Double Entry Journal #5

The Relationship between Media Literacy and Traditional Literacy Skills:

 

“Don’t always believe everything you read,” a seemingly meaningless mantra recited amongst literary minds for as long as literature has been a focused study. History is always told by the winners, media focuses on the negative to market a key demographic, and propaganda spreads the ideals of one point of view. However this wise old saying has increased in validity over the years of advanced technology.  The relationship between media literacy and traditional literacy is that there is no distinction between the two anymore. Today media literacy is the traditional literacy. The only person that seems to separate them is that of the educator, in terms of how they used to teach, to now what they find better reaches their students. Like an invisible line drawn in the dirt, teachers have reveled in the compromise moving that line back an inch or so with each advance in technology. Now the line is non-existent and teachers are coming to grips that literacy is literacy and whether you label it traditional or media comprehension remains the same. Focus on whose writing it, why, and what do they hope to accomplish. Now it’s just a broader range of criteria.

 

Quote:

 

"Can students learn to recognize bias, track down sources, and cross-check information?"

 

Response:

 

I chose the above quote out of the article because it poses a very valid question in terms of literacy education. Obviously the article seeks to answer that question, but in the simplest terms I would like to share what I know on the subject. A good to way to look up information is to look at the URL, if it has a .com than it is a company website and is more than likely going to be biased to benefit that company. The best sites would have a .edu in the URL meaning that the website is educational, or a .gov meaning a government website (although government websites can also be biased depending the nature of your research). A good search engine to go by is google scholar which is just like regular google except it filters the result to strictly educational sources. And like I mentioned in the last journal entry Wikipedia is a great starting point for research on the internet, its references provide credible sites to better cross-check information. These things I feel should be taught and practiced in the classroom to better help navigate and protect kids on the web.

 

Source:

http://www.domainregister.com/comorg.html

 

The above is a page that explains URL domain names and the distinctions between them, this would better filter source information for students to follow.

 

Activity# 2

1. How do you use Wikipedia in your personal life? I use it as a point in the right direction on a particular subject, as an overview, and finally as a way to locate credible sources.

2. What do you think the value of Wikipedia is for classroom teachers? I think it would be an immense value, but teachers must educate students on how to use it properly.

 

Activity #1

 a. What is Wikipedia? Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization.
b. How would you answer the question posed in this piece “How reliable can a source be when anyone can edit it?”?
c. Who do the creators of Wikipedia place their trust in when it comes to weeding out misinformation? In the “wisdom of crowds,” believing that by having many people watching what appears there, errors and vandalism will be weeded out, sooner rather than later.
d. Why did founder Larry Sanger leave Wikipedia? Mr. Sanger left Wikipedia, believing that it should give more authority to experts; he has since created another site, Citizendium that does just that.
e. What would abuse or vandalism look like on a Wikipedia page? Mainly in the form of the wrong information.
f. What do the statistics quoted in the third paragraph of this piece reveal? That Wikipedia has become increasingly popular.
g. Why do you think Wikipedia is so successful? Because for the most part it is reliable and easy to access.
h. Why might Wikipedia’s creators not want to accept advertising? Accepting advertising my bias some of the information on the company providing the advertising, thus breaking their own strict neutrality laws.
i. How does Wikiscanner help increase the reliability of Wikipedia entries? Because it runs a check on the anonymous editor who can alter a Wiki page.

 

Double Entry Journal #4

Quote:

“Students shouldn’t be citing encyclopedias.”

Response:

  I strongly agree with the above quote. Wikipedia and encyclopedias are just useful guides to find a particular source; they shouldn’t be used as the source themselves. I myself use Wikipedia when I am researching a particular subject. On certain subjects it’s kind of hard not to end up on the Wikipedia cite, it’s usually the first result found on google search. Through Wikipedia I get a nice overview of the subject I’m researching. Then in the sited sources is links to other websites that could be used as sources as well, some of them more credible than Wikipedia. So the tools are there and Wikipedia is just a point in the right direction.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources

Above is the Wikipedia’s criteria for citing sources on their site, which are the links I was talking about in my response.

Visual Learning Example

I saw this in my Education class, and found it to be a good example of aid to a visual learner. After viewing it everybody could name atleast one thing they learned from it.

Double Entry Journal #3

Quote:

“Technology can help visual students by allowing pictures and other visual aids to be used in the classroom.”

 

Response:

 

I tend to agree with the above quotation. When I heard the description of what a visual learner is I realized that that is what I am. Everything they described in the article about the tendencies of visual learners was an accurate account of all the things I’ve done and still do to this day to help learn a particular subject. Technology today provides a wide variety of stimuli to help capture the attention of the modern student. I don’t mean the old fashioned power point presentation that has joined the ranks of the blackboard and overhead projection as dinosaurs of the classroom. I think the apps, and videos now will take over and instead of issued notebooks there will be ereaders and ipads. Visual learners will be immensely more helped in the future with the progression of technology.

Comic Beliefs

My Poll