Below is my end of semester reflection from the New Media and New     Literacies class from Empire State College.  As it is my first semester in the MALET program, I feel that I have gained a lot of knowledge and understanding of how technology is changing and will forever be changing our world.     

Strengths: identify the strong points of your performance or understanding thus far. Give specific examples and tell why they are considered strengths.

I feel as if the one thing I know I can hang my hat on through this first semester of the MALET program is that I have professional life experience.  Many of the topics discussed and concepts researched are living breathing issues I face daily in my career.  I can imagine it may be a challenge for someone coming into this program with little real world application, they may have a hard time envisioning application of the topics discussed. 

The two topics that resonated with me the most were the Digital Immigrant/Digital Native topic and Participatory Culture and Media Literacy.  These topics were very real in my professional world and I was able to see direct correlation immediately.

Improvements: identify any areas that you see are in need of improvement. Include how these improvements can be made in during the remainder of the term

The one area I have a hard time understanding is how everything relates to one another, not just within this course but in the big picture schema.  I feel as if some of the information is slightly disjointed.  All very interesting topics however there are time I have had a hard time grasping the concept completely because I don’t know how it fits into the big picture of my environment.

          The one example in this class has been the Networked Publics readings.  I felt it was a very intellectual read and provided a lot of good discussion but I’m not quite sure how it fits into the big picture of New Literacies.  Most of our other readings and discussions were discussing how the new media affected literacy and this piece, from what I was able to extract, was more a discussion about the ethics of the networked places and what the future hold for the networked environments.

Some of the disjointed feeling I experienced may have been from taking two classes simultaneously.  I have not been a traditional student for some time (if we can even call this traditional), so it may be my learning curve. 

 

Insights: identify any insights that you have had about yourself or about the content. Discuss how you can "take away" this new knowledge and apply it to other contexts. 

Since the midterm evaluation, I have been able to get a better handle on the vocabulary in the literature.  I have now seen it used several times.  I’m sure it will continue to be on my radar throughout the program.

Looking at what I have learned about myself throughout this course has been interesting.  One component that stands out to me is that I previously may have judged an individual who may not have been as digitally literate negatively, because I didn’t view it as a literacy.  For example, if someone (i.e.. My mom) was unable to use her IPhone I may have judged her negatively.  However, now I see it as a lack of literacy (which may be present for many reasons), she does not know the symbols (icons) or jargon of the phone.  I now view it from a linguistic perspective of literacy and place less judgment.

As I continue to change how I look at what it means to be digitally literate, I have gone back to the micro-trainings I have developed for our LMS and realize that not everyone will have the same literacy level.  One example, I have had to change the approach for how the ‘slides’ progress throughout the training. 

I continue to learn and grow in this program and I look forward to the next semester.