CCK11# On Becoming a (digitally literate) person

If i had a hammer...or a harpsichord.... I'd do different things ....
doh.

That i am in a course that uses web2.0 makes a course that cannot function without certain ways of being.

Knowing more rather than less about these effects becomes critically important.

Lankshear and Knowbel’s investigation of new literacies emphasises insider understandings of practice, particular values being shared by those involved:
"The more a literacy practice that is mediated by digital encoding privileges participation over publishing, distributed expertise, collective intelligence over individual possessive intelligence, collaboration over individuated authorship, dispersion over scarcity, sharing over ownership, experimentation over normalization, innovation and evolution over stability and fixity, creative-innovative rule breaking over generic purity and policing, relationship over information broadcast, do-it-yourself creative production over professional service delivery, and so on, the more sense we think it makes to regard it as a new literacy."(Lankshear & Knobel, 2007, p. 228)

In teaching and learning through a medium involving new digital literacies there are ways of being, and things learned, that may not be overt. Being (more rather than less)conscious of the influence, of the agency held by the distributed network, requires us to challenge every time a dismissive statement such as 'its just a tool' is made.
eg... newspapers are just a tool,
.. so is tv...
BUT they position the 'user/consumer in certain ways...
so too do classrooms...
so too does powerpoint...

so too does web 2.0

Dont be fooled that this suggests in any way shape or form that tools are neutral;
they have influence, for better or for worse.
Technology is not just a tool, it affects how we interact, and it would be a mistake to consider it merely as the bearer of a message.

Todays wee rant was inspired by comments on Jenny Mackness' blog re attacks on connectivism