apologies

im sorry about the weird order that these are in, it because i have had them saved in my draft box for a little bit, untill i had completed all of question 9, i hope this is ok and not tooo comfusing for every one!

Week 9 -Question 1

I found it very difficult to relate Wenger and Prenskys theories, as initally they seem about two completely different ideas, But after thinking about it carefully i have realised that there are some similarities. For instance Wengers CoP is about learning, learning from people who are on your wave length and no trying to be above or the boss of you. Prenskys theory is about education in a world where there are two different types of people, digital immigrants and digital natives. So the main concept of both theories is learning. This can go deeper though, because the digital immigrants and digital natives, have to come to some sort of agreement, in which not one of them is better than the other, it is about adapting to each others needs and coming to a compromise. For instance digital immigrants have to understand that digital natives are developing in a different way to the way that the immigrants developed when they were younger. This means that the immigrants have to learn from the natives as well as visa versa, which is similar to what a community of practice is, everybody is learning from everybody to increase there knowledge.

Another underlying theme in both of the theories is the use of technology, Prensky maybe more than Wenger, but CoP can definatly develop more with the use of technology and communication through technology.

i am not sure whether this is correct or not, but these are the main points that i felt worked in favour of both articles and theories.

Week 9 Blog e)

I Believe that by 2020, the majority of our lives will be controlled by technology. I still think that we will probably have face to face lectures, and maybe take notes, but we might have special computers or something, i dont know whether we will still use pen and paper to take notes, although i think it will still be encouraged at schools. I do not think that we will have gone compltely online, therefore i do not think that blogging is going to be come the new form of learning. but i do t believe that this will play a bigger role in more courses, than just media based ones.



I think maybe by then there will be the semantic web as well as other theories around web 3.0, for instance quicker graphics etc, so this may make life alot easier and it maybe be easier to find what you want on the internet.



I think we will probably rely on the internet alot more as well, for hand ins and essays, a sound system will probably be created, so that you can email your essay across, with the guarantee it is going to get there in time and not get lost.

Week 9 Blog d)

d) neo luddites is some one who secretly despises technology, in todays society this would be extreamnly hard to live by especially at an instituition like university. Every Single peace of work that is handed in has to be written on the computer, it can not be hand written. This would probably frustrate a neo luddite because they wouldn't necessairily have ever used a computer enough to be able to create a peace of work that was easy for them to create.




Also many lectures are done with the use of the power point, instead of maybe black boards or something similar. It would probably frustrate them even more if they had to do a presentation, because you are expected to use powerpoint for them as well, where as a neo luddite might prefer to just speak or again use non technical visual material.


The neo luddite also probably would not like it when so many people communicate through facebook, msn and text. I am the head of the dance society and the main ways i keep in touch with people is through Facebook and text. A neo luddite might not have a mobile or the internet, therefore they would find it hard to keep in contact or get information that is being passed around.





The fact that alot of supplement material is online, for instance library resources, journals, seminar notes, lectures slides, essay questionsand alot of other resources are posted online first and foremost, before being given out in hand, if being given out in hand at all, would probably also aggrevate the neo luddite severely.

Week 9 Blog c)

c) A person that i know who most threatens the digital Native/ Immigrant Approach, is still probably my dad, but the thing is that because of his age he should really be an immigrant, but because of his job he is really native, he has pretty much grown up around the developing technology. Unlike my mum who is a real digital immigrant, they are exactly the same age, and yet my mum has trouble navigating a mouse around the computer screen. Other people in my dads social circle are actually immigrant, but still become involved in things that you would expect a digital immigrant to understand, for instance my uncles partner, is fully functional on a computer and like my dad has facebook, as well as a few or my dads friends havign facebook as well and playing virtual scarbble against each other over the internet, which many digital immigrants would not know exists.

Week 9- Blog b)

b) The youngest digital immigrant you know.

It was hard for me to think of a young digital immigrant, probably due to the course that I am taking and the family that I have. Though there are a few of my friends that are probably more like digital immigrants than say I am, because they still struggle with computers and new technology, for instance talking to my friend yesterday she didn’t know how to copy something across from a usb on to your hard drive. I think it is quite hard be a young digital immigrant in todays society, especially as so much of uni and school work has to be done on the computer and on the internet, it is bard not to become at least partially adapted.

Week 9- Blog a)

a) The oldest digital native you know.

The oldest Digital Native I know is defiantly my father, I believe that this is because he is an engineer. Originally he worked for the RAF, this was when he was about 17, so he has basically been surrounded by the developments of the computer age as they happen. Because this was his job, we were quite advantaged with technology as children, I was one of the first people in my class to have a computer of my own and to have msn. My Dad is quick to catch up with new emerging websites and computer based technology, for instance he has a facebook and is very able to use MP3 Player, I got the same one as him and he had to teach me how to use it and create playlists, because it didn’t say it in the instructions.

Week 9- Question 6

6) How does it differ from web 3.0?

The semantic web is a string of web 3.0, as far as I could tell web 3.0 is the latest development of the web, it is a theory about how the web is changing from 2.0. For Web 3.0 it does not necessarily mean in the semantic sense. With web 3.0 it is mainly about the development. For instance there are theories about it developing in a way in which they are going to develop 3D and virtual reality or maybe advancing graphics, or the way that we will be able to view our new media, there are ideas that we may be able to view it through our bathroom mirrors. So the main difference is that it does not focus on Semantics.

Week 9- Question 5

5) What is the 'semantic web'?

The Semantic web, was coined by Tim Bernes- Lee, it is a developing technology through the web in which the web will be able to understand and satisfy the requests of people, it will be easier to troll the net and find exactly what we want to find, instead of things relating to what we want to find. There are already a number of semantic data bases set up on the web, including the semantic web coordination group. Also I think that what Andrew Frasers lecture was on was a development of Semantic Web, after all he was trying to find ways of giving people exactly what they want. For instance the point of the holiday search website was to find people a holiday that they would actually really like to go on, it was not to do with price range, or where you come from, it was about your personality. He was also trying to develop something similar for sites like Amazon, for instance in the recommended section it would not be about similar products, it would be products, that through a series of questions, amazon would realize that you would actually be interested in and buy. This new web form focuses on the information rather than the processing.

Week 9- Question 4

4) Is there a potential problem being stored up for people if 'education' is tailored to fit into their cultural and personal preferences?

I do not see initially that there is a potential problem being stored up for people if education, is tailored to fit into their culture and personal preferences, after all it makes sense. It would not make sense for every one around the world to be taught in exactly the same way, after all this may mean that what they are learning will not have any relevance to their later lives and education may be pointless. The only problem that I can see is that with the personal preferences, there personal preference maybe to not learn certain key legacy skills and therefore they may not have the basics for life in general.

Another potential problem might be that people become to complacent, like I mentioned in the previous blog about you being stretched. I don’t believe this would happen if everything is tailor made, if every body got exactly what they wanted and needed all the time.

Prensky would probably say that this is a good thing as the way we are processing information is different, and so maybe changing education to fit this new culture of new media that is evolving would, according to Prensky make sense and work.

week 9- question 3

3) Should education 'stretch a person do you think? (What do you mean by 'stretch'?)

I think that education should stretch the mind. I believe that in order to do that people maybe should learn in ways that maybe they are not used to. So Prenskys theory of learning through computer games etc, may not actually stretch peoples minds, it may make them become complacent. As they will always be learning in the same way. I do think that doing this blogging has stretched my mind, as I have had to express my opinion and really think about what I have read and what that means to me. When you are in a seminar it is easy to sit back and not say anything and just listen to what other people think. Where as on this module, it is not that easy to do that. I think when saying that education should stretch a person, it should not just be in the learning sense, therefore the fact that we still have seminars and are not completely online, does try and encourage people to speak out face to face with there colleagues, where as blogging maybe doesn’t. So I still believe that a combination of new media learning and face to face “legacy” learning is the way forward and that this would stretch me educationally.

Week 9- Question 2

2) What difference to all this might the 'digital divide' make? a) To socioeconomically related access issues within a society? b) To global access issues across countries and regions?

A) The digital divide means that people within societies use new media in different ways. People access differently due to mass media. If there is a topic within there social circle that is talked about often, eg within my social circle it could be musicals, then I am more likely to access the internet to gather information on this subject and then pass it on to other people in my social circle. Therefore people within my society who do not have a favourite topic, or subject may not go on the internet as often as they have no reason to find out more information for instance. According to Goldfarb, A and Prince J (2006), who did a survey on 18,439 Americans, Higher educated people are more likely to have adopted the internet by 2001. Though this is the case it was also found that low income and less educated people may have taken longer to adopt the internet, they actually spend more time on the internet. Internet adoption is higher for, younger, married and city dwellers.

B) The Digital Divide across countries and regions mainly occurs due to wealth. Obviously the richer communities can not afford to have the internet on tap and access it as often as possible. Other people in poorer communities will not have this privilege. This may not always be a bad thing, because some regions and countries may not be as aware that the internet is such a big phenomenon and so to them it may be irrelevant. It was also found that white people had higher internet adoption, but also it was found that there was not a significant difference between people spoken in different languages.

week 8 question 5 revealed abstract 5

Abstract 5

This article is about whether there is a place for traditional learning methods of design drawing, that which Prensky calls Legacy, in a CAD (Computer aided drafting) world, It talks about what measures have been taken in Scotland to incorporate CAD in to the curriculum. It was found that it was helpful to have both manual and computer aided drawing training, so that the students were able to understand the basics. A number of different people were asked including, industrialists, teachers and students. They were asked through E surveys and scale questionnaires. It was found that only 1 in 5 industrialists continue to do manual technical drawings, it was found that manual technical drawing developed spatial awareness, visualisation and thinking things through! So in conclusion it was found that there are still many benefits of learning to draw manually. But increasing the time spent on CAD would defiantly create more efficient drawers, but at the expense of deep understanding.

Key Words: Computer Aided drafting, Manual Drawing, Education. Curriculum.

week 8 question 5 revealed abstract 4

Abstract 4

This is a report on a study done on 72 student who are actually digital immigrants, and have experiences the development of the internet at first hand. Studies support the idea that young adults spend a large percentage of there time on line, for social and educational reasons as well as for fun. In this study collage students wrote autobiographical essays on there experiences on the internet both in the past and in the present. Some participants believed that the internet was being used to change there identities, other believe that it has created many more opportunities for them and for many it has changed the way they think completely. It looks at four sections, internet and the self, family, Real communities and the virtual communities. It looks at the dependency that we have developed as a society for the internet, apparently filling a void that we never knew we had, others believe that it is an addiction.

week 8 question5 revealed abstract 3

Abstract 3

This is a study into 15-24 year olds who seem to be the key demographic in consuming telecom and media services. It has been found that media consumption has increased considerably over the past few years. Gaming being the single biggest contributor to the increase in time spent on media. Teenagers are also the ones that access the internet the most especially forms of communication such as IM. The 15-24 year olds are the digital natives, they have grown up around technology all there lifes. It is believes that Digital natives can be characterized in four ways: Control, which is due to the fact that they can access things when they want to, for instance watching television programmes on the internet. Impatience, an example of this is the fact that young people avoid watching adverts and do not actually pay attention when they are on. Community interactions, such as the increase in uses of blogs and wiki sites. Originality, for instance creating your myspace page in and interesting and fun way that reflects you, also sharing photos and art work. The fact that community interaction has increased has meant that people are commenting more openly on new products, especially if they are not working properly. This article suggests some ways that this can be improved for instance are “ideas blog” where people post there ideas to make the products better.

week 8 question5 revealed abstract 2

Abstract 2

Another article by Marc Prensky. This article is explaining what digital natives and immigrant are, that the natives were brought up surrounded by all these technologies and so this is how they think, where as the immigrants were not and so have had to learn later on in their lives about computers etc. Again he is talking about educating and how the digital immigrants do not understand that the digital natives will have to be taught in a different way, as they have been brought up using different parts of there brains. Marc Prensky believes that they should be taught in a way that relates to the digital world, for instance instantaneously, not step by step, and random access like hypertext. Teachers should not go back to there old ways of teaching they should take a step forward and take into account the fact that children learn in a different way now. There are two types of content in education, legacy and future. Legacy is what we have been learning for a very long time, for instance reading and writing ( which he believes may die out like Latin and Greek did) and Future is digital and technological. He helped create a computer game called “monkey wrench” which helped people to learn how to use some software called CAD. This helped prove his theory. He believes that now it is not a question of what do they have to do? It is more of how are they going to do it? For instance how are they going to transfer or the learning to digital.

week 8 question4 revealed

4) In the Harvard manner, name five different academic articles dealing with the notion of young people's facility with the new world of converged media

Prensky, M (2001) “Do They Really Think Differently” On the Horizon, Volume 9 (6) http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part2.pdf [Accessed 24/03/08]

Prensky, M (2001) “Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants” On The Horizon, Volume 9 (5) http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdfteachers [Accessed 25/03/08]

Capgemini (2007) “Digital natives: How is the younger generation reshaping the telecom and media landscape” Telecom, Media and Entertainment, issue 16, http://www.de.capgemini.com/m/de/tl/Digital_Natives.pdf [Accessed 31/03/08]

Mclaren, S ( 2007) "Exploring Perseptions and attitudes towards teaching and learning manual technical drawing in a digital age" International Journal of Technology and Design Education. issue N/a, http://eprints.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/3965/01/mclaren_exploringperceptions.pdf [Accessed 01/04/08]

Week8 question 5 Revealed Abstract 1

Abstract 1

Marc Prensky wrote this article too back up his theories on digital immigration. He uses it to show that there is evidence to suggest that digital natives will learn better by learning through video games etc. His evidence is to prove that the brain does change and will shape differently when in different environments. Firstly he uses neurobiology to back up his ideas, in which experiments on animals, brain scans on musicians and looking at chemical changes in the brain when a participant is thinking intensely, have shown that your brain is different in different situations. He then goes on to talk about social psychology he states that there is evidence to suggest that people who are brought up in different cultures not only think about different things they actually think differently, but this does not come easy changing the structure of your brain does not just happen over night, participants have to do very intense hard work over a long period of time, in order for this to work. Because digital natives are surrounded by technology such as video games Marc Prensky believes that this would be the best way for them to learn. He backs this up with evidence that proves that games can help improve learning, but they have to be well made and obviously they have to appeal to the children so that they want to play them in there extra curricular time.

Week 8 question 2 revealed

2) Identify five different websites/five-pages-on-different sites dealing with digital immigration and its counterpart. Give their urls

http://henryjenkins.org/2007/12/reconsidering_digital_immigran.html

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/digitalnatives/

http://www.digitalnative.org/Main_Page

http://digitalnativesct.blogspot.com/

http://www.assortedstuff.com/?p=2

Week 8 question 1 revealed

1) Find out about 'Digital Immigration'.
What Is it? Who cares about it? What sort of general attitudes have been based upon it?

Digital immigration is the fact that people are not used to technology and were not brought up In a digital age, therefore they have to do stuff like print stuff off to edit instead of editing it online. Therefore the opposite of a digital immigrant is a digital native, because these people have been brought up in a digital age, they have been surrounded by computers, televisions and mobile phones, through most if not all there lives.

The people that might be interested in this could be teachers and the government alike, because like marc pensky says people believe that children are changing, but he states that it is surroundings that are changing. They have been brought up in a completely different way to the children of the 1950’s and so they should be taught in a different way. It is thought that there brains are now structured in a different way. As stated by Dr. Bruce D. Berry of Baylor College of Medicine. In Marc Plenskys papers. This means that teachers should be aware of these theories as it may explain why a child is having trouble learning. Although there is a counter argument to this which brings up the fact that if children are so adaptable to technology they should really be adaptable to learning through the traditional ways of teaching.

The general attitudes that are raised in the number of articles that are written on this subject are that education needs to take advantage of the fact that children are processing in different ways, due to the new media. They might benefit more if they were taught through these new media eg. Computer games or the internet. People are having problems dealing with the fact that in a few decades, traditional ways of teaching may die out, just like, Latin and Greek did.

week 8- question 6 part 4

Disagreements with article part 4

I did not do a thired section for this question because i actually agreed withthe majority of article 3 and found it very interesting. FOr article four it did not actually mention digitla immigration or natives, but i knew from what it was talking about that it was actually about this topic.

The studies in this report shows that many of the participants believed that they used the internet to solidify who they were really offline. I do not believe this is entirely true I think your online persona is always an exaggeration version of yourself to show off your good bits, you tend to miss out or talk less about the less flattering side to yourself. So I do not believe that it is always more of who you are than your actual off line self. I do not believe that I am any less technically developed than my younger sister, if anything I am less technically developed than my older brother. As I am not very good at computer games, etc, but when it come to the internet I would say that we are about equal, due to the fact that we all created our own email accounts at the same time and the fact that our dad is an engineer and very much into modern technology, he even has facebook. I do not believe that this dependency or addiction is a good thing, I already think that I rely on the internet too much and do not believe that it would be a good thing to need to rely on it even more.

Week 8- question 6 part 2

Disagreements with article Part 2

Some disagreements that I had with this article was the fact that I would be termed a digital native, because I have been brought up with new media al around me. But this is still constantly changing. It took me quite a while to get to grips with facebook for instance even though I have been using the internet since I was 11 or 12. Surely it should have been pretty easy for me to understand. Does this mean that with the constant developments being made that learning completely digital will only help in the short run, because in a couple of decades they may have to completely change the system again. In this article it states that legacy teaching may completely due out, after all latin and greek did. I disagree with this, I think that even though technology will take over, I do not think it will ever be the only source, I think reading and writing will always still be around and taught. For instance I do not think that in primary school we will eventually only be teaching 4 year olds how to type there name. I think they will still be taught how to write it as well.

week 8- question 6 part 1

Disagreements of Articles part 1

I believe that even some children of today are still digital immigrants. And to convert to teaching completely through computer games etc would be wrong. I think it would still benefit children to learn through books and other traditional sources and instead of the computer games being instead of, they would be an added bonus. The fact that he states that the programs have to appeal to the children, does this mean that they are going to create different ones for different types of children, for instance some forms of games are very much more appealing towards boys eg, football games and some are more appealing to girls ones that involve animals or fantasy characters. When learning through a game, surely there should be characters and stories and so they would either have to gender neutral, or maybe two different types of games should be created. But it is not all about gender, within the same age group there are usually different levels of learning and so will the computer games accommodate for this. Id say they probably will but it doesn’t mention this in the article.

The fact that he has received some of his research from animals, makes me wonder whether that is ethical and even whether the information received from mice, etc, is even transferable to the human brain.

week 8 question 3 part 5

Websites on digital immigration 5

This is one of my least favourite blogs that I have found because although they do have an archive down the side and a search engine. There are no links that tell you the profile of the blogger and so it is hard to tell how reliable this person is going to be for information. This website has a brief at the top that tells you why this man has opened this blog, but it doesn’t tell you who he is and why he has the qualifications to tell people about this. Also the last blog that was posted was January 2008 and so it hasn’t been updated in a very long time and so a lot in the digital immigrant field could have happened since then and nothing has been posted about it. I like the fact that a lot of his posts are interactive, for instance they have videos or sound clips on with links to other websites, so that you can follow up any comments that he makes. It is annoying when you open the page though, because music starts to play in the background and you can switch it off and this decreases its usablilty because the only way to get rid of it is to close the page and this what I did on a number of occasions because the music became to distracting when I was trying to read.

Week 8 question 3 part 4

websites on digital immigration 4

Again this another blog,but is not just about digital natives and immigrants, it does seem to want to cover more ground than that, For instance in his about section he talks about covering “he state of public education in the United States and the perpetual efforts to reform it. That, plus comments on instructional technology, blogging and the read-write web (aka Web 2.0), various forms of media, digital rights and fair use, a very small dab of politics, and the everyday oddities of life that pop up.” All of these relate to Digital nativism and Digital Immigration and so the blog will cover a lot of ground. On this blog there are navigation bars along the top and down the right hand side. The one along the top has the options of Home, about, stuff for edtech and the top 101. And down the side is divided into teaching and learning, education news and opinions and general news and opinion amongst others, there is also again the option to access and Archive, which seems to be a really good in a very active, well established and regularly used Blog. For instance there is the option to go back to may 2007 all the way up to April 3^rd 2008. So it is a well updated website. The top 101 websites, is one of the links which helps teachers (digital immigrants) to find websites that might help them teach the pupils (digital niatives) in a digital way. For instance there is a link to an interactive prehistoric time line.

week 8 question 3 part 3

Websites on digital immigration 3

There is a blog that relates to the another of the websites. This blog I don’t feel is as easy to navigate as the Henry Jenkins one because although having a search engine, they do not have amenities such as and Archive and so it might not be as easy to find blogs on information that you would like to find. It does have a good “about” section, in which it explains about who the hosts are and what there project is. It is also good that you are always able to see the recently updated comments and the most recent one was March the 19^th and so this suggests that is updated frequently. The fact that it is a blog on digital natives does suggest that is practicing what it preaches, because they are appealing to people who are able to use the technologies with ease and understand the concept of them. Digital immigrants would struggle to be able to post and maybe even struggle to understand the concept of the blog.

week 8- Question 3 part 2

Website on digital immigration 2

This website is a wiki site and so the information may not be as reliable as other sites, because anyone can post the information on these sites. They are open to every one. Although the site was set up by Berkman Centre For Internet and society At Harvard Law School and the Research Centre for information law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. These students are hosting and working on the core of this site and so it may be slightly more reliable than other wiki websites. The main page is the one with most of the information. The talk about qwhat the Digital Native pages is, why they have used a wiki for there project, an introduction to the life of digital natives, the questions for discursssion, other places they are places, eg facebook and what they are currently reading. All these sections on the homepage are valid because they explain what they are doing and why. The problem is the other navigations on the page are limited. For instance when you click on current events and donations there is no text on the page. These links are dead and so until they have information for these links maybe they should not be there. Also you have to be a member of the site inorder to read any discussions that have been created.

week 8- Question 3 part 1

website on digital immigration 1

This website is a blog and is written by a man called Henry Jenkins who is a lecturer at MIT and has written nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture Therefore I believe that what he writes is valuable and he probably has a lot to say about the subject of digital immigration because it is the field of work that he works in. The website in general is laid out in a simple way in which there are hyperlinks to different areas of the website, for instance “links” and “about me” which helped me understand that what he was going to say could be valuable. Then down the sides he has links to Amazon and Powells to read his books. The search engine is a good idea because when wanting to find out if he had written anything on Digital immigration I just typed in Digital Immigrants into the search section, and it showed me the blogs that featured this. There is also an archive which is a listed of links to all the weblogs that he has done on the many different categories that have interested him. It was last updated on march the 29^th so it very current and talks about issues that are around today.