Living in the Information Society

Could have been my own voice… ;-)

Has it ever happened to you? You have a message going inside your mind, rumbling and mulling inside your head…. A message you’d like to put in black and white (or whatever combination of colours that is in digital form)… and then publish and post so that you can reach all your colleagues… But life goes on, and you work hard, and make some small attempts at spreading the word, and keep telling yourself “one day, I’ll be able to show it in neon lights”.

So there I was, browsing TeacherTube in search of a video that discusses how new technologies can help young learners learn… and, voila!

Download Video: Posted by suziea at TeacherTube.com.

I usually don’t give videos that last more than 5 minutes a chance, but since its description read:

An explanation of what Web 2.0 is, a look at how it benefits children, a closer look at blogs and wikis and tips on how to get started

… I decided to “give it a click”…

I have never heard about “suziea” before, have no idea where she comes from or why she uploaded this video to the web, but what a surprise to watch 16 minutes and keep anticipating the words… I think I’ve found a twin soul in cyberspace… one who’s better at multimedia, though, as I’ve never produced a video yet!

Have you found your twin cyber-soul yet? While you wait for such a moment, why not enjoy this video clip?

Gladys

PS: if you are wondering how to embed a video from TeacherTube into your edublog too, follow the link to “Gladys Learns Edublogs” in the comments below.

testing WriteToMyBlog

testing an oline blog editor I learnt about from Gustavo, whom I've recently met at EdubloggerArgento.

On its homepage, I read: 

WriteToMyBlog is a free web based word processor for your Blog.
Create Post Entries for your Blog from right here, completely free, no
membership required, can Post to multiple Blogs simultaneously, manage
your Posts, works with all major Blog programs, and is easy-peasy!

 Promising, though I've just failed to insert a picture from my Flickr!

A case for social networks (Facebook)

I was surprised to read today in “Next” – Clarín’s issue on new technologies- Tom Hodgkinson’s strong rejection of social networking (actually, I read the Spanish translation by Cristina Sardoy of his article in The Guardian last Jan 14 ; see the original version in English here).
Though I quickly scanned the article online, and am not quite sure the translation (clearly much shorter than the original) totally respects his ideas, but there are some points I’d definitely like to disagree with:

Hodkinson writes:

And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn’t it rather disconnect us…?

I think this argument is as old as the question of computers dehumanizing social relationships… to me, just fear of the unknown. What happens is that the Internet has allowed us to choose who we want to have “around”, making geographical location quite irrelevant.

Hodkington goes on:

since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image.

Now, there’s no reason why your writing on the Web has to be ungrammatical when your usual writing isn’t, is there? Like all the communication we have, you can choose what to show others… Now, if his friend chooses to stay at home “plugged to the computer” when he does have something to share f2f with friends who are nearby… I’d say he either needs therapy, or is time both of them looked for new friends!

He adds quite a lot about the philosophy and policies advocated by Facebook’s founders and sponsors, an arena where I’m really ignorant and so I’d better not discuss… In favour of objectivity, I must say it is there that Hodkington gave me some food for thought, and started me wondering w”ho is favoured by my practices” (paraphrasing Paolo Freire).

However, it is his conclusion that makes me dismiss it all:

For my own part, I am going to retreat from the whole thing, remain as unplugged as possible, and spend the time I save by not going on Facebook doing something useful, such as reading books. Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven’t read Keats’ Endymion? And when there are seeds to be sown in my own back yard? I don’t want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it. … And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It’s free, it’s easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it’s called talking.

Now sir, maybe the things I am interested to read are suggested to me by my friends at Facebook? After all, by linking to the “right” people, and then to the friends of those friends (carefully selecting who to add as “my friend” according to my criteria). And in my case, my interest in educating with new technologies is much better fed by browsing websites (like The Guardian’s, which made your opinion available to me!), as the only books in the field are not easy to get and more often than not beyond my budget.

As for nature, maybe it’s the other way about. Maybe the time I spend at Facebook saves me hours of browsing for the links I want to find, and the time and money it’d cost me to travel all around the world to meet the teachers at Webheads in Action and Learning with Computers, among so many who help me keep developing professionally every day!

That’s all for now… It’s not I’m mad about Facebook (as I’ve said somewhere else, I only joined it after Mary Hillis’s kind insistence), but I do believe it’s not more than other tool… It’s the way we use that will make the difference!

BTW, if you want to find me on Facebook, I’m “gladysbaya”… And if you’ve never watched this excellent video yet, do not put it off any longer! (watching it takes just under 5 minutes, I won’t take any responsibility for how long it keeps you thinking about it!):

And now you all know why I’m not a regular poster… I can’t keep my opinions short!

Thanks for your attention,
Gladys