The new culture of online participation, for my future classroom, means that I can incorporate more ways of learning into my classroom. Participating in group projects via filming/editing different sections of their presentation for example.
For schools in general, it means that staff needs to be more diligent in supporting kids’ learning appropriate digital citizenship.
I thought our conversation in class about the disappearance of mediation was interesting. It reminded me of a video I saw earlier which laid out why Generation Z (Zoomer) parents are so against “iPad kids” (children ‘raised’ online rather than by their parents). Some people have been referring to Zoomers as Boomer-esque in this aspect of their parenting. The video I stumbled across pointed out that a lot of Zoomer parents (and Zoomers in genereal) were the original iPad kids–with our parents unaware of the dangers of the internet, allowing us to be unsupervised online. A lot of Zoomers know first-hand why unfettered access to the internet is not a safe tool for children, and thus parent accordingly. This makes a lot of sense once it is pointed out/pondered.
Other than this, I find that laziness keeps parents from caring enough to properly protect their children from the internet (and what lurks beyond).
Wesch mentions that most programming is not mass media but meant for less than 100 viewers. I found this interesting because I think that really highlights humans’ need to be part of something bigger than themselves. Humans’ need to tell their story, humans’ need to be social, to participate.
Wesch’s video also mentioned 80% of content is new and original; recently it feels like a lot less than that. Content farms (like 5 minute crafts //I’m not linking to that as I vehemently disagree with them, but a quick google search will enlighten you//) are popping out video after video of recycled clips over the same copyrighted music.
I pointed out in class yesterday another point that Wesch brought up: people sharing the things they like. How this ties into the way that news spreads in our world today was also discussed in class and I think I was able to put it more eloquently there.
Wesch shared that the most commonly uploaded are home videos, linking this to the participatory nature of YouTube. I would also like to link this to how happy it makes humans to share, and be social.
(Vogels, Gelles-Watnick, Massarat)’s article mentioned the difference in usage of platforms between genders and ethnicities. It makes sense that groups would create community on a specific platform better and then making the platform more inviting to people like them. I wonder how this factors into transgender kids, since the article is very binary and I’m assuming the documentation is based on assigned genders at birth.
I like how explicitly the sample sizes are stated in the article. It really really puts actual credibility to their claims.
If you want some fun ‘flash’ games and don’t mind a bit more reading, here’s a tumblr post that expresses users’ fondness of games from yesteryear that I found whilst scrolling the other day.
2 Comments
Hello!
I definitely agree that the people who grew up with unfettered access to the internet know first hand how damaging it is. I didn’t realize that this generation was making a stand and becoming more “boomer-esque” in their parenting! Cool!
Bernice
I definitely agree that some parents take the “lazy” approach to parenting by handing their child a device to distract them; however there may be situations where this quick fix might be worth it (i.e. on a plane, no one wants a dirty look from other passengers because their child won’t stop crying). However, as the child gets older and can explore the internet on their own, the parents need to take responsibility and teach their child how to safely use the internet. They cannot rely on the school as not all schools teach internet safety.