Danah Boyd Chapter 7 (It's Complicated)

Curriculum 550 Digital Media Literacy 

June 26, 2018

Danah Boyd Chapter 7 (It's Complicated)

                                                          Are Today's Youths Digital Natives? 

Danah Boyd in chapter 7 talks about how media literacy have been in use since 1920’s and 1930’s. During the 1900's, media was use for more than just entertainment. For example the radio was focused on entertainment then news, until World War II where newscasts on the radio became more prominent. Mass media was intended for a large audience during this era. During the 1920's-1930's media was usually used for entertainment purposes simply because people were subject to propaganda just before WWII. I believe that the audience still needs to have a clear understanding of what the intentions of the speaker is/are as they try to read the information. 

Many students may be able to cruise the web to find information they are searching for or information they may not be searching for. Sadly in many cases the students do not even know or understand who is posting this information on the web. They may not even know what the intention(s) behind the information is/are. Danah Boyd argues that “ technical skills are increasingly important” Even though many students are considered to digitally speaking, there are still students whose technological skills are that of an immigrant. Many of these students have a basic understanding of how the computer they use every day work. 

Students may be able to navigate the internet and find information, sometimes too much information, but that doesn't mean they understand who is putting that information out there or the motivation behind the information. For teachers it would easy to assume that their students know more about computers than they do. (at least that is what I thought). Some students do but it does not mean they understand what is biased or untrue information. We should not assume that all students are fluent or native digitally speaking. Many of them, still do not understand the basic use of technology. 

As an educator I believe it is important to teach them how to navigate the internet safely. Textbooks are now becoming a thing of the past. We are now seeing more and more people navigating the internet searching for all types of information. Students will certainly be searching on the web for years to come and we have to make sure that they do it in a safe and secure way.

I currently work at West Broadway Middle School and at my school. Hispanics, African American, and Asians make up 84.9 of the total school population. Currently there are about 17 languages being spoken in my building. Many of these students come from poor African Countries, from South, Central, North America (Mexico), the middle east. Some of them left their countries because their parents feared for their lives. Some of these students are illiterate as they had to leave school to work in different farms in order to support their families back in their countries of origin. 

Having access to a computer for these young children was simply non-existing. They had zero access to computers at home. This would make them digitally immigrant. I would actually say that even students who are born in the US do not have access to a computer at home. Not all school-age children in the US today are digital natives. 

American born children will then required extra help with technology in order to start to complete their educational tasks on a daily basis and that will also make them digital immigrants. Currently social media is dominating our lives and that is I agree with Danah Boyd about the importance of teaching students to read content critically and to teach them to understand how to identify bias within reading article(s).

Our Teenagers and ‘digital natives’ are pretty much comfortable when navigating social platforms such as, Snapchat, Instagram, Tweeter, Facebook as well as other social media platforms and as an educator that understand they may not be able to differentiate between good or bad information (good or bad intentions). I believe that our jobs as caring educators is to show them how they can use technology intelligently to gain literacy and new knowledge.

According to Prensky, if you were born after 1980 you are a “digital native” I quite do not agree with Mr. Prenky’s assumptions simply because the fact that many people can easily navigate the web, can use graphics for projects and assignments instead of using standard text,there are many people who are not technology savvy! Once again, students may be fluent, but still do not understand how computer works (I certainly do not know how computer works). So, I an still not savvy digitally speaking. 

Regarding reliable source to obtain information from, in her chapter Danah Boyd mentions that the two most popular, but controversial source like Google and Wikipedia are not a reliable source. Information on Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time. This means that any information it contains at any particular time could be false. If students are allowed to use Wikipedia teachers should make sure that information obtained is evaluated before students use it for their assignments. 

Google, by itself, is just a search engine. Google is not a source, as all it does is search through hundreds of millions of websites; therefore cannot be a reliable source, as it does not have any of it's own information. Asking if google is reliable would be like asking if your local library is reliable. I heard many time that Wikipedia is not a reliable site. I hardly use it to obtain information anyways. If you ask me which one I prefer when thinking of searching information, I would use Google. I sincerely do not trust Wikipedia as a source to use in my classroom. When my students are working on projects where they have to search online, I advice them not to use Wikipedia. I allow them to use google Scholar to search for articles and other information instead.