Inquiry Into Digital Content #4b: Pondering on Participatory Culture and Digital Literacy

 


I tried a new opener tool here from Simple Diagrams...it's pretty awesome, especially as you can see the possibilities for collaboration using this application on and offline....you must try it!

My experimental diagram is an attempt to illustrate myself Pondering on Participatory Culture and Digital Literacy!

There's No Place Like Here: Brazenhead Books by Andrew David Watson & Etsy

After my previous post in which I mentioned my interest in Engeström's notion of hybrid worlds--simply put as an online-offline interplay--I went on a quest to find examples of digital content that might demonstrate some element of barrier-crossing phenomenon. I intentionally sought out media that illustrated aspects of the physical world whilst simultaneously interfacing or interacting in a digital space.  So far I have posted two that are quite fascinating samples of rich narrative around the lived physical world that have been constructed very artfully into digital content for sharing on the web.  I am thankful that there is such an online place or space where such delights can be shared with a large audience.  This is the way to let your story be told, heard, shown, and spread. (I hope to select more to link to as I continue my personal quest!)

The video above narrates the dedication and passion of Michael as he cares for his secret second-hand bookstore and the following video tells the art, craft, and fascinating story of Geahk as he designs and constructs marionettes. Both videos appear to be elements of what we may view as a dying culture from the physical world: both touch on an art-form for storytelling, treasuring real books and treasuring puppetry.  And yet, it is in the other world, the digital world, that their stories can be valued and honored.  Both digital artifacts are  artistic crafts in their own right: using the power of voice, silence, image, music, precise editing and story flow to serve the perspective desired.  Etsy appears to be a center of online webbed activity around promoting, showing, demonstrating, buying, and selling of home-made items or skills. From my initial lookings it is an online-offline culture all of its own! It represents much in the physical world but operates and thrives in the virtual. A hybrid indeed!

Process: Marionettes with Geahk Burchill by Eric Beug & Etsy

During this inquiry into digital content, we (my colleagues and I) mused over the question, "What do we need to be good at in order to communicate well in a digital habitat?" In other words, what does literacy look like in a digital place or habitat? I think these videos begin to give a glimpse of those very literacies and associated online and communicative skills necessary to add meaning and worth to digital content on and in a digital landscape.  Many of these same literacies and skills operate in the real world too! We quickly brainstormed what we considered the related key aspects of such components and represented our suggestions in the following Wordle:

  
We then began to experiment using this same Wordle application to play around with short phrases rather than single words: this is achieved by adding a hyphen between the words of the chosen phrase so that the thought remains connected in the word cloud.

  
An associated leap of thought...  

I am interested in finding out more from Dr. Joan Hughes, from the University of Texas, who created the RAT Framework for teachers to self-assess their approach to using digital media with their students. The RAT  acronym stands for Replacement, Amplification, and Transformation and signifies a series of questions for the educator: 

1. Do you employ technology to replace (but not change) text and other traditional materials?
2.  Do you use it to amplify traditional methods, making them faster, stronger, richer, or more engaging?
3. Or do you use it to transform the classroom experience, changing, restructuring or reorganizing it in a novel way for learners? (From PBS Teachers, Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century, Discussion Guides)