“We are people of the screen”.

I couldn’t agree more!

We used to be people of the book – as the article states. We used to (and sometimes still do) “cut and paste words on a page…quoting experts…paraphrasing expressions…” (Kelly). And now we do the same with images and clips. Instead of cutting and pasting text, we cut and paste second-long clips of our favorite movies or TV shows. Instead of quoting famous quotes, we “quote” famous scenes.

In today’s society, technology has made is unbelievably easy to alter things; so many versions of software available for us to use, oodles of resources just piling up by the second, amateurs becoming experts within weeks. I am referring to the era of digital video – everyday people like you and me can sit in front of the computer and compose our very own video; without the help of Hollywood experts, for example. The article also mentions how this video-making has become sort of a “collective sport”. No matter the level of expertise you have, you can still participate.

On the professional level, things are much more complex, however. Movies such as Star Wars and Speed Racer were made using manipulation of digital video. Layers upon layers of different media: video, sound, graphic, motion capture, real-life-action, etc., are overlapped one on top of the other, infused with one another and blended to create the perfect story. According to the article, not a single scene in Star Wars was “left untouched by manipulation”; simply stating that digital film is almost literally “written pixel by pixel” (Kelly).

So what does this mean?

Honestly? Whatever you want it to.

The era has changed; we are no longer copying and pasting from books; but rather from actual images. Instead of telling stories through words, we tell stories visually. Everywhere we go there is screen technology – and it’s not going anywhere! Heck, even our refrigerators have TV screens built in them already! Only thing we can do is become even more screen literate to keep up with this amazingly fast trend.

Thanks for reading,

xANex

As I read this article, I wasn’t sure what year it was written in. Seemed like the 1990s… It was talking about “if we could compress a lot of information” and “if everything was streaming at once”.

Honestly? We are already there.

Students are carrying around flash-drives that are over 8GB, our phones have a larger memory capacity than they did five years ago, textbooks available on our iPads, iPhones streaming movies off of Netflix, famous artists streaming LIVE on LiveStream, etc… The list is endless.

…oh, let’s not forget the fact we can compress our files into a zipped folder, and unzip that folder using WinRar (or any other program like it).

This is an era of change. Extreme, rapid change. We don’t have to wait an entire 24 hours before we get that newspaper on our front porch. We can easily go online and read about any breaking news – or even watch it live – without having to wait an extra minute or two.

For example, singer Whitney Houston died last night, sadly, but the news about her death just exploded all around the internet. It is now one of the top trending worldwide trends on Twitter. And honestly? I actually found out through somebody else’s post on Facebook.

Simply stated, like I’ve stated on my previous blog posts, this is no surprise. We, as a society of humans, know where this is leading us. We are updating our technology at an alarmingly fast rate, which some people predict there will be a time where it will be so updated that we won’t catch up in time…. I’ll get to that later.

My point is, we are where we led ourselves to be. Since we are here now, let’s make use of what we have to the best of our ability and for the best.

Thanks for reading,

xANex

When I first watched this video, I had to watch it again, and again, and again. There’s just so much information that pops out at you that requires you to stop and rewind, or just entire re-watch the video to absorb everything.

I want to point out a few interesting facts and comment on them:

-“Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30 years old.”

—My first thought was “Really? No way!” Then again, I couldn’t really find that statistic, so I am not sure what age groups are included in that exactly, as the very next thing mentioned in the video is about Dracula and vampires. So I am thinking from the younger teens to about 29 years old. – Then “Dracula is a cereal character [to them]” isn’t exactly true since there are some schools that require the actual novel Dracula to be read in English classes.

-“An education study revealed that online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

—That can’t necessarily be true… Not in my eyes anyway. And I am sure there are a lot of factors involved in that. For example, the type of class, and the amount of homework received. Nowadays, students just go on Google to find information about things they don’t understand, or get help from somebody WHILE in the middle of class – if you will. The biggest difference is students are less restrained while sitting in front of their computers in their pajamas rather than in a classroom setting where they aren’t allowed to openly talk…

-“Kindergardeners are learning on iPads; NOT chalkboards.”

—I don’t believe that for one second. I actually have a little brother who is in kindergarten, and they have face-to-face professor instruction, kind of like we all did when we were kindergarteners. The biggest difference is technology. They have calculators and computers, whiteboards and Smart Boards, while WE had chalkboards. And on top of that, what can a kindergartener learn on an iPad if he/she doesn’t know how to read in the first place?

—I believe that iPads should be used as a learning tool in higher grades because the student has a lot of background information, such as spelling and mathematics, whereas kindergarteners do not. Another thing; if teachers are teaching them to write, they are writing with THEIR FINGERS not pencils or pens…. Then of course, when time comes around, teachers of higher-level classes wonder why their students have such terrible handwriting…

-“If Facebook were a country, it’d be the world’s 3^rd largest.”

—Agreed.

—I also want to point out, as the video states that Facebook (along with Twitter, YouTube, and Google) are not welcome in China. Now imagine if they were. “Populations” of said websites – especially Facebook – would rise dramatically. It would probably become 2^nd , or even 1^st largest.

-“1.5 Million real farmers; 80 Million FarmVille farmers”.

—Now that statistic is just sad, for the lack of a better word. I honestly do not understand the hype behind the game. One thing I do understand is that it’s an in-browser game, which makes it incredibly accessible. You don’t have to buy anything special for it, no special keyboard, or mouse, or even a headset, you just play it on the computer that has an internet connection…

So, social media is definitely here to stay. It’s how we make use of it that will determine whether it’s good or bad. Then again, those who make use of it badly will make it bad for them, and vice versa.

So, do have a peek over at this video, it bears a ton of interesting information.

Thanks for reading,

-xANex

This is quite the lengthy article, and for the most part, it talks about the history of the Internet. I won’t be dwelling into that as it is quite drawn out, but I will say this, the article mentions the fact how anything these days is considered “new media”.

Maybe instead of calling said things “new media” – call them “digital media”. Digital media is, according to the article,

“are forms of media content that combine and integrate data, text, sound, and images of all kinds; are stored in digital formats; and are increasingly distributed through networks such as those based upon broadband fiber-optic cables, satellites, and microwave transmission systems”.

Some of the characteristics are (I had to include them in here; they explain digital media in a very good and concise way):

• Manipulable: digital information is easily changeable and adaptable, at all stages of creation, storage, delivery, and use.
• Networkable: digital information can be shared and exchanged among large numbers of users simultaneously, and across enormous distances.
• Dense: very large amounts of digital information can be stored in small physical spaces (for example compact disks) or network servers.
• Compressible: the amount of capacity that digital information takes up on any network can be reduced dramatically through compression, and decompressed when needed.
• Impartial: digital information carried across networks is indifferent to what forms it represents, who owns or created them, or now they are used….[they] are all simply a combination of zeroes and ones in the digital media environment.        [Quoted directly from the article]

So, I think anyone would agree with me that the characteristics stated above definitely describe digital media, spot on. In my eyes, the said things are not ‘new’, but rather ‘improved’. The internet has been around for a while now, and yet it is considered as new media. Why? Well, we, as a society, found a better use for it, rather than just a place to search for information. We now use it to communicate and distribute information, as well as store it for later use…hence why it is ‘new’.

Take Facebook for example: a user can upload his/her pictures, tag them, describe them, and any time the user wants to see those pictures, they are stored in his/her Facebook profile for later retrieval. Sure, the quality isn’t the best, but that’s a topic for another time…

So, simply said, internet, and any advancements that circulate around it are not necessarily “new”, just more advanced, and more distributed than ever before. We all use the internet daily, whether to check our e-mail, our Facebook, or just to read an article, we are simply absorbing and sharing information in a different way, on a different media. As traditional media is still around, but it is losing its touch as the digital media takes us to a different world of information.

Thanks for reading!

-xANex

This article is slightly outdated now, as it was written in 2010, (shockingly how fast things become outdated these days) but it still brings up a numerous good points… _{[And 2010 seems so far away now that we are in 2012…]}

But 2010 had a lot of trends, some new, some old and resurfacing, but the way we, as a society, have changed our reading habits (news-reading, specifically) was one of those trends, and it’s what this article is focusing on.

So, why did our reading habits change? Well, let’s look at the internet really quick: Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper, and Flipboard are dominating the news industry right now.

But they’re social networking sites – more or less! Yes, Twitter and Facebook are, yet they still dominate the news industry.

How? Real-time news tracking, that’s how. With Twitter and Facebook, and any other social networking site, getting updates about events and situations is a lot faster and easier. Why spend your precious time skimming through different newspapers, or newspaper websites for information, when you can just go on your Facebook profile and find that other people already found said situations and posted information about them. Also, not to mention the fact that each of those sites have a “Search” function, so if you’re curious about what people are saying about certain events, just search the name of that event. Easy, right?

For example: The article mentions Wikileaks, an event that happened a while back that involved Wikipedia’s leaking of sensible information. People searched “wikileaks” inside their Facebook or Twitter search boxes and any information you would like about wikileaks is out there.

Another thing the article mentions is Instapaper and Flipboard.

[Instapaper is an application that saves web pages for reading later (McManus).]

[Flipboard is a magazine/newspaper reading application made specifically for the iPad (McManus).]

– Oh! Speaking about the iPad… Mobile devices, including cellphones, and portable tablets have also contributed to the decline in the old reading habits, and the increase of the new. Because this is a fast-paced world, we don’t have as much free time we did back in the golden days. We can’t just sit down and leisurely enjoy a newspaper with a cup of coffee (or tea). Nowadays, we are all on the run, we have our Android devices and our portable tablets in our hands, and as we sit on the bus – on the way to work – we find ourselves consuming all the information through them.

The author mentions his fondness of Instapaper and Flipboard because of the ability to save articles for later reading. Articles can be saved on the computer, then transfer red onto your mobile device and then be read whenever, wherever. And not only that, but he also mentions that he has acquired the habit of tweeting any article that he has enjoyed reading in Instapaper.

***

So simply said, yes, our reading habits have changed. This new emerging media sector is making its way into society’s hands faster than ever. We have access to breaking news and information easier and faster, and, quite literally, anywhere and everywhere.

Thanks for reading!

-xANex

Another fascinating article by Henry Jenkins that needs to be sliced apart by my mentality… I will, however, try to keep this a bit shorter than my previous ‘dissection’…

So, this article uses Harry Potter as its main focus to explain the things I talked about in my previous article; the intertwining of “new” media – aka digital media. This one is slightly different, however, because Harry Potter is actually a set of novels written by J.K. Rowling. Digital media only comes into play from the people that brought Harry Potter to it: fans. The “Harry Potter Wars” as the author calls it, is not necessarily a war, but merely a “struggle over competing notions of media literacy and how it should be taught” (Jenkins). Jenkins uses Harry Potter as a prime example how education and religion shape children’s lives; the situations, the effects, and the consequences.

Let’s look at the situations. Ever since Harry Potter was released, it has become a huge hit amongst people of all ages. One of the prime examples is fanfiction. What is fanfiction? There is no ‘single’ definition for that word. It’s merely a title to something fans created.

So what do I mean by that? Let’s look at an example: This article uses The Daily Prophet, an online ‘newspaper’, created by Heather Lawver, in which children of all ages can participate in and provide articles of all sorts. But these aren’t just ordinary articles, in fact, they are written as if they are set in the Harry Potter world. The ‘authors’ of these articles are children of all different ages and races, and they create profiles based on their fictional (imagined) life in the Harry Potter world. They write fictional experiences, using characters, places, and situations from the actual novel to make their own.

That is fanfiction.

The usage of something that was already created by someone else

to “costume-play” or create your own “view” of it.

Of course, such actions ended up having extreme consequences. After Warner Bros. (or WB for short) “bought” Harry Potter, they were afraid of losing their copyright rights, and these fanfictions threatened that. So WB sought legal actions against numerous websites that allowed for fans to post their fanficts.

What truly surprised me (from reading this article) is that the CHILDREN PROTESTED against that. Not the parents, not the teachers, but the children; the fans who, put all this time and effort, into something they all have created as a whole. They collected petitions, vociferated their opinions, and those who received the ‘cease-and-desist’ letters from WB, they publically posted them online for everyone to see.

These children were not going to allow WB take away their right to freedom of speech.

And they prevailed!

These fans, not only had themselves (a large collective whole) as support, but also adults who sympathized, some teachers – who felt that the children who wrote these fanfics actually bettered their literacy skills, and lawyers!

Of course, that just doesn’t stop there. The tensions between what is copyrighted and what is not are still there. Until that is resolved, issues like these will continue to arise. _{[See pages 189 and 190 inside the book for really good detailed information about all the copyright rights the article mentions]}

***

Next, I wanted to point out that I support the teachers who support their students when it comes to fanfiction. (Fanfiction is seen in many different forms, such as drawings, photography, but I mainly support the writing portion of it.) Why? It’s like the article mentioned, the children are teaching themselves how to write, and how to express themselves. These websites on which they post their fanfics on have moderators and helpers (almost like tutors) which assist the author in becoming a better writer. These mentors don’t just “instruct” but rather suggest “as a means of getting students to think the implications of their writing process”. Meaning instead of telling them what they did wrong, but why they got something wrong and how can they go about fixing said problems. _{[The article also makes a numerous other points as to why said collaboration is good, but I won’t be getting into that right now.]}

***

Lastly, this article brings up religion, and how Harry Potter is “against” religion. Jenkins brings forth many examples of priests burning Harry Potter books, claiming that they are satanic, and that they teach children the way of the occult. It also brings up the idea of banning, and ultimate control of what children should and should not read.

The best thing the article brings up however is the following:

“Rather than ban content that does not fully fit within their [Christian] worldview, the discernment movement teaches Christian children and parents how to read those books critically, how to ascribe new meanings to them, and how to use them as points of view into alternative spiritual perspectives” (Jenkins).

He even provides examples of that “discernment” with mentions that several “groups published study guides to accompany the Harry Potter books and film with ‘probing questions’ designed to explore the moral choices the characters made coupled with Bible verses that suggest how the same decisions are confronted within the Christian tradition” (Jenkins).

I agree with both quotes because they prove to children that it is perfectly acceptable to have their own point-of-views on things, and that those views are acceptable in the eyes of their elders and tradition. If the books/movies were banned, children would feel restricted – causing them to rebel – which could lead to unfortunate circumstances. This is showing them that there is order in the world, and that nobody is going to act crazy as to burn books in a treacherous way (which has happened – the article mentions a few instances), but rather go about situations respectfully and morally.

*****

To summarize my view: do not constrict children’s literacy. Times have changed, the autonomous way of learning (as stated in my previous blog post) is shifting to a more of a collaborative type. Children (students) just will not depend only on one source of information these days, but multiple. Because all these sources come from (more or less) the same age group (or mental capacity), it’s much easier for them to relate and feel “as one” with the group, and not having to be intimidated by adults – such as professors – if they make silly spelling mistakes, or need help with their grammar. If I were ever a professor, I would support students finding their own means of learning and using that to MY benefit, so that I can become a better teacher, and them, better students.

Obviously, there will always be a group (or several groups) of people who do not see eye-to-eye, and that’s perfectly okay. But what’s not okay is if one group tries to impose drastic changes upon the other without rectifying their wrongs or finding the middle ground. Like I said before, I support the intertwining of different things (such as using biblical quotes to correlate with the movie) instead of just entirely banning something a child likes.

So to close off, I will say that those who haven’t read this article should definitely go read it. Every person will have a different standpoint, and that’s perfectly okay, right? We live in a world of free speech – so why not put that to good use?

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed my _{even smaller} overview on this fascinating article.

_{[Looks like I did not keep up to my word from the beginning of this article, this 'dissection' is nearly 1,300 words long. Apologies, my lovely readers, but I hope you have enjoyed it!]}

-xANex

After finishing reading the lengthy article, my thoughts were just swimming in pools of The Matrix, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Star Wars flashbacks. The things the article talked about were very deep and intriguing… I found myself stopping reading and taking a moment to ponder (and compare) different situations the article imposed.

To give a synopsis of this article would be like giving a synopsis of all the Star Wars films in a small paragraph – it was just that informative. Simply stated, the author of this article used the movie, The Matrix, as the main example of the intertwining of all the different sectors of the entertainment industry (e.g., movie, television, and gaming.) Throughout the article, the author gave several examples of how The Matrix evolved, not just through the sequels, but also through varying media (especially digital) that started shaping the world. Regurgitating what the author said, “…what I suggest here about the links between the game and the films, for example, emerged not from my own game playing but from the conversations about the game online” (Jenkins). Here he clarifies that he is not a full expert on the correlation of all these ‘links’, but merely a part of the whole structure, a structure he calls “Transmedia Storytelling*”.

*Transmedia storytelling, also known as multi-platform storytelling, cross-platform storytelling, or transmedia narrative, is the technique of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. [Definition acquired from Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmedia_storytelling ]

The structure is, as follows: the creators, the fanatics, the information-seekers, the information-providers, and lastly, the people who overlap between these different structures. To draw out on the previous statement more: the creators are the people who thought up, who manifested, who created The Matrix. The fanatics are those who just saw the movie for their pure enjoyment – and nothing more. The information-seekers are those who, as Jenkins says, “didn’t get” the movie just by watching it. The information-providers are those who have oodles of information that they’re just itching to “throw” out there. Of course, lastly, we have people like the very author of this article as a prime example of the overlapping. When you group all of those people together, you get people recapping the same thing, through their own eyes – essentially telling a story – in a whole another way.

Now, let me jump off to the side here, onto a set of different examples that Jenkins also provides, Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!. In today’s society, especially in countries with immense technological advances (such as China, Japan, and the United States), try naming off at least ONE person who hasn’t heard of either of the two. They are popular children’s animated cartoons that captivated the minds (or souls – as my own mother describes it) of millions children. Jenkins uses the two as a wonderful example of “transmedia storytelling”, or in other words, telling stories through various different media. He quoted professors David Buckingham and Julian Sefton-Green:

“Pokémon is something you do, not just watch or consume… Children may watch the television cartoon, for example, as a way of gathering knowledge that they can later utilize in playing the computer game or in trading cards… In order to be a part of the Pokémon culture, and to learn what you need to know, you must actively seek out new information…” (Jenkins).

With this quote, he later makes a point with which I agree; he says that our culture’s education is based upon raising “autonomous learners” and that to gather information from other people is “classified as cheating” (Jenkins). Our times have changed and people now get their hands on various types of information through many different places.

So, let’s put his quote into play really quick. Say a 10-year-old is watching Pokémon after school one day. This particular episode introduces two new Pokémon species (which are supposedly in a game that the child plays online). So after watching the TV show, he goes on the computer, and with his new information, he will use it to “win levels” in the game – if you will – then tell all of his friends about, who will end up doing the same.

So, using previous examples (as examples – yes, redundancy is required here), I strictly agree with him. Nowadays we have things like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, online databases, and even email. It’s really difficult to just stick to one thing when there’s so much available out there (to put it lightly). He also mentions how everything is starting to become more and more of a collaborative effort, and that “we are living more and more within knowledge cultures based on collective intelligence” and that “our schools are not teaching what it means to live in such knowledge communities, but popular culture [is]”(Jenkins).

To simply restate all of that, before, a student used to come home, read his assigned chapters from a book, answer a set of questions, then come to school the next day and discuss what he/she has learned. Today, a student comes home, scans (not literally with a scanner) the said chapter, figures out what he/she knows and does not know, and goes on to find other sources of information that will help (aside from the assigned chapters from the book) answer the set of questions. He/she may also provide that information to a different person – sometimes even the professor – and the said cycle will continue.

So, judging from everything that I wrote above, I have really let this article sink in – it was incredibly interesting for me…

Long story short, our world has changed from its usual:

pen-on-paper, to

pen-on-paper-and-eyes-on-Google.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed my _small overview on this fascinating article.

-xANex

-xANex (Short way of writing xAngelusNex)