I thought that the  3rd grade children of Roberts elementary school invented a revolutionary way to learn about other cultures and a great way to get rid of cultural misconceptions. I thought that many of their misconceptions about people from the middle east were spot on and I believe that most of their misconceptions even though they are young are shared by thousands of other adults. Even if the misconception is something small like snow in the middle east or they aren’t muslims they are ninjas, which was a pretty funny comment but just shows you how off our ideologies are when we are that young and imaginative. Finding false information or biased information on the internet is not uncommon since there are most likely over a million fake webpages or webpages that are biased.  This is a problem when a little child who does not know how to check sources reads information about middle eastern traditions and develops a skewed view of how people of the middle east operate. The problem doesn’t start and stop with the children, but Im sure if you asked an adult to find a reliable web page they might pull up wikipedia or use google who’s search engine is based upon your viewing history, who paid the most for positioning, youtube history, Netflix viewing history and whatever link is trending. For this reason alone finding reliable information through a google search can be some what of an undertaking.

I think it is a great undertaking to use the technology that we have and teach new minds how to find information. Being media literarte isnt just about finding information and comprehending it but becoming smart publishers of the information we do find. So by starting at such a young age as the 3rd graders did we are creating a whole new generation of smart publishers. 

Libraries in crisis

  One aspect of the Metacognitive dimension of metaliteracy which I would like to comment on would be “libraries in crisis.” Char booth comments on this crisis in three different ways as trends which are destruction, decline and displacement. She starts off by stating why libraries are the usually targeted by terrorist factions or by invaders and this is due to the reason that libraries hold a civilizations cultural history within them. So this is no surprise that during an invasion the conquerer would want to destroy existing ideologies and replace them with ideas of their own. She states a couple examples such as burning of books and bombings which have taken place in the past. Afterwards she moves onto decline which is basically societies not having enough money to manage and run public libraries whether it be budget, loss of need or management. Then she moves onto displacement, the moving away from public libraries to the digital age or using the internet instead of books. This is no surprise to me since we are termed the digital age and in some minds using books is a way of the past because the internet is so much easier and faster to navigate. Through the internet it is possible to get thousands of hits with one keyword whereas in libraries finding the information you specifically want could take hours. 

After a brief rundown of her views of why libraries are in crisis she defines library and the most recent definition is a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for people to read, borrow, or refer to. Now just with this definition libraries seem out of date. In my opinion according to this definition everything a library is can be found on the interent just as easily if not faster and more efficient. It is no wonder why libraries are in crisis. 

#metaliteracy

Metaliteracy

The Metaliterate Learner diagram holds the metaliterate learner at the centerpiece to this approach of learning. The next layer displays learning objectives which help the learner further him/herself in what ever environment, these are basically ways in which we learn. and the last ring displays how information is conveyed, collaborated on, learned, or shared pretty much any possible way to learn. In this approach the learner is the author and reader making educated contributions to “scholarly conversations.” 

Technology has influenced the way we learn drastically over the past 50 years making the college experience infused with URLs. Students today study using the internet then they ever have before, in fact New York has a general education requirement that mandates an information literacy class be taken. Many universities are embracing using the internet for homework assignments, relaying information, posting lecture slides along with other things. Personally I enjoy this new method because as long as the user is somewhat technologically suave they can navigate webpages to find any information they desire. However returning students or even students that are not technically sound have severe issues with this new tech way of submitting homework or finding reliable information that isn’t based off yahoo answers.

If someone were to ask if students are better off now or back 50 yrs ago? I would have to say that this is a two edged sword because todays students have endless information just a few clicks away, with this being said many universities have exponentially growing expectations. So as new things are discovered the course outlines are forever increasing. Although it is a lot easier to just go onto google type in a keyword/phrase and get endless hits relating to the topic instead of spending hours in a library scanning books to find that one quote needed to finish your term paper. 

#metaliteracy

 

 

 

 

 

#Metaliteracy

Metaliteracy to me is just a term created to make the historically correct term information literacy obsolete. To me metaliteracy is the same as information literacy, but as we progress the terms we use do also. Metaliteracy incorporates digital literacy, visual literacy, news literacy and all other possible literacies into one complex term that in summary means the ability to locate pertanent information, comprehend that information then use/apply that information. From this class I plan on attaining the information that is needed to gather information more effectively, produce a webpage that outlines internet security, and understand annotations more thoroughly. Becoming more metaliterate will help me in becoming an occupational therapist and finding anwsers to questions that i didnt know before.

Husky puppy

I have recently become a new puppy owner of a german shepared husky mix puppy that is 8 weeks old. He seems to have a playful biting problem is this due to his puppyhood or is this behavior something that should be dealt with