Week 7 - Information Literacy Guide

Christen Lawicki

New Media and New Literacies

Information Literacy Guide

This information literacy guide is geared towards upper elementary students, for grades three to five (but could be used for older grades, as well).  The focus of the guide is to show students different tools they can use to create presentations for research they conduct.  It also explains how students can publish their presented work so that they can continue to share with other people on a larger scale (this is done along the lines of there being a classroom blog that students can access).  This guide offers a smaller list of choices for presentation and sharing tools, as it is meant for a younger audience.  The tools listed do not have any type of age restriction, as a number of online resources do.  The point of this is to help young students get their feet wet and start exploring different digital resources so that they can see there are many different ways they can create presentations.  (The only note to keep in mind is that some websites do require an e-mail address, so this would only work if the students had one set up with the school).

Elementary Presentation Guide

Sharing your work with others in different ways

Once you have worked hard, done your research, and have become an expert on a topic, how can you share your work with others? Instead of just telling others about what you learned, create an exciting presentation to show them! 

Here are some tools you can use to make a unique presentation and engage others in your work:

PowerPoint Presentation

• This allows you to create a slideshow with your information that you can customize in different ways.  You can use different colors, fonts, transitions, add pictures, audio, and even video clips!
• This is a program that is on the computer and you do not need to sign up for

Prezi

• Prezi is similar to PowerPoint, but creates a different looking presentation.  Instead of slides, you have a pathway that zooms around different parts of a larger picture.  There are different themes you can choose from to really add excitement and connect to your presentation topic!
• This is a website that you need to create a free account for: https://prezi.com

Powtoon

• Powtoon is a fun way to make a presentation that adds a little something extra and goes a step further than PowerPoint and Prezi…it helps you create an animated presentation!  Using the templates, you can create a short video presentation.  Instead of just slides, your whole presentation is a video with animation and music.
• This is a website that you need to create a free account for: https://www.powtoon.com

Video Presentation

• If you are feeling adventurous, another way to present information is to create your own video!  You can record yourself speaking, take videos of different places and things, and even interview others (with their permission, of course). 
• You would create this video using our classroom iPad and upload the video onto the computer.  

Once you have created your own presentation, you can share it with the whole class by adding it to our classroom blog!  This way, everyone in the class can see all of your hard work and you can go back and show others what you have researched.

Week 6 - Adolescent Interview

Adolescent Interview

I was able to interview my 17 year old sister about her technology use.  I enjoyed doing this interview because notice how often she uses her phone, but it was interesting to actually talk to her about it and get her perspective on this.

What type of technology or device do you think you use the most?

A phone. (iPhone)

What do you use your phone the most for?

It depends.  To look stuff up or talk to people.

Do you text or call people more?

Text.

How often do you actually use your phone to call people?

Everyday, to talk to you and mom (haha).

Do you typically call your friends?

No because it’s easier to text.  You can talk throughout the day.

Do you think you would talk with your friends as much as you do without texting phone?

Yes, sometimes we email each other.

Okay, what if there was no texting or e-mail, and you could only call?

Then no, we wouldn’t talk as much.

How often do you think you use technology for school?  It is a choice or required?

Everyday.  It’s required because we have to research things and write papers.

Do you like having to use technology as much as you do? Why?

Not really because it gives me headaches sometimes and makes me tired. 

I really was not very surprised by the answers my sister gave me during the interview.  Not only because she is my sister, but her answers were fairly typical of someone around her age.  A lot of teenagers are so dependent on technology and use it to stay in constant communication with each other.  (Although, ironically, she did state that if it were not for newer forms of communication, such as texting, she knows she would not talk to her friends as much).  I did find it interesting that she did admit that she does not like having to use technology as much as she does for school.  I know that, personally, I do not like having to be on the computer all the time, but I assumed that it did not bother most younger kids.

Week 5: Ad Deconstruction Reflection

I chose to deconstruct an alcohol ad for this assignment.  I used the 2015 Budweiser commercial which features a lost dog, his journey home, and being reunited with his owner with help from his best friends, the Clydesdale horses.  This was such a different assignment that I really enjoyed doing.  I had never really taken the time to break down an advertisement -- look at it in detail, think about what went into making it, possible implications of the ad, and the audience it is trying to reach out to.  I think these are things that may have crossed my mind when I've seen/read a commercial/print advertisement, but it is very informal.  I previously had not really dove into a commercial the way I did for this assignment.  After reading the statistics about advertising, however, it has made me much more conscious of the enormous role advertising has in our lives today.  I certainly realize there are print advertisements everywhere you look -- billboards, magazines, even sports arenas -- and there are definitely a large number of commercials that play on TV.  Still, it was surprising to see the numbers behind this.

Week 5: Media Education

Jenkins brings up a very valid point that with the changes that technology brings to our world – socially, culturally, politically, etc. – people need to make adjustments accordingly.  This theme and cultural issue is present throughout McLuhan’s lecture as he states, “Mine is a transformation theory, how people are changed by the instruments they employ.”  I certainly agree with this statement.  People are directly affected by the tools they use on a daily basis.  These tools change rapidly with technology, and those changes are transferred onto the users, as well.  People really do not have a choice with that.  Different technologies require different skills sets.  If people do not adapt and change themselves, they will struggle to keep up with the ever-changing and transforming world.  These new technologies also have so much to offer and ways to better and improve the way people do things.  This also provides incentive for people to want to keep up with the changes. 

This is not to say that keeping up the changes is always easy. McLuhan brings up the interesting point in his lecture is how we tend to see effects before causes.  He states, "Another strange circumstance attending all discovery and all investigation is that the effects come before the causes."  I think that this speaks volumes about how sometimes the changes in technology and new media literacies happens so quickly, we may not always see it coming, be ready for the changes, or even know where they come from.  

McLuhan, M. Living in an acoustic world. (PDF Document). Retrieved from http://www.marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/media/mcluhan_pdf_6_JUkCEo0.pdf

Week 3 -- Technology and Politics

When it comes to technology, something I had never given much thought to before was the way it has influenced and changed politics.  It is not surprising that this has taken place, however, as in this digital world we now live in it is inevitable that technology will have an impact upon just about everything.  Technology has become the dominant force as Saskia Sassen explains, “technology is the independent variable…it’s a given…it then applies to a dependent variable that is a familiar object of study.”  This shows quite a big shift in the way the world operates.  In Language and the Internet, David Crystal explains how the Internet is a world of its own, even having its own language.

The video presentations by Raquel Recuero and Saskia Sassen, along with Bennett’s Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age all focus on this integration of technology into politics and democracy, with a strong focus on how young people fit into this equation.  Bennett (2008) sums this up very well by saying, “There is a need for caution and considerable creativity in thinking about implementing more creative approaches to engage young people in communication with each other about real political concerns” (p. 17).  The political world itself has not drastically changed, but many young people do not respond to it the way people used to.  This is really found on a global scale.  More often than not, political issues are addressed or movements are started using the Internet as a vehicle for change. 

I do not necessarily wish it was the case, but I was able to connect to the readings and speakers.  I have never been overly involved in political issues, though this is something I am working to try to become more aware of.  It seems that most people my age do primarily rely on the Internet as the main source of finding out political information or getting involved.  There certainly is value in using the Internet to do this, but I think that when it comes to politics, traditional methods of involvement, such as face-to-face interactions, are just as important.  I think that both should be used and that people should not be motivated only if the Internet is used.

Bennett, W. L. (2008). Changing citizenship in the digital age. Retrieved from https://moodle.esc.edu/pluginfile.php/1699274/mod_page/content/6/Changing%20Citizenship%20in%20Digital%20Age.pdf

Crystal, D. (2004). Language and the internet. Retrieved from https://moodle.esc.edu/pluginfile.php/1699274/mod_page/content/6/david-crystal.pdf

Recuero, R. (2012, July 24). Digital youth, social movements, and democracy in Brazil. Retrieved from http://connectedlearning.tv/raquel-recuero-digital-youth-social-movements-and-democracy-brazil

Sassen, S. (2012, July 26). Networks, power, and democracy. Retrieved from 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpw1GpHzAbc&feature=youtu.be

Week 2: Shift in Sharing

In chapter two of Networked Publics, the idea that new medias have brought on a shift in control really jumped out at me.  Russell, Ito, Richmond, and Tuters write, “Artifacts once associated with personal culture (like home movies, snapshots, diaries, and scrapbooks) have now entered the arena of public culture (like newspapers, commercial music, cinema, and television). As a consequence, the top-down, one-to-many relationship between mass media and consumers is being replaced, or at least supplemented, by many-to-many and peer-to-peer relationships” (p. 44).  Technology provides people the ability to instantly share any type of information they wish – at any time and any place – as long as they have one of the many tools that have the capability to do so. 

This has two different implications.  The first is that professionals working for media sources (such as newspapers and television news stations) are no longer the only ones who can pass on information about what is going on the world.  Anyone has the capability to share information about events going on in communities, the country, and around the globe.  I often find myself finding out major news stories from something a friend posted on social media well before I see it on the news or in a newspaper.  This says a lot about the way our culture has transformed.  Not that long ago, people would have to wait to hear big stories when they were released by the media; now they can go to endless numbers of sources online (many of them not even news sources) at any time they wish to get the same information. 

The authors also brings up the impact that technology has had upon our personal lives.  This is something I think about often, which is why I think this quote resonated so much with me.  The Internet, in particular social media sites, has become a place where many people post details about their personal lives for many others to see – in some cases, people they do not even know.  I admit that I am partially guilty of this; I am careful about who I am “friends with” on social media, so that my posts do not reach the public.  I do not post very often, but when I do put a picture up, I have found myself thinking how funny it is that sharing pictures online has become the social norm.  No one is, of course, forcing anyone to do this, but it has become a part of our culture to use sites such as Facebook and Instagram to communicate and share details from our lives with our family and friends.  I think it will be interesting to see what happens with this part of our culture.  It seems like it is only going to continue to grow, but I do wonder if it will reach a tipping point and people will get tired of sharing details of their lives in this manner?

Varnelis, K. (2008).  Networked Publics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.