We have looked at social media and Web 2.0 as part of the professional networks around us (we look at this particularly in Module One). Over the last ten years, since BAPP (which the MAPP courses grow out of) started in the form it is today, social media(s) and Web 2.0 has changed and developed and created cultures of their own. Back then Alan Durrant and I re-shaped the BAPP course to include blogging and social media platforms following ideas of Connectivism*. Connectivism is still at the heart of the courses however the implications of the internet are not static and requires continued critical thinking about what knowledge and information manifests as ( and what they do!). I just watched the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma (Director Jeff Orlowski, 2020). It raises interesting questions about the networks we develop around us. Interesting ethical considerations about what knowledge, information and learning manifest as in the 21st Century.
*Connectivism is a theoretical framework for understanding learning in a digital age. It emphasises how internet technologies such as web browsers, search engines, wikis, online discussion forums, and social networks contributed to new avenues of learning. Technologies have enabled people to learn and share information across the World Wide Web and among themselves in ways that were not possible before the digital age- see the recommended book on our reading lists - Knowing Knowledge by George Siemens
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11464826/
What are your thoughts? - please comment below.
I am finding as a teacher, and particularly as a dance teacher that I am continually having to update my understanding of how the internet is changing, and influencing, as well as altering our perceptions of connectivity.
ReplyDeletePart of my role is that of House Leader and so I have a pastoral responsibility for half of the pupils in the school. Worryingly over the Covd-19 lockdown and cessation of physical schooling for this period, several pupils have become heavily involved with apps such as Tik Tok. Although there is a huge increase in pupils engaging with dance (which is wonderful), I am deeply concerned about how connectivity through virtual means allows connectivity to happen in spheres that the internet was never intended for. Although the ability to converse and discuss with colleagues in other parts of the world is brilliant, there is also the ability for the internet to be misused. Connectivity can very quickly lead to cyber bullying.
Some of the material that young people are exposed yo on apps such as Tik Tok is for me alarming, particularly with the lyrics of some tracks videos are made to, but also the nature of the movement vocabulary young people are being exposed to.
I'm all for connectivity, but in my own practice I am very often helping young people to understand how to use the internet safely. My comments aside, my greatest worry is that somebody else owns the video once it has been uploaded. Being encouraged to connect, but handing over ownership of your physical image in to a virtual world.
Until 7 months ago, the term ‘social distancing’ was not present in our every day vocabulary. It was coined in response to a health emergency that not only did it require from people to temporary isolate themselves and keep physical distance from each others, but also to refrain from touching their, so far, shared objects and spaces. Since this change has inundated our attachments and blurred our certainties, we have witnessed to an explosion of online courses, classes, webinars, zoom meetings, coming to our lives as first aid kits, to entertain us and let us feel less alone, more connected to the rest of the World, perhaps.
ReplyDeleteWe have started to see our reality through the lenses of a faulty telescope; the advantageous luxury of time has given us the opportunity to see others. Some of us may have started emphasizing with the sufferings of people experiencing disease and death, acknowleding global warming as a fact through occurring natural calamities, like the fires in Australia first and later in California, finally discovering discrimination episodes and closely following the Black Lives Matter protests, or even offering our teaching skills to keep our well-known community tight to us. We have developed surrogate families and friends, meeting our emotional needs. Connettivism has played a valuable role and it seems to have been intensified within this context of social identity disintegration.
I considered this pandemic as a means to bring several controversies to the surface and help people from across all latitudes to claim for their human rights. I genuinely thought social media were facilitating this process. After watching the appalling documentary Social Dilemma on Netflix, I had to take some time to digest what the speakers presented as a perverse mechanism underpinning the business model of social networks.
The change in perception the documentary caused to me, was like receiving a strict slap on my face imbued with compassion and guidance. It made me think of the bubble of empty approvals I have been unconsciously maneuvered to create around me, in the middle of profoundly questioning what my role in relation to external structures was. Among the void of missing answers and general confusion, the immediate gain resulting from connecting to virtual ideals and receiving addictive comforting responses has slowly ranked first, in the fragile grading scale of my identity survival. Without not even realizing, my animalistic reaction ended up supporting the piloted economy of ‘user-content creator’. This generalized micro-macro distortion of learning and bulding knowledge driven by the omnipotence of economic forces, has silently reverted the ideal 70-20-10 model*.
It has, indeed, gradually shaded my ancestral need of experiential learning.
I find myself at a crossroad; facing the direction of learning through personal experience or gulping down pills of virtual information. My dilemma of connecting to the world reality imposed through the carefully adopted filters of mega corporates’ agendas, while being pulled into the whirlwind of emotion-based opinions, on one side, or crafting the pillar of my knowledge drawing upon grounded sources, on the other, leaves me with no straight answers.
*model of learning and development, Morgan McCall, Michael M. Lombardo and Robert A. Eichinger, 1980, https://trainingindustry.com/wiki/content-development/the-702010-model-for-learning-and-development/*.
The use of social media and the internet has so many great intentions. I too recently saw the Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma" and I know the down side to social media, but I was not aware of the depth of the problem. It really hit home, since im sure we can all relate to the issues raised in the documentary.
ReplyDeleteThe numbers and visuals they use really illustrates the degree of importance that we need to start paying more attention to what fires we are fueling.
It has given birth to "fake news" and I find myself constantly questioning, "what is real?"
I really don't know how to feel about social media, and that scares me (a lot more so than corona virus!) Especially since the industry is driven by monetary gain.
Still, I think we also need to focus on the positives. Due to the internet and social media we are able to connect across the world and even run this course over great distances. It's a big ethical issue that I don't think most people can fully comprehend.
As a coach and mentor helping young dancers with their college/tertiary training options and opportunities I am often surprised at the paralysis the greater opportunity of information and awareness, that can be found on the world web of literally hundreds of programs available, seems to create in some youngsters. The vastness of choice seems daunting. The struggle is the inability to sift and evaluate. These skills would certainly help in future life too with discernment when reading fake news. Too, I wonder at a lack of curiosity. The ability and agility to search and research in todays world is an absolute gift for a curious mind, yet many youngsters will look no further than what appears on their social media feeds. But then, perhaps that is our role - to inspire students to want to explore what is at their fingertips but guiding them with skills to evaluate and appreciate.
ReplyDeleteI watched The Social Dilemma. I was slightly more horrified than I thought I'd be. However, for me social media is part of my job. I am required to use it for promotion. I therefore have a fairly cynical relationship with it in the first place. There has always been fake news. It used to be called propaganda. Entire countries have been kept in check by its surreptitious use. Many still are. People's willingness to believe nonsense is boundless. The problem now is that propaganda is pretty much all that we are fed. It takes an effort to sift through it. And, believe me, it's not just young people who are taken in. What makes me angry is the notion that a few minutes on Google and suddenly you are able to argue with doctors and scientists. It is likely possible to find 'facts' to support almost any argument. In fact, the more you search for nonsense, the more Google will put it at the top of your results. Thank you for that Google. My maternal grandmother always believed anything she read in the paper. "It's in the paper" was the statement that meant there was no point continuing with any disagreement. We exist in our own belief system bubbles on social media, particularly Facebook. I make my posts and keep a few unbelievers on my friends list to keep me honest. Or for sport. Depending on how mean I'm feeling. Idiocy in endemic and sometimes it really is 'fish in a barrel'.
ReplyDeleteThe funny side to the fact that anyone can say anything is the nonsense you can read about yourself, if you care to look. I set up a fake account to edit my Wikipedia page because it was *so* inaccurate. However, I read on Twitter today that I released my first album at the age of five. Perhaps it was a typo, because they were crying with laughter and couldn't see what they wrote? Truth has no value, but writing nonsense may bring traffic to your page, as people can't believe what they're reading, and that laydeez and gennelmen is worth money. Kerching!
Rhoda