Reflection on Topic 1: Online participation and digital literacies

 1. Who are you as an individual in the digital age, and what characterizes your journey so far?

Online I have been/can be many people. I have run multiple social media pages for companies across platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. This included designing posters and creating content videos to even filming live events. My dad worked in IT from the '80s through to as recently as 2020, so I have been exposed to the digital world from an early age, from chat rooms to online games, but only in recent years did it really begin to play an important role in life. It was always a part of life, but never with such importance to the extent, it is now. Now I work online, play online and learn online. I have watched Google searches go from "we can't find anything on this random topic after years of searching" to "here are two million articles on this in 0.000005seconds". I was there for Facebook when it was just statuses that started with "So and so is..." and if you wanted to message someone you had to do it where everyone could see as shown in this article on Version Museum which can be found at https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/facebook-website. I had social media before Facebook was even a thing, Myspace, Faceparty, ProDigits, Mxit, there were many online platforms who to me were just places to make friends, I was pretty weird and longed for a different world, the online world could bring it closer, I got to know people from all over the world and learn a lot of things that most of my peers at the time couldn't even comprehend. But there was also a downside, it was unfiltered, unregulated, and wild, this lead me to some rather unscrupulous sites and situations, but we live and learn, and we replace hard drives after they are infected with multiple viruses after trying to get a free version of a game. So my journey online has been long, there have been ups and downs, sometimes I just want to erase myself off everything and be a ghostly memory, so I would classify myself as a resident, so much so that I completely understand and embrace the fact that identity online, is malleable. It is a place where one creates an identity and just runs with it. It is as real as you make it. 

2. How are your digital literacies linked or separate in your personal and professional life?

They weren't always so linked, a mere 7 years ago I was one to refuse to use a touch screen phone, but that didn't mean I was not being resident digitally, I have blogs that are almost 15 years old, but they were never really used as such, rather just back up storages for poetry and writing. I have never been one to use things "normally", I will always find a new way of doing something or taking something old and making it different. There was a point where I was quite a vehement activist on Facebook, tackling racism, sexism, bullying, etc, to the point where I was called a "race traitor", a "simp", hell I even got death threats, and people actually stalking me because I caused such a nuisance for these extremist groups that terrorized people on Facebook, at one point I was even doing small jobs under the "anonymous" guise. But as with all things, that came to an end once I realized the people I was fighting for were being just as bad as the people they claimed to be fighting against. and so i, as they put it. ghosted. I deleted every trace of me online. Everything. Made everything private or just straight up deleted it completely. I could have been an "influencer" but i just couldn't handle the facade and the fakery/ It was all a show, there was no real activism, there was no change, just continuous complaining and Like baiting. Now skip a few years later and I am back, trying to build up my own name and brand, to create a professional online presence apart from LinkedIn, the only place you can find what I actually do. Every other profile has an air of fakeness and creative flare. I post things for reactions and responses as one should/ 

3. What does ONL mean for your development?

It has already changed the way I see teaching and the facilities that my institution has. I have a weird job. well one of them,, it is to convert classes recorded on Teams to youtube videos, it is quite an admin process but I have narrowed it down to a really fast process. What I realized was that the brand's youtube channels were just being used for marketing, ie it only catered to visitors, but it was indirectly becoming a residency, students were commenting to each other on the topics of the class in the YouTube comments section of the class YouTubes which were separate from the official ones, so this gave me an idea to further their resident status, by bringing the class videos to the official channels, this reinforces the idea of these pages becoming places of education as well, not only will this create a more centralized place for the students but it will also aid in the marketing as the traffic to the page would push up the views. I think to become a true resident one must also become sustainable on their platforms, this includes procurement which is what I am trying to achieve with the YouTube channels by directing traffic. These channels can then also be used to host sponsor/partner content. Having sponsors and partners ups the credibility of the page, it makes it more official. ONL has also shown me that I am but a small fish in a very big ocean, for now.

4. What are your experiences from ONL so far?

\My experience of ONL so far has been informative, the timing is not so great but that has nothing to do with the course and more to do with life just being like that sometimes. There is a lot happening all at once and have to try to keep me on top of it, sometimes I battle, sometimes I just want to quit because there is just so much to do, sometimes I get really excited to learn and read. I'm not actually sure how to rectify this apart from asking God to extend the hours of a day because it just feels like there aren't enough. But as they say "this is too shall pass" and I have to keep reminding myself, I've done this before, I have handled more than this before, and once it is all over I will feel great about it. But this part right here, this is where I struggle, where the edges start blurring and things fall apart if I don';t hold on to them tight enough. I've really enjoyed getting to know my group members and look forward to hosting the topic 2 discussions. 

5. Reflections on topic 1 readings and discussions

I LOVED the readings and webinar and was quite sad I couldn't make the tweet chat. I really connected with what David White spoke about, at first I was a bit speculative, but the more I listened and read the more it made sense. I instantly saw flaws in Marc Prensky's native VS immigrant analysis (Prensky. 2001), to me, it was from a very privileged and rather ignorant point of view, the typical western view that the rest of the world is exactly like them and must be like them. Trying to apply a local fix to an international problem doesn't help, so to me, if an argument doesn't account for all factors, then it is flawed and should be done away with. To assume that age is the sole factor in online literacy is frankly absurd. It's even more absurd to assume that just because one is a certain youthful age they will understand technology. This actually upset me trying to grasp how Prensky came to the conclusion, it is riddled with privileged neglect for social standards and modes of accessibility around the world. Coming from a developing country where some children have never even seen a phone before i found the notion disturbing. I have college students who still have no idea how to use their phones, the only things they know are IG and Tik Tok for sharing videos and trying to become internet celebs. So already the idea that just because one is young does NOT mean they are digitally literate. What it feels like to me is Prensky was grasping at straws trying to make sense, but it only makes sense to him in his world and point of view., but does it apply outside of his bubble? No, not really. It's too black and white to be applicable everywhere, too many factors he hasn't considered, which is why I agree with David's analysis of a "spectrum" rather than a "is or isn't" as he stated in his video "Visitor and Residents" (White, 2014). As I read Prensky'sessay "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" (Prensky, 2001) I felt uneasy, like all those times I had to argue with some know-it-all American that thinks we still ride elephants to work in Africa, that snob nosed "I know better than you" feel. So it was a hard read, but I read it nonetheless, to at least know my opponents point of view. While I do agree with some of the things he stated, for example, our youth does indeed need a new form of education that meets the digital requirements and the fast-paced learning styles of this new world, while doing that are we not leaving behind a host of students that don't have access and the required digital literacies to engage with this new world. What about them? How do we cater to them? And this is my only issue with online learning, is that while it may be a tool to further education it will also further the class gap due to accessibility, so while the new world grows exponentially, those left behind fall even further even faster, which David did touch on in his webinar, and I don't think that's what education is about. This is why I am actually looking forward to hosting the topic 2 as this is right up the alley I want to tackle. I am constantly sharing Open Education resources with students to help aid their learning so I am interested to see how this pans out.

References:

Prensky, M., 2001. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. [online] Marcprensky.com. Available at: <https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf> [Accessed 26 March 2022].

White, D., 2014. Visitors and Residents. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI> [Accessed 26 March 2022].