I love the the opportunities created by the digital age but
am also wary of the dangers posed. Being annonymous and keeping my private life
private is an important foundation upon which my online presence has so far
been built. Activities such as information seeking seem harmless whereas sharing
information about my self and daily activities, including pictures, are not
exactly my thing. So i would rather consider myself a visitor rather than a
resident. On the other hand in order to properly engage my students in an
online environment, some degree of ”resident” character is required. And i love
engaging students, for example on discussion forums connected to the courses i
teach.
So after listening to White (2014), i have a better perspective and clearer
understanding of myself. As White puts it, rather than imagine the visitor-resident
dichotomy and the private-professional dichotomy as separate from each other,
we can imagine the latter as a vertical line right across the center of the the
horital image of the former to create four quadrants (White, 2014). One of the
quadrant will then be the resident private or resident professional, the latter
appeals to me!
There is also a tendency for older
teachers to assume that their younger students might posses better digital
literacy since most of them were born in the digital age. Prensky (2001),
described the situation where the younger generation have been raised to
understand the digital world as their ‘native’ tongue. The older teachers, on
the other hand, are more like ‘immigrants’ who speak an outdated language struggling
to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language (Prensky, 2001, p.
2). Personally and from experience, i think the apprehension of the use of an
online environment might be similar for both students and teachers. This is
because in the end, the applications and conditions in an educational context are
not exactly the same as those on social medial. It is probably easier to blog
and write about fashion, travel, food or daily life based on one’s interest
than it is to write a ”reflective blog” that aligns with the intended learning
outcomes in a course. In the later case, learners may feel vulnerable due to
the fear of how people (classmates and instructors alike) might judge their
intellectuallity.
In this course i have learnt that context and content are important determinants of different types of literacies (Belshaw, 2012). We should do our best to minimise potential barriers and sources of apprehension or fear for online learners. This is beacuse learners participation and engagement are dteremined by factors such as institutional IT resources and competence, access to technology, previous experiences etc.
References
Prensky,
M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 6.
