’s blog post regarding the subject of weather patterns in Toronto? Again, I think my point is fairly obvious.

ABILITY TO EFFECTIVELY USE A SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITE

This skill is SO important for so many people in today’s society. Social networking websites are key factors in business promotion and communication between members of a society. Think about all the business you know that have a Twitter and/or Facebook account. How many businesses or organizations do you follow on Twitter and/or Facebook to get information? Social networking has become such a key factor for advertisers and business people because it allows them to instantly communicate with the demographic that they wish to target. This has elevated our business related activities to a whole new level. This skill is a key skill because EVERYONE does it. When I come across people that are unplugged from the social media world, I find it hard to communicate with them about current social activities because they are completely unaware of them. Myself, being a user of Facebook, find it easy to obtain the information I need very quickly because everyone else is using the same networking website to communicate.

USING A SEARCH ENGINE PROPERLY

Believe it or not, many people do NOT know how to use one of these things correctly! I’ve seen people getting frustrated because they aren’t finding information, but when I go to help them I see that they aren’t even using the correct keywords for their searches. Knowing how to use a search engine can save you LOTS of time and LOTS of swear words. Due to the fact that I usually pick research topics that are hard to find information on, I had to learn how to use a search engine correctly to avoid causing myself a lot of stress. Some search engine tricks can be found here: Using Search Engines

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Tinkering

Ok..hopefully I’m not the first to think that “tinkering” is KIND OF a funny word.  All joking aside though, tinkering is the process of manipulating the tools that already exist in your basic realm of being in order to create new, interesting, and imaginative ideas. I suppose you could say that tinkering is the physical evidence that you have an imagination and it’s working…which is a good thing because one needs a healthy imagination in order to function, especially if you are an art student like myself. Good old Albert knows what I’m talking about. Just knowing how to do something isn’t as important as being able to imagine the potential that the “something” has to give you.

Tinkering in New Media is exceptionally important. As media artists, we are constantly imagining what we could do with the technology of today and the technology that we’ll be able to use in the future. As artists, we draw, sketch, scribble, doodle, and create little ideas all over the corners of our art history notebooks while we’re learning about the historical significance of every single Greek sculpture. I am no exception. I now can’t bring a notebook to class because I will imagine all over it. Now I have to bring my laptop and disable the internet so I’m not allowed to imagine anything.

Now, I guess I could consider myself a fairly decent “tinkerer” (I know that probably isn’t an actually word…just bear with me) but I find I’ve only been able to work within one medium, being a pencil and paper. I’ve never been short on imagination…in fact sometimes I have too much and it hurts when I land back down on the ground (that would be my dose of reality). I am already eager to get a new idea or project rolling and I’ve usually got two or three ideas in the back of my head. However, I find that it can be hard to explain my ideas sometimes because I am only experienced with drawing my ideas out on paper. How is that a problem? I’m REALLY not very good at drawing. I would very much like to learn how else I can communicate my ideas to other people….other ways that don’t involve me drawing something. Ideas just don’t look so good when all you are drawing is stick figures.

For a slightly…well “interesting” webcomic featuring today’s word: IMAGINATION…click here.

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oops..that’s gross.

I mean: *click*