Gabriel Rodgers - Digital Media

     Good evening, and welcome back! So today we're going to cover stress, harassment, and bullying when it comes to the digital space. This is a major topic for today's educators, especially those who are digital immigrants and struggle to understand these problems from the perspective of the digital natives they teach.      Some of the more prevalent thought and chatter has blamed cell phones and other technology for heightened levels of stress and bullying, particularly in students. The popular thought would say, if we don't know what they're doing, they're getting into trouble. While there may be some merit to that, the issue is far more complex than "just turn it off". For instance, digital natives have naturally adapted communication styles that align with faster-paced online presence. The idea of limiting online "screen time" is not actually beneficial to adolescents in any way other than limiting access to them. ( source ) On the other ha...

Good afternoon, and I hope you're staying warm in this frigid cold January. So I reviewed the syllabus, and I suspect it may be that these blogs are slightly more freeform than I previously thought. The blog posts seem to be broken up into the learning objectives listed on the course, with only a few words of a header to guide them. If I'm barking up the wrong tree, I'll change format for the next one. However, we'll go with this this time, and see how it goes.  The topic listed for this week is "Understanding Digital Natives". I learned that term in my education tech classes. Digital natives were born during the information age, metaphorically with an iPad in their hand. For this generation, usually Gen Z or younger Millennial, their literacy skills are tied to a completely different set of schema. They tend to be prone to intaking multiple stimuli at a time for information and understand technology as a part of their world as much as their clothing. Alternat...

 Good Morning, Vietnam and welcome to my blog. I have never in my life managed to keep a blog, so this will be a first. Maybe I should have assigned a letter grade to myself before now.  There didn't seem to be a blog topic anywhere I could find. I thought, perhaps, that the assignment was simply to create a blog, but the syllabus instructed me to write a post. So here we are. We were instructed to take a Digital Knowledge quiz, which was somewhat interesting.  Of course, my inner perfectionist wants to take it again and get it right, even if there's no grade attached. I missed a question regarding "incognito mode" which I have never used in my life and can't really imagine why I would use it to begin with. I suppose lack of exposure is how we don't know things, so I should forgive myself for that. We were assigned 4 articles this week: The Internet and the Pandemic, ( https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/09/01/the-internet-and-the-pandemic/ ) was an over...