DIGITAL LITERACY
In my exploration of webcasting tools, I realize the
importance of digital literacy. While the tools are free, they are not very assessable
to the population that does not know about them, or how they work. The people
who had no idea about the kind of tools that exists typically do not seek out
for these kinds of tools. The ability to understand how these tools work also
requires a basic level of computer literacy, which is lower than the general
reading literacy rate. There are so many tools in the digital world that can
benefit people socially and intellectually. The senior population especially
would benefit greatly from this.
Fan, L. (CC) 2015.
Tools such as Muziboo, SoundCloud, RecordMP3, Garageband,
Jing, and Screenr are great tools that can capture what I see, what I hear, and
what I say. These tools are great ways to share a large essence of the
information I process when living in this world with other people. These tools
differ than the other communication and collaborative tools I’ve explored in
that these tools focus more on audio and visual data than simply texts. Unlike
the other tools, these also capture what I see, hear and say live. This gives
an accurate and realistic reflection of reality as I experience it. I have
already included Lightshot, similar to Jing and Screenr into my PLE. I am not
including the voice tools as I am very shy, especially about my voice.
In learning about becoming a digital citizen, I realize this
week that it is not only about sharing ideas and contributing content together.
It matters what kind of content are being shared. It also matters what type and
format of content we are sharing. It is possible for anyone to not only share
information, but also their emotions. Their voice and a live reflection of
their experience in the living world can be shared with a variety of tools such
as the tools we learned this week. Moreover, people can protect their work with
Creative Commons license. I have learned that this is a very easy and quick
process. The key is in knowing how to do so.
Fan, L. (CC) 2015.
FEEDLY
Content sharing has its up and downs. We learned about Netiquette
in the first week, and twitter use in the recent weeks. One article that
appeared on my feedly reader this week was about the Memories Pizza restaurant
whose owners serves anyone in restaurant, but not cater to the wedding they
were asked to cater for a gay couple. A Concord High School golf, softball and
basketball coach used her Twitter to call for people to commit arson with her
by burning down the pizzeria in response as a part of an outcry for gay rights.
Reflecting on what we have learned in class, this is an improper use of digital
tools as the coach is threatening the safety and security of other citizens. A
high school teacher promotes violence based on her own beliefs. But what
happens if someone acts on them? If a community pizzeria owned by a black
family refused to cater to a Caucasian KKK member’s wedding, would there be a
similar outcry for discrimination? And if these KKK members retaliate with
threats like burning down the pizzeria, I am certain they would be arrested and
prosecuted. I am glad that the police department here made the right decision
in recommending prosecution for the coach too. More importantly, I think this
shows that digital citizenship is as much a public presence as a real
citizenship. A person must conduct as they would online as they should offline.
