A10.5: Week 10 Reflection

Aims and objectives: This week I wanted to learn how to do a podcast and figure out what my 5th genre would be.  I also wanted to revise my first few genres, adding sources to each.  Then I wanted to learn what reproduction literacy was, and discuss my mailing list that I joined.  I wanted to get all of my assignments done thoroughly and on time.

Declarative Knowledge: This week I learned what a podcast is and how to make a podcast using gcast.com.  I also learned what reproduction literacy is.  I learned that reproduction literacy involves finding and using information, and then recreating it to express your own thoughts and ideas.  This week I learned more about my mailing list/online community I have been observing since the beginning of the semester.  I had not really thought of it as a community until this assignment.

Procedural Knowledge: I first had to decide what my 5th genre for my MRP would be.  I looked at the list of genres I made and saw which ones remained that I have not yet completed.  I decided to do the Interview Transcript so I referred to our Resource Manual for CD 424 to see the outline of an interview.  Next I saved and published the genre as a page on my weblog and then sent the link to the class list.  After this I conducted my peer reviews on Alyssa and Abby’s 4th genres.  I used the comment feature on both of their pages, and remarked on the voice of the piece, the intended audience of the piece, what I thought the author was saying in the piece, something specific to “bless,” and something specific that they may want to address.  I did this on both of their weblogs and then saved the comment.  In order to find out about reproduction literacy I first conducted a search.  Next I reflected about my online community I have been observing.  I used the post feature and commented on the people in the community, its purpose, whether it fulfills its purpose, and additional thoughts of mine about the community.  I then saved it and published it to my weblog.

Conditional Knowledge:  Doing an interview transcript will help give me practice for what types of questions to intially ask clients/caregivers.  Knowing how to do a peer response is both beneficial to me and my groupmates.  Having someone else’s perspective on your work helps you look at it from a different point of view.  It also helps me keep in mind these things when I am creating my genres.  Learning about reproduction literacy continues our education about becoming literate in a digital society.  We have learned about many different types of literacies this semester.  The mailing list has been a lot more beneficial than I orginally thought it would be.  I had never had any experience with any type of mailing list so I was not sure what it entailed.  After observing one for a while, I have learned many different things and will continue to look for different mailing lists concerning different interests/subjects.  I can use the mailing list both for educational and personal interests in the future.

A10.3: Reproduction Literacy

     I originally had no knowledge about reproduction literacy.  In order to obtain information on the subject I had to refer to sources through conducting a search.  I first found an article from the European Journal of Open, Distance and E-learning (EURODL) explaining that reproduction literacy is the ability to use pre-existing art, text, images, sound, or other forms to recreate your own thoughts and ideas.  They emphasize this type of literacy is important in both writing and art.  People must be able to think abstractly and be creative to use the ideas in a new way.  From all of the literacy’s we have learned about, this is the one that I feel the least successful and comfortable with.  I think you truly must be creative to be reproduction literate.  I also think that it is still important to be aware of citing sources when needed to, even with reproduction literacy. 
      I agree that in order to be reproduction literate a person must possess certain skills.  When using someone else’s work and then recreating to your own thoughts and ideas, we must still be very aware of plagiarismand sure to cite the correct sources.  I personally find this difficult sometimes because there are a limited number of ways to say and express certain ideas/thoughts.  Most of the teachers I had throughout high school emphasized paraphrasing more than just directly citing different sources.  I feel like a person has to be rather creative in order to be reproduction literate.  Personally, I an not a very artistic person so I do not really think of myself as being very reproduction literate.  However, if it was absolutely necessary I think I could handle it to be somewhat creative and use my own thoughts and ideas. 
       I do think that reproduction has and will continue to change schooling/education.  I think that there is now much more available information such as art, pictures, images, and other items that students will be able to use in order to enhance a project or help convey an idea easier in a presentation.  With most of the other literacy’s I feel like our generation was the “experimental” age that first got to test and use the technologies.  I think that as technology advances the way schools teach these skills will also continue to change using the digital world.  It is a very broad and complex concept that I think may make education easier, and also may make it more complicated.  However, I believe the benefits of reproduction literacy along with the other forms of literacy will forever remain important, especially throughout a person’s schooling/education.

A10.4: Online Communities

    I subscribed to a mailing list concerning Cochlear Implants (CI).  The description said that you did not have to have a CI or a hearing loss in ordert to join the group.  This community is very informative and supportive of everyone in it.  Overall, everyone is very helpful to their fellow members, and offers any type of advice they can.  The community seems to be very close.  There is a wide variety of people in the community such as: People with CI’s, people with children with CI’s, professionals/educators, people with hearing loss,  and like myself, the general public. 

   There are several people who enjoy sharing their experiences that they have on a daily basis that never would have occurred without having a CI.  When reading these stories, I admire these people and often find myself getting excited for them being able to hear! For example, one woman wrote that she was in her car on a large freeway when she got stuck in traffic. She said she turned on the radio and heard there was a big accident so she was able to get on a different street and avoid being stuck in traffic for hours.  This is a good example of something so simple, but she made the point that she could have never been able to do that pre-CI.  I have read numerous inspiring stories just like this one from this community.  It often makes me realize the little things hearing people take for granted.
   
  The main purpose of this community is to offer support to those members in the community.  It is primarily for people with hearing loss, who personally have experience with a CI or know someone with a CI.  However, it is not specifically only for people who are already implanted; many are in the process of just beginning with their CI or in the process to see if they qualify for a CI.  There are also many people who are going through the process and have questions about all of it.  I know this through the messages that are sent daily to the group.  One particular e-mail, a lady had recently been implanted and was becoming frustrated with the way she was hearing.  One of the replies was encouraging not to give up and remember that they may never really hear “like before,” but they will hear and that is the most important thing.  I thought this was very motivating and reassuring.

     Quickly after joining this group I realized how involved everyone was with it, and the concern of the people in the community.  I feel like the community does a very good job of fufilling it’s purpose of offering support for people with hearing loss.  If one person has a question, or makes an interesting comment then that comment alone receives about 8 or more helpful responses.  Typically, I receive about 10-20 e-mails per day from the mailing list.  All of the people want to help, whether it be a simple or complex question or concern.  People in the community also often send educational or interesting information like links to different articles concerning hearing loss of CI’s.  One woman sent a link to a very interesting/educational article back in early October. 

    I am very glad that I have had the opportunity to participate in the mailing list, and I have learned a lot about CI’s.  I was not aware before this class that lists like this existed.  I have found that they are a very good source for information.