Reading reflection 1 | W10 Q1 | Discussion

In Greenhow et al (2009), Web 2.0s’ affordances involve interconnections, content creation and remixing, and interactivity (p. 249) Those features enable a diverse, open, and complex digital world. The idea that seems to be most persuasive (or clear) for me is the direction of learners’ online identity formation. I agree with what they say that people develop their online identities and those identities can impact themselves to a certain extent. From many research works, researchers can find the dissonance between real-world self-presentation and the digital world. Within the framework of situated cognition (p.248), the contexts take a significant part in identity formation and the possible selves reveal the different aspects of students. Teachers can know more about their students through social media and become a model/facilitators to provide guidance.

The direction I find less convincing is media literacy. It is not because they are not unimportant or worthless, but because of the challenges and complexities. As both Crook (2021) and Allcott (2021) mention, students pay less attention to in-depth understanding and often fail to evaluate the recourses, as well as, make judgments fast and easy. The abundance of information and publicity of data results in an overload phenomenon. Students need support to deal with the raw material gleaned from search engine output (p. 70). Teachers need to devote themselves to developing students’ underlying logic and the ability of media literacy, which I think it’s hard to catch up with current fast-growing technology.