Get Digital Content Everywhere You Go On Any Device
by TopTenReviews Accessed at YouTube
The digital landscape
somehow affords me the luxury
to follow particular winding knowledge threads
toward serendipitous discoveries
and larger webs of meaning
(Jeannette Jackson)
To watch the above video is to be overwhelmed with gadgetry fever and a sense of frenetic activity to create more things that can spread more stuff and to inch ever closer to immediacy of speed and transmission: it is a dizzying landscape. Of course this speaks to the intention of the video in the first place: choices of material, voice-over, sounds, transitions, and locations all play into the intended perspective of the message that we-are-going-places-with-integrated-media! As they promote in the video, people "can enjoy everything everywhere, without going anywhere!" Do they mean in body, spirit or in mind? This comment in itself provokes serious contemplation!
However, it is not the gadgetry itself that does and will create interconnections; knowledge sharing and creation; social activism; inter-cultural understanding; global community; and the like. It is the ability of people to imagine, understand, and actualize the possibilities inherent in the ever increasing and changing digital technologies available to us that will provoke such positive use. As Marshall Mcluhan attested, our culture(s) is shaped by the nature of communication media rather then the content itself: still, someone has to decide on that content and that format and that purpose. Tom Wolf explains--as he narrates for the 100th birthday year (2011) commemoration of Mashall Mcluhan--that Mcluhan believed that electronic media changes humans' patterns of thought and behaviour and also alters human nature. He explains that Mcluhen describes the post-print-media-man as:
As Mcluhen emphasised, "We are responsible for our technologies and the effects of our technologies as we are responsible for tidying up our grammar."
more like primitive tribesmen, intimately involved with one another whether they liked it or not and captives of what they hear over the grapevine whether it's true or not. (Wolf for Mcluhan, 2011)From a teachers perspective I hope to encourage students and colleagues to utilize such amazing media tools and online spaces for building or constructing knowledge that is applicable and of interest to them, as they seek, store, retrieve and share information and learn by so doing. Also, I hope to enable collaborative work and conversation that is supported by the richness of available materials and not hampered by time, distance, or place. However, students need to be assisted and guided in their use of such available technologies in order to ensure an ethical, empathetic, wise, intellectual or intelligent, and socially profitable online digital landscape.
As Mcluhen emphasised, "We are responsible for our technologies and the effects of our technologies as we are responsible for tidying up our grammar."
I am inspired by many online examples of the power of digital narratives to call people to thoughtful reflection and action. For example, as suggested to us during our summer session, PhotoVoice, Participatory Photography for Social Change is dedicated to providing all people with the chance to speak out and be heard. Their mission as stated on the website is to:
The following video details the process followed in the Photovoice youth program in Hamilton, Ontario (2008), and illustrates the hands-on-ness, community centered, call for action embedded in the process and production with the local youth. It also is an excellent example of the production of knowledge and a constructivist approach to inquiry.build skills within disadvantaged and marginalised communities using innovative participatory photography and digital storytelling methods so that they have the opportunity to represent themselves and create tools for advocacy and communications to achieve positive social change.
An interesting and useful guide prepared for those hoping to follow the Photovoice example and goals is provided by Carolyn Wang , from the University of Michigan School of Public Health at http://people.umass.edu/afeldman/Photovoice.htm
