This week at a party someone commented that all of the photos from the party would be posted online that night. One guest countered that I definitely don't want my photos on facebook stating "at 44 I don't think you should have a myspace or facebook page."
A debate then ensued regarding the age limits or rather the participation age limits of each social networking site. One guest a facebook Diva then instrcuted the guests on the ways to use Facebook to accomplish "adult networking" based on "knowledge of how the site works." She told the "anti-social networking Guest" all of the ins and outs of using facebook, cautioning against the use of other social networking sites, mainly myspace, which she countered was indeed for little kids an adult predators.
The discussion led me to think of the various online literacies and the communites of practice (Lave and Wenger) where participants gain the skills and receive the tools to become more integrated into the community. This integration within the community is based upon an interest in achieving full or some sort of participation within the community.
Online Literacy based on this obsveration seems grounded in the need or want to participate. If you don't see a need for participation then there is no need to acquire, practice, or do whatever needs to be done to become a participant within the "comunity of practice."
This makes me wander is there such a thing as online literacy or is it simply literacy within certain domains, e.g a facebook literacy or social networking literacy, mobile literacy, email literacy? Adopting Barton's approach to "literacy" would encompass literacy within the online domain without possibly limiting the view of literacy to the technology "online" which can change like "print."
Barton bounds his definition of literacy within "print" which presents some challenges when reviewing various text based literacies which can not be physically printed yet they can be preserved and later printed. Is the ability to Print enough for Barton's definition of literacy to extend to the domain of online?
The use of online literacy is something that I'm going to have to spend some time with and hopefully have more answers or questions following the reading for tonight and the subsequent lecture.
Monday, February 23, 2009
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