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| Digital Something |
I used to define myself as a digital something, but could not be sure anymore after I had exhausted all the possible combinations of native, immigrant or nomad at various intervals. The digital pull was always there but quite tricky to name and define during all those years, maybe because it was always a mercurial state in my case. The theme of topic one, online participation and digital literacies, therefore, has offered a very enlightening and personal perspective for me.
While freeing me from the burden of being that something after the digital as if I am the product, and labeled as a result (by Prensky, 2001 as either a digital native or digital immigrant), I have learned that finally some people (White and Le Cornu, 2011) have come up with a proper definition to address this disturbing issue. Based on what they propose, I didn’t have to be the end product any more (fantastic news!), I am actually, and have always been (all hail to all those painful questioning moments!), the user of any digital something. As the user, I can choose to be the temporary one or permanent one. So my heartfelt thanks goes out to White and Le Cornu for their spot on definitions of resident and visitor.
After clearing out the identity issue in the digital platform, then came the moment of questioning the purpose of ONL. Yes, it is defined as a Project Based Learning (PBL) experience, but what was it really? This would be my first time to experience it, therefore I was looking forward to receiving the instructions from the facilitators. As a teacher I would define them as the KEY element of the activities. But hey, I didn’t receive those keys, so what was going on?!
After some painful observation, ruminating and reading on PBL, I have come to realize that the trick is to ask and you shall receive. What? Why? How?
As a result, each one of us provided a resident perspective to this PBL problem rather than a (relatively) shallow visitor one. In the meantime, I am quite happy with my newly found accolades: resident and visitor and the fact that I do not have to pick one over the other.
Off we go to solve another multidimensional problem, and fear not, we have seasoned residents and visitors on board!
References:
Group 10 PBL Artefact for Topic 1
Topic’s ONL Reading List (from our course page)
Videos
Articles
- Developing digital literacies (2014) JISC guide. Available here
- White, D. & Le Cornu, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9). Available here
