WebLog 6

Discuss the readings. What is your twitter literacy level?  How is it evolving? How would you define 21st Century Literacy Skills?  How does someone acquire these skills?  Do schools teach 21st Century Literacy Skills? What are the relationships between technology, participatory cultures, and 21st Century Literacy?  (the multimedia equivalent of 500+/- words)

 I consider myself an advanced twitter user. I started using twitter right when it came out, back in May of 2006.  My account number is 306 which means I started using it the very first day it was released, I actually had to get invited to it because it was a closed environment at first. I love twitter, just the idea of posting anything that's on your mind at any given moment to share with the entire world within a hundredth of a second, it's amazing.  Twitter didn't really become popular popular until late 2009-early 2010 because people thought that the idea of posting what you are doing, thinking going is just stupid. What they realized then is that it is much more than that; you can share important information, articles, break stories and even have polls or contests and interact with your followers. I myself love the idea that you can follow certain people and they do not have to follow you back, its kind of like a one way relationship, which is great. Aside from my love for twitter I would say that 21st century literacy skills are to have the technological equipment, fulfilling the digital divide AND knowing exactly how to use it and be proficient in it. In my eyes you need to own a computer and know how to use it to its fullest potential, whether it is just to access and read the webpages or to actually be a creator and create the content, you have to personally state your need for the technology. Adults if they weren't exposed as a child have to be physically shown and taught how to use the technology. However as a kid from the 90's and from then on, we basically grew around the technology it is is like a second nature to us, just from messing with it as a kid you learn how to use it and you gain more skill from just the use. Schools do not have the 21st century skills in their core curriculum. Today it is assumed that each teen knows how to operate the machine and be digitally literate. Schools do however offer elective classes where the individual may choose to learn about technology and becoming more proficient with it, it is however not a requirement. I'm not sure what stand to take on this; I feel like this should be a requirement however to those that have the literacy skills, sitting in the classroom just because they have to would be like a punishment to them. There is a close relationship between technology and cultures and the literacy just follows. For example, today students go to their classes wih their laptops and cellphones. In most cases they are free to use it to take notes or however they would like where as back in the day you were strictly only allowed to bring a pen and paper with you. We also live around the technology, we schedule our plans based on what is playing on the television and communicate with each other via emails and texts vs strictly telephone calls few years ago. In my opinion it is kind of implied that as people now use emails and text for communication the digital literacy is spreading between people as they know how to utilize and take advantage of it.

WebLog 5

Please discuss your experiences as an internet user.  Consider Besser’s article, what are your experiences as a consumer versus creator of internet content?  How have your ICT literacy skills evolved over your lifetime with respect to Warschauer’s model (as depicted in Figure 1), the notions of literacy and ICT access (depicted in Table 1), and Warshauer’s  discussion of the six principles of literacy and the related six principles of ITC access.  How have the physical, digital, human and social resources of your life journey allowed you to effectively make use of existing information on internet as well as contribute new content?  (+/- 250 words, at least one graphic, one photo and a podcast +/- 30 sec.

 I found both of these 2 articles very interesting. While they do have good theories and thorough ideas, some of the statistics and reasoning are outdated as they were both written in the early 2000's and a lot has changed in the ICT world since. I can't really comment from internet creator's point of view because I don't create content on the web, I preliminary just use it, however I can imagine that with the evolution of technologies and the narrowing gap of ICT illiteracy and division it is much easier to create and publish new content that gets bigger exposure than ever before. As a user I noticed a huge change, every thing is much more easier to access and there is tremendous amount of information on the internet thanks to the new creator tools. Regarding Warsachauser's model, I'm sure that my ICT literacy skills developed overtime however just looking at the Figure 1 I feel like I am proficient in all of the points. The only thing I would not consider myself fully proficient in is industrial capitalism. This is because I do not create enough content to monetize off of it yet. ICT literacy skills and access are somewhat related. In order to have total access to ICT you need to be proficient in technology and know how to use it and vice versa. ICT literacy has more than one type and definition, it's all about in what context you use it in. For example if all you need to do is print off articles so you can read them later and you know how to do it you are considered proficient and literate in ICT, however if you need to know how to access the content, create it and distribute it but you don't know how to distribute it you are not fully literate. Digital Social resources have greatly developed recently and they allow me to effectively use and share information on the internet. Facebook for example, with this digital social environment its easier than ever to keep in touch with your friends and share information. Physical factors also changed greatly, now I have a smartphone in my pocket all the time, a device that is more powerful than some computers. Thanks to smartphones I can take facebook with me wherever I go and if I need to look something up on google, there it is, in front of me wherever I am in a matter of seconds. With smartphones you can also create the content and share it wherever you are, it's a beautiful thing.

WebLog 4

In class and through our readings, we've struggled to develop an understanding of social justice. The liberal theory of social justice concerns matters of distributed justice. However, should social justice also concern matters, as Young asserts, of power, domination and oppression? Please explore the website Where Race Lives which concerns how United States government policies and past discrimination have made generating wealth easier for some Americans than others.

Social justice plays a huge roll in the distribution of power, domination and oppression. The Where Race Lives website helped me understand and realize clearer how white people back in the day, and even today shape the laws and the economy around themselves while leaving the nonwhites hanging. For example when Social Security was first created it was only for the white workers and excluded the nonwhites. With Social Security and other acts, the whites had more protection, easier and higher chance of getting and keeping better jobs while the nonwhites were the last to get hired and first to get fired. Because of these acts whites had a better chance of being homeowners in the suburbs while the nonwhites rented in the city. With owning a house and generally having more wealth its easier to save and pass down those things to future generations and while doing that you're giving the next generation a head start, when if you don't the next generation as to start working from the ground up continuing the discrimination and gap. The story of Max (white) and Byron (nonwhite) perfectly illustrates that. They were both born at the same time and had the same job, but Max made two times more than Byron. This happened because of all the discrimination and laws. Max had wealthy parents that set him up better for his live than Byron's parents did. At the same job Max had all of the money to himself which he could spend however he wanted while Byron had to pay for his loans, parents and any emergencies. The downward spiral part of the website explained that whites contribute a lot of resources to their communities and once nonwhites move in, they simply get scared and move away taking the resources with them. Doing so leaves a gap in the community that taxes have to make up for it and the nonwhites that are not as rich simply don't have the money and the community goes down hill from there.

Basically what I had learned is that previous' generations wealth, which they have acquired through past unjust laws, make my life easier because I don't have to start from bare dirt.

WebLog 3

Apply Miller's discussion of social justice  to a brief analysis of the two contrasting theories of social justice you developed for Blog2

Miller has some interesting ideas and facts about social justice. He makes good points that almost everybody has social justice, what differs is the amount of justice we have. One of hits theories is knowing how many people exist in a society and how to distribute the right and opportunities among the society.For example we all get compensated for doing work, its just a matter of how much, or that we all have the freedom of speech but it depends on how much and it what situations we use it in. Most, if not all of the points from Miller's discussion can be used and related to the two theories of social justice in the city of Omales (refer to WebLog 2).

In Omales, the residents that learned to accept and live with the idea of the locked up child take a lot of things for granted. While they do not think about this daily, or ever, they live in a happy, well structured, developed city. They enjoy the privileges that most residents do and they don't even think about it, they simply take it for granted, not thinking about the one child or others outside of the city that might not have a happy life or a roof over their head. In the city there is a consensus of how everyone should live and how everyone should be rewarded from their career and social input or existence. In my opinion everyone in that city understands the importance of the child and they live around it, it's essentially a social norm.

As for the contrasting view, the ones who see no social justice and choose to walk away from the city are not contributing to the problem and are somewhat socially just. Every resident who lives in the city is contributing the the problem and social injustice. The ones who walk away realize that the child is being mistreated and not given the chance to contribute or fit into the society, he's not even given a chance to! If the only circumstance and rationale for the child to be locked in the basement is that it keeps the rest of the city happy and stable because it was born defective or was neglected, that's corrupt. Some of the residents want to fix this corruption and set the child free however the rest of the population will not allow to. The rest of the population is keeping the justice away from that child because they rely on him and will simply not change their mentality. They are in a way adjusting the definition of social justice, because they rely on a "handicapped child", they overlook and not view it as a concern, resulting in all residents having social justice. The ones who walk away are in a way increasing social justice because they rather walk away and not find happiness for the rest of their life rather than seeing the child suffer.

In conclusion everyone has their own definition of social justice. Social justice does not only mean equal treatment or monetary possessions. To everyone's definition there are also circumstances and rationale behind it, each person has to explain why and how it is just in their opinion. There are both advantages and disadvantages to each person's definition because while it may support one point of view it may hurt the other. In the story social justice is measured by the happiness of the residents. While residents appear happy that one child is suffering but according to someone that may just be the utopian society they'd like to live in, as the residents of Omales do.