Life-Long Learner

Alright, I have to admit I’ve become a bit of a blogging junkie and I think I might need some help. Blogging is amazing and frustrating all at the same time.

Here is the amazing part – intellectual thoughts, ideas, and opinions come to the individual – literally dropping information at our finger tips. Information and resources that we never knew existed are being shared with a whole community, and I am a part of that community.

Here is the frustrating part – so much information and so little time. I am currently subscribed to 40 bloggers including classmates, educators, and literacy (adult and family) practitioners, which is exciting in itself. BUT I find that I’m easily distracted. I’ll be happily reading a blog and clicking on all the links (you never know how much additional information is beyond the next link). Then I’ll come across something that I’ll want to learn more about so I’ll google it or check the links within the links. Next thing I know I’ve spent over an hour on one blog. This explains the 183 blogs waiting for me to read them. This would be fine if I had a coffee pot next to the computer and my double taking care of all of my other life celebrations and challenges.

So I’ve come to accept that I am not managing my blogging skills or time very efficiently and I ask for some help. If any of you have some recommendations (beyond getting up two hours before the rest of the family and squeezing in moments when I think no one will distract me), I will gladly hear/read them. As a student, mother, spouse, and career woman, I will take all the advice that I can get – not to mention how many more blogs I can read. Tee hee hee.

Have a fabulous blogging day.

Last week our professor for ECMP 355 at the University of Regina, Alec Couros, took us on a journey to the dark side of the internet and technology. He spoke about the definition of media literacy and asked us to review and respond to some of the resources and tools available on his wiki – Open Thinking Wiki.

While looking through the resources I came across many useful tools such as Evaluating Internet-Based Information: A Goals-Based Approach, Quick Tips for Authenticating Online Information, Knowing What’s What and What’s Not, and not to forget all the information and tools found under media literacy.

While going through much of this information I was both amazed and disgusted at what people use media literacy for. So, I googled further. That is when I found an interesting paper written by Douglas Kellner called Media Literacies and Critical Pedagogy in a Multicultural Society. He talks about multiple literacies (print literacy, computer literacy, cultural literacy, social literacy, ecoliteracy, and media literacy) as a way to redefine how we look at educating and engaging our youth. We are in a time of change and he encourages all educators to embrace the good and be aware of the bad when incorporating media literacy. It is how our youth are learning and developing critical thoughts and theories. Though I encourage you to read the whole paper, I want to quote his final thought because it resonated with me so much:

“Youth — indeed all of us! — needs to learn to interact in many dimensions of social reality and to gain a multiplicity of forms of literacy and skills that will enable us to create identities, relationships, and communities that will nurture and develop our full spectrum of potentialities and satisfy a wide array of needs. Our lives are more multidimensional than ever and part of the postmodern adventure is learning to live in a variety of social spaces and to adapt to intense change and transformation. Education too must meet these challenges and both use new technologies to promote education and devise strategies in which new technologies can be used to create a more democratic and egalitarian multicultural society.”

This paper was written in December 1997, yet so much of it relates to what we are discussing over ten years later.

Enjoy and have a glorious day.