the public only works when the public is empowered to speak in ways that the structures that contain that public might not endorse or facilitate

As Sara Goldrick-Rab demonstrates, public spaces are fraught with danger and stomach-aches… but they are intimately connected to the vision many of us have for the public commons as an accessible, learner-driven space for diverse voices to share and create knowledge.

The public is not just a place we might be willing to work in; it’s a place we must be willing to work at

“open to the public,”

WMV (Windows Media video), MOV (QuickTime Movie), AVI (Audio Video Interleave video file), MP4 (iPod, iPhone), iTunes-compatible video, MP3 (audio only), GIF (animation file)

Screencasts are excellent for those learners who just need an aural as well as a visual explanation of the content presented.

which is not always feasible in the classroom.

Screencasts are an effective instructional format that can be used for tutorials, demonstrations,

Students in both K–12 and higher education will spend all of their personal and professional lives immersed in a digital society.

eliminate awkward and unnecessary portions

instructors can create their own screencasts

Connect with people in another part of the world

I encourage them to begin looking at other tools.

Learning happens together.

more experienced educators.

(ORCA)

As the ORCA Project continues and as we learn more about the assessment of online research and comprehension, we are likely to discover additional limitations that are equally important. Nevertheless, the current assessments provide a useful starting point to understanding the assessment of online research and comprehension within authentic, performance-based tasks.

How Are We Doing?

Keyword entry in a search engine, for example, becomes an important new literacy skill because search engines are an important new technology for locating information.

use information in creative and innovative ways to develop new ideas and solve complex problems

for example, Internet use in U.S. workplaces increased by nearly 60% among all employed adults 25 years of age and older (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2002)

Today, global economic competition requires that organizations abandon these traditional command-and-control structures and instead harness all of their intellectual capital, unleash innovation and creativity, and generate greater productivity.

we mean that literacy is not just new today; it becomes newevery day of our lives.

we live in new times, with new literacies.

Just seeing my words in that beautiful font and layout makes me feel like a real writer and not a “mindless blogger.”

Basically socially complex texts are authored by opposing forces discussing an issue with equal passion and often mutual disdain.

Students who succeed in online environments skimmed more websites and spent more time engaged with sources when they judged them to be relevant.

The students who could manage multiple tabs

how divergent thinking allows some to create more complex models and more frequent simulations of the future.

New and more complex skills and practices are required to read in online environments.

Two percent. Just 2% of code separates us from our Chimpanzee brethren.

Creation can be viewed simply as the act of producing, or causing to exist.  Construction is the building or assembling of an infrastructure

(ORC)

All these are social meanings, specific to a particular culture. At the same time they are chosen, put together for their potential to mean, by the deliberate action of the designer. The sign - a complex message of words, of letters, of colour and font-types with all their cultural resonances - reflects the interests of its designer as much as the designer’s imagined sense of those who will see and read the sign. The sign is based on a specific rhetorical purpose, and intent to persuade with all means possible those who pass by and notice it.

Semiotics takes the sign - a fusion of a form and a meaning – as its basic unit. In making signs we –embedded in our cultures - select forms in such a way that they expresses the meanings that we ‘have’ always ‘aptly’; hence signs always express, through their form, the meanings that the makers of signs have wished to make.

Wherever I place it, someone looking at the image is entitled to assume that the nucleus actually is where I have placed it in the circle/cell – whether I intended to or not, or whether it actually belongs there or not. Each mode forces me into making certain kinds of commitments about meaning, intended or not. The choice of mode has profound effects on meaning, and textbook designers, for instance, need to be aware of such meaning effects of different modes.

Changes in media, from page to screen, make ‘‘it easy to use a multiplicity ofmodes...in particular the mode of image – still or moving – as well as other modes,such as music and sound’’ to convey one’s message.

we as educators need to move beyondcustomary views of these media as simply curriculum-delivery devices, teaching aidsor ‘‘neutral’’ tools for learning (p. viii) to find ways of engaging with them morecritically and creatively as ways ofrepresentingthe world, ofcommunicating,and associalandculturalprocesses

hyperpersonal,even more friendly, social, and intimate than face-to-facecommunication

boyd (2006), however, describes how the meaning of ‘‘Friend’’ connections inMySpace differs from traditional conceptualizations of ‘‘friendship’’ offline. Withinsocial network sites ‘‘Friendship’’ can mean a variety of different relationships (

A form ofself-publishing, personal home pages also canbe viewed as online multimedia texts constructed through a process of ‘‘inclusion,allusion, omission, adaptation, and discovery’’ (para. 11) and shaped by one’sassociations, connections, and conventions in Web subcultures.

The majority use MySpace (65%) with Facebook (37%) being the second mostpopular site,

The majority use MySpace (65%) with Facebook (37%) being the second mostpopular site,

devoting an average of 9 hours

An important goal of this paper is to articulate how the insightsfrom this research might help us make education more engaging for all studentsand more meaningful to their present and future lives in a technologically mediatedworld.

Threequestions guided our investigation: How do young people themselves talk abouttheir social network site and its role in their lives? How are social network sitesseen to be supporting young people’s interpersonal needs? How are young peopleusing social network sites for creative and communicative purposes, if at all?

Madden,

This research suggests some tendency to read “professional” sites as more credible than “amateur” mate-rials, although students lack a well-developed set of standards for distinguishing between the two.

Ex-panding access to computers will help bridge some of the gaps between digital haves and have nots,

Children and youths do indeed know more about these new media environments than most parents and teachers.

David Buckingham argues that young people’s lack of interest in news and their disconnection from politics reflects their per-ception of disempowerment.

While formal education is often conservative, the informal learning within popular culture is often experi-mental.

Participants in the beta-reading process learn both by receiving feedback on their own work and by giving feedback to others, creating an ideal peer-to-peer learn-ing community

Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways.

The tools available to a culture matter, but what that cul-ture chooses to do with those tools matters more.

Rather than dealing with each technology in isolation, we would do better to take an ecological approach, thinking about the interrelationship among different communication technol-ogies, the cultural communities that grow up around them, and the activities they support.

every child deserves the chance to express him- or her-self through words, sounds, and images, even if most will never write, perform, or draw professionally.

One-third of teens share what they create online with others, 22 percent have their own Web sites, 19 percent blog, and 19 percent remix online content

In most cases where people share to maintain privacy, they do because they do not want someone to have power over them.

tchotchkes

Some admitted to using this freedom in problematic or destructive ways—recounting acts of ganging up on girls whom they deemed annoying or using a combination of wits and trickery to manipulate Facebook administrators into providing data.

image-based bulletin board site 4chan.

Although some teens choose to use the same handle across multiple sites,

may be amusing to watch Kramer face embarrassment when he and George accidentally run into Kramer’s mother on Seinfeld,

it’s easy to get lost in the back-and-forth on Twitter.

The ability to understand how context, audience, and identity inter-sect is one of the central challenges people face in learning how to navigate social media.

Without knowing the teen, my guess was that he was genuine in his college essay. At the same time, I also suspected that he would never dare talk about his desire to go to a prestigious institution in his neighborhood because doing so would cause him to be ostracized socially, if not physically attacked.

as adults have started participating in social media and, especially, Facebook.

For Heather, social media is not only a tool; it is a social lifeline that enables her to stay connected to people she cares about but can-not otherwise interact with in person.

AIM screen names either,

Teens’ determination to set their own agenda can be nerve-racking for some parents, particularly those who want to protect their children from every possible danger. Coming of age is rife with self-determination, risk taking, and tough decision-making.

. Most teens are not compelled by gadgetry as such—they are compelled by friendship.

Teens continue to occupy an awkward position between childhood and adulthood, dependence and independence. They are struggling to carve out an identity that is not defined solely by family ties. They want to be recognized as someone other than son, daughter, sister, or brother. These struggles play themselves out in familiar ways, as teens fight for freedoms while not always being willing or able to accept responsibilities. Teens simultaneously love and despise, need and reject their parents and other adults in their lives. Meanwhile, many adults are simultaneously afraid of teens and afraid for them.

A popular T-shirt designed by John Slabyk and sold on the website Threadless sums up the disillusionment with failed technological utopias:they lied to usthis was supposed to be the futurewhere is my jetpack,where is my robotic companion,where is my dinner in pill form,where is my hydrogen fueled automobile,where is my nuclear-powered levitating house,where is my cure for this disease

The Walkman music player was viewed as an evil device that would encourage people to disappear into separate worlds, unable to communicate with one another.11

Search engines make it easy to surface esoteric interac-tions.

many adults fear networked technologies for the same reasons that adults have long been wary of teen participation in public life and teen socialization in parks, malls, and other sites where youth congregate.

Rather than being seen as a subcultural practice, participat-ing in social media became normative.

Friendster, in particular, was designed as a matchmaking service. I

ols like email, instant messaging, and online forums are still used by teens. B

eens turn to a plethora of popular services to socialize, gossip, share information, and hang out.

“If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist.”

As in many schools I’ve visited over the years, friendships at this school in Nashville were largely defined by race, gender, sexuality, and grade level, and those networks were immediately visible based on whom students were talking to or sitting with. By and large, the students were cordoned off in their own section on the sides of the stands while parents and more “serious” fans occupied the seats in the center.

how little things change. I’m guessing a lot of the drama is still the same, it’s just the format is a little differ-ent. It’s just changing the font and changing the background color really.”

the more things had changed, the more they seemed the same.

déjà vu

2005 to 2012

she thinks that everything online is bad, and you seem to get it, and you’re an adult.