Critical Perspectives: media in the online age

Tuesday, 4 May 2010

Defining Digital Natives

From Wikipedia.....

A digital native is a person for whom digital technologies already existed when they were born, and hence has grown up with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones andMP3s.

A digital immigrant is an individual who grew up without digital technology and adopted it later.

In the widest sense, this can refer to people born from the late 1970s and beyond, as the Digital Age did begin at this time, but generally, the term focuses on those who grew up with 21st Century technology.

As Dr. Ofer Zur and Azzia Zur discuss (2009), not all digital immigrants are technologically inept; they fall into the categories of Avoiders, Reluctant Adpoters and Eager Adopters.

Avoiders may only have a land line, and no email account.

Reluctant Adopters see that technology is necessary to their lives, but they don't have a knack for it and often don't like it.

Eager Adopters have enthusiasm and (sometimes) talent for technology that puts them close to on par with Digital Natives.

Similarly, not all digital natives are excited about, like, or have a knack for technology. The terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" refer to the time period in which someone was born, not their taste for technology and gadgets. There are digital natives that despise technology or aren't good at it.

Marc Prensky is acknowledged to have coined the term digital native in his work Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants published in 2001. In his seminal article, he assigns it to a new breed of student entering educational establishments. The term draws an analogy to a country's natives, for whom the local religion, language, and folkways are natural and indigenous, compared with immigrants to a country who often are expected to adapt and assimilate to their newly adopted home. Prensky refers to accents employed by digital immigrants, such as printing documents rather than commenting on screen or printing out emails to save in hard copy form. Digital immigrants are said to have a "thick accent" when operating in the digital world in distinctly pre-digital ways, for instance, calling someone on the telephone to ask if they have received a sent e-mail. A digital native might refer to their new "camera"; a digital immigrant might refer to their new "digital camera".

Sunday, 25 April 2010

You asked me about the AOs, so here they are!

Assessment objectives for a2

View more presentations from shsgmedia.

Here is what teachers are advised to do!

A centre might consider how the online age has influenced the production and consumption of

news. Most newspapers now have an online format. Some magazines only have an online

format. Students might consider whether or not hard copies of news products have a future.

Note: the historical, current and future situation is relevant to this Unit.

Students may then consider the problems and advantages that the online age has produced for

them in this respect. Many have taken advantage of the potential role of citizen journalists for

eye-witness reports and on-the-spot photos and amateur video footage. This in itself has

implications regarding news values and news selection, as well as ethical considerations.

Other problems that the industry has faced are more basic: reduction of revenue from sales of

hard copies and an unwillingness of consumers to subscribe to websites, coupled with

difficulties in persuading advertisers that web-based ads actually work. The Online Age is in its

infancy in this respect.

There is a multitude of texts, and approaches to each topic.

A focus on the ‘now’ will limit understanding of the issues. Students

should be encouraged to consider the historical perspective, and also be able to engage with

the possible future media forms and issues in the given topic.

The most important factors are that students understand the concepts and the issues, that they

are aware of some historical context, and can speculate from an informed position about

possible future developments. If studying the work of established academics in the field will aid

that process, then fine. But do not lead students into the trap of thinking that they will do well by

name-dropping a few of the academic greats in the subject.

Uses of tagging online, look at You Tube tags.
How could you tag your music video to attract more visitors?
How effective is tagging?

Next week, we will look at who got the most visits & speculate on how effective the tagging was in achieving this.

Good over view of online issues:

Excellent article that gives an overview of online issues. Written by David Gauntlett, current big wig in media theory. He also writes in a very accesible tonehttp://bks8.books.google.com/books?id=1WV1xG9rWUIC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&sig=ACfU3U1_hpbJSzk3tVyF0UpReogHcFyABA