Missy's Media Adventures

 A hot topic I hear being discussed gamification - everyone wants learning to be more engaging via gamification. How can we engage learners and make it interactive? I think this topic of gamification will continue to grow because of how Digital Natives/Gen Z interact with the internet.  I think back to when I taught middle school, and students were required to partake in extensive standardized testing a couple of times a year. They were simply worn out by the end of it. An idea we had, that unfortunately never was more than a few conversations, was to add in some sort of game element to this testing. They wouldn't know if they had a question right or wrong, but just receive a kind of *ping* or *good job!* or watched their car work through all of the questions. Anything to create a dopamine hit that worked on short attention spans to encourage them to keep going. I wonder how student's scores might improve, or morale might be better on these intensive exercises they are require...

Which am I? A digital native or a digital immigrant? While I grew up with technology, there are a few key aspects that are a bit off - a byproduct of being at the end of the millennial generation and the beginning of Gen Z. You see, I grew up in the middle of nowhere Florida. Think there was a gas station... that was it. It was a big deal when the closest 'town' got a Redbox at their gas station and a Subway inside.  I think I identify more with being a digital native, or at least, I know how to navigate technology easily. I compare myself to my brother who was building his own computer at 11, and consider myself years behind him. Yet my parents are not internet literate and will turn to us for help. I suppose I might be somewhere in the middle - able to understand the Digital Immigrants, but understanding the perspectives of Digital Natives.  Is there some kind of middle ground for those of us who fall somewhere in the middle of being a Digital Immigrant or a Digital Native?...

 I love podcasts. I have about an hour commute each way on days I go into the office, and I make the trip three times a week. I find myself gravitating to different podcasts depending on my mood (whenever I'm not listening to Taylor Swift on repeat!) One of the shows I keep in my rotation and will give a listen to whenever a title piques my interest is The New York Times The Daily . This show is about 30 minutes and covers different topics every day. The episode from May 23rd is titled "The Supreme Court vs. Andy Warhol" The summary of this case brought to the Supreme Court is posed around the question  "When is borrowing from an earlier artist an act of inspiration, and when is it theft?" (Adam Liptak, New York Times) The premise of this case is exploring whether or not Andy Warhol 'transformed' the original photograph by Lynn Goldsmith of Prince. The Courts ruled against Warhol, and claimed copyright infringement. However, "J ustice Elena Kagan pe...

 This week, I have begun exploring twitter. Part of that has been learning how to find the types of communities I want to engage in. So far, I have explored different hashtags, such as #instructionaldesign #edtech and #accessibility. I tried to focus on personal passions of mine as I worked through the Twittersphere.  I found that by exploring different hashtags, users also interested in those topics were using them, or they were tagging users who engaged in those topics. Through the accessibility tag, I found a user posting about Lego Education, and how they create learning opportunities for students using legos. While this may not be directly related to my current line of work, I still found value in exploring legos in education. I think there may be some opportunities to create team building activities for adult learners in the right setting.  In my twitter explorations, I was surprised by how easy it was to find users and hashtags that interested me. What other hashta...

 This week, I learned a new term - produsers. This is a combination of consumers and producers. The key part of these produsers is both consuming media and adding their own portions via producing before passing it on.  I think this idea of produsing can be especially seen in social media such as TikTok. Many times people will offer a prompt and tell others to 'stitch their response' and include their own ideas and thoughts. Whether these people realize it or not, they are expanding and diversifying their ideas by continuously taking a piece and adding on their own ideas.  Education can similarly benefit from these types of prompts. Encouraging learners to both consume and produce their ideas and information creates a deeper level of synthesis versus doing just one or the other alone. The challenge is creating meaningful tasks for learners to engage in these online communities to offer opportunities for produsing.  Thinking about my own produsing recently, I have shar...

 Diving into a new class can always be scary. This emotion can be multiplied by diving into a new class and stepping out of your comfort zone via creating content and interacting with others in a broader space outside the confines of a classroom - virtual or physical. Stepping out into the world proclaiming your ideas in a space where they can be found and critiqued is quite the daunting task.  This led me to wonder, why do people get so uncomfortable trying new social media and putting their ideas out there? Humans thrive in community with others, yet so many of us are uncomfortable with putting ourselves out there to build a community.  Alexandra Fasulo has an interesting article on LinkedIn: " The Fear of ‘Being Seen on Social Media:’ Why Public Posting is Stopping Entrepreneurial-Hopefuls" ( https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fear-being-seen-social-media-why-public-posting-stopping-fasulo/). She ends her article with "It may help someone else by sharing it." For me...