Sunday, March 2, 2008

Week 6 Reading Relfection

http://www.alicechristie.com/classes/530/copypasteliteracy.pdf

http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/the-perils-and-pitfalls-of-wikipedia

The first article dealt with site such as, MySpace, being used as a form of literacy. The author draws on the opinions of experts in defining literacy. People interact, share, and create content: they are consumers and producers through a network of friends who all share, copy and paste content to create new hybrids. Myspace makes it easy for people to recreate sites by allowing others to format the codes of other pages for use on their own sites. Human beings have been using the term “cut and paste” forever. If you like a phrase that another person uses then you take it and use it as your own and no one accuses you of being a thief. When you take a little from here and some from there and mix it together you have a new product. What’s new is that existing literacy is now expressed through a new medium: MySpace.

The second article talks about Wikipedia, and whether or not you can use it as a creditable source of information. Wikis allow groups of people to conduct different types of research on a topic and then report their findings in an article to be posted on Wikipedia. Anyone has access to this information and can add to it, change information, or even delete things. This makes me wonder if the information you are reading about is truly accurate.

No comments: