(Using the Inter)Net Smart(er)

This week, we read the book Net Smart. This was as always- an interesting read, however I did feel that there were some powerful similarities with this book and the Information Diet. Such as, they both talk about becoming obsessed with technology and having an inability to turn off technology or get away from it and how it can grab your attention for far longer than you actually are aware of. These are just some of the similarities that both works talked about. The thing that we talked about most and that I found most interesting and helpful were the 5 literacies Rheingold mentions. He specifically talks about: attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration, and network smarts. These 5 literacies are supposed to help us to basically be a better digital citizen an become more aware of what we are doing and accomplishing online and what the majority of our time is spent doing online. This will in essence, make us more aware and productive by being more introspective while being online.

To break down the 5 literacies a bit further, the first is attention. Rheingold talks about how we can use our attention to look at all of the information coming to us in various formats and focus on the pertinent ones. I just read a quote from the MIT press and they called it a “tsunami of information” and I could not agree more. Next, participation with others helps all of us to be better digital citizens. It also broadens our base of knowledge and helps us become digitally literate in many formats. Next is collaboration goes with participation in that it facilitates new knowledge into the world in many new ways. Finally, we have network sharing in that he talks about network building. This is of course, the briefest of overviews but I also think that Rheingold’s ideas also would benefit us as teachers because we are constantly barraged with information as teachers (here have a pamphlet or another catalog) about products, services, and whatever the new “it thing is. I think we can use this process that he outlines to focus on the importance of what we are talking about with the students and cut out the extraneous details that are not as important because it is so easy to get bogged down. Like Rheingold alludes to, if we collaborate with each other and become more mindful of our work online, we could really end up elevating everyone’s life a little more, digitally (and make their educational experience better as well!)