Net Smart by Howard Rheingold was the perfect book to follow The Information Diet and Copyright Clarity. Net Smart tied everything together nicely. Rheingold does a great job of breaking down digital literacy into five topics: attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration, and network smarts. With The Information Diet, I learned about how much digital information I was consuming and how to make changes to reduce the amount. Copyright Clarity taught me about how to determine if the information I found on the Internet was being used fairly and lawfully. Net Smart taught me how to be more mindful of the tools I use online, how to become aware of where I focus my attention, how to determine if information I find is "crap" or valid, how to thoughtfully participate rather than consume information, how to collaborate with intention to share common interests and resources, and the importance of networks and how they influence behavior.
Of the five digital literacy topics, Participation really resonated with me. It was also the topic I worked on with my group to create a Glogster. What Net Smart made me consider in terms of participation was whether I participate when I am online, or am I just "passively consuming culture" or "stealing people's time." I like to think that I participate and add meaningful contribution to things I post, but I will definitely be more conscience and think before I hit the "post" button from now on. The biggest notion from the Participation section that I will bring into my classroom is making sure my students understand that what they post online is there forever. It can be searched, reproduced, and distributed. Sixth graders may not think what they post now is a big deal. However, when they are applying to colleges or for their first job, they will be glad they knew enough to think twice about posting something questionable.
Spot on, especially what you said about participation. So much of what I see on Facebook is reposted or "shared" content. How much of it is really adding to the community? I have to be mindful of that myself, especially on outlets like social media. Thank you for sharing!!
ReplyDeleteWhile attention stood out to me most, I feel the same way you do about participation. I know I am not an active participator and am normally just consuming. It's definitely not the example or message I want to send to my students.
ReplyDeleteI also reflected a lot on my participation. I have a bad habit of "reposting "things without adding to them. Sometimes I excuse this just by thinking I'm not biasing people's response to it but it does make me relatively passive in the process. Recently, I'm trying to be more constructive on social media.
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