Notes on Media Literacy

Note: part of The Troubling Hour: “For the past year or so, I’ve gotten in the habit of getting up at 6:15 AM, before anyone else in my house is awake. I make my extra strong coffee and sit on the couch, scrolling through my facebook and twitter feeds. Usually I’m looking for something that sparks my curiosity and inspires me to get into a critically reflective (troubling/troubled) space. I call this time the troubling hour.”

Social Media Literacies

Attention and Other 21st Century Literacies by Howard Rheingold

  • Attention
  • Participation
  • Collaboration
  • Network awareness
  • Critical consumption

Rheingold discusses focused attention and need for awareness and reflection on social media practices. Could a variation of this data diary exercise be helpful?

on different forms of paying attention

Sometimes we need to “turn on all the lights” in order to be aware of as much as possible. Sometimes we need to be vigilant to information outside our focal area, and at other times we need to block out distractions and narrow our attention to a spotlight.

I need to find the feminist pedagogy articles that I’ve read about attention and digital literacies and revisit them:

27     Teaching with Online Technologies, part two

Readings:

  • Herbst, Claudia. “Masters of the House: Literacy and the Claiming of Space on the Internet” (WebVista)
  • Gordon, Eric and David Bogen. “Designing Choreographies for the ‘New Economy of Attention'” (WebVista)
  • Kellner, Douglas and Jeff Share. “Critical Media Literacy, Democracy, and the Reconstruction of Education” (WebVista)
  • Daniels, Jessie. “Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment” (WebVista)
  • Musto, Jennifer Lynne. “Techno-Mindfulness and Critical Pedagogic Praxis in Third Wave Feminist Classroom Spaces” (WebVista)

Types of Attention

Troublemaking Bookmark: Why Read?

On Thursday I happened to see a bookmark that my 4th grade daughter was using:

My future is bright—I read every day, and I know reading is cool! Being a good reader will help me succeed and do my best in school.

Yes, reading is cool and it can help you succeed. But, reading is more then cool and the success it allows for is not just about doing your best in school (which is currently too closely tied to the Test and to getting a job that makes lots of money). What would/could a bookmark that went beyond “reading is cool” look like? I want to create one for Rosie that reflects some other, equally (or more) important, descriptions of the awesomeness of reading.

As I think about what that bookmark might look like, I’ll start with a list (that might make into my Lists! for my latest book project):

Why Read?*
  • To Enter New Worlds
  • To Dream
  • To Recognize that Other Ways of Being are Possible (and already exist)
  • To Exercise Curiosity
  • To be Recognized
  • To Resist
  • To Escape
  • To Increase Understanding
  • Adventure!
  • To Retreat and Be Restored
  • To Witness Humanity
  • To Listen and Learn
  • To Be Challenged
  • To Light a Fire
  • To Encounter Mystery
  • To Solve a Mystery
  • To Relax
  • To Join in Ongoing Conversations
  • To Feel, To Laugh, To Cry

*Some reasons, other than being cool, being a Success!, or acing the Test.

On Not Being Productive

This summer I’m hoping to not be productive. I don’t want to become involved in any big, all-consuming projects. And I don’t want to do Work. What does that exactly mean? Right now I’m resisting the urge to “unpack” my claims. That sounds like work to me. But, I will archive some recent sources that are currently influencing me.

The Mirror Stage?


[Fletcher, age 6 months, looking in the mirror, 2003]

The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation – and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic – and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject’s entire mental development. Thus, to break out of the circle of the Innenwelt into the Umwelt generates the inexhaustible quadrature of the ego’s verifications (Lacan, The Mirror Stage).

Transmedia, New Media or What?

Lately, I’ve been doing some thinking and researching about the next step for my Unofficial Student Transcripts project. While phase one was an iBook, I’m imagining phase two as something more creative and accessible and that draws upon my increased interest in online/interactive media.

I want to create a new media project that allows me to engage in my storytelling/account-giving across media: video footage, digital stories, written text (prose + poetry/ blog posts + journal entries/ new + archival material), interactive online games (for wordpress and/or iPad?), sound clips, images + text (problematizers) and more.

So far, the following sources are informing my project:

ADVICE 5 Tips for Transmedia Storytelling
THEORY Transmedia 202: Further Reflections
EXAMPLES The Waiting Room, Pine Point, Flawed, (Re)Framing Mexico