The journey has already begun to be a more digitally
literate individual! The ONL course has indeed opened up my eyes to the vast
knowledge that is out there. And I am fortunate enough to meet scholars from
many corners of the world and it is undeniably exciting.
If I talk about me, I am a naïve individual when it comes to
technology. I think, I started using my own computer in 2005, but I don’t
remember the type of the computer: it was comparatively a big one. And I
started using a mobile phone in 2003 or 2004, and it was NOKIA, I remember! (I
am not fond of phones at all: I have never bought a phone for myself, for I
always receive them as gifts!) Anyway, I started using social media in 2006, I
think; and it was Hi5.
Well, David white’s video on ‘visitors and
residents-credibility’ was really interesting and that made me watch the part 1
of the video as well. There, he was explaining that digital literacy can be
compared to one’s second language: the earlier you start learning the language,
the more literate you will be in the language. We can of course see this among
the kids of these days. Kids who are born after 1995 (Generation Z) are
considered to be born into technology; it is said that on average they use
internet minimum three hours a day (Soysal, Çallı, & Coşkun, 2019). However, it should also be
noted that increasing digital literacy among psychologically vulnerable young
people may result in putting them at a risk if their skills are at a lower
level while their usage of internet is intense (Helsper & Smahel, 2019).
However, these days, I believe whether we like it or not, we
need to adapt ourselves to the rapidly changing techie life styles. Today, computer
mediated communication has become indispensable. We can’t literally survive
without technology.
ONL has become an amazing learning platform for me. I knew
that we do not have the right to use any picture we can see on internet for our
tasks. But I was not aware of the sites like unsplash.com, pixabay.com and
pexels.com where pictures could be downloaded without any copyright issues. It
was great! And thank you ONL so much for this new knowledge. And I started
using padlet in my classroom, and my students enjoyed it so much.
Thus, the journey so far with the ONL team was so exciting, and
I look forward to exploring more during this journey!
References
Helsper, E. J., &
Smahel, D. (2019). Excessive internet use by young Europeans: psychological
vulnerability and digital literacy? Information, Communication & Society,
0(0), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1563203
Soysal, F., Çallı, B.
A., & Coşkun, E. (2019). Intra and Intergenerational Digital Divide through
ICT Literacy , Information Acquisition Skills , and Internet Utilization
Purposes : An Analysis of Gen Z, 8(1), 264–274.
https://doi.org/10.18421/TEM81-37
