Process Journal on Digiteen Wiki

During our work on the Digiteen wiki, we first worked on a Google document to collect all the required information as a group, and then copy and pasted the required parts to its required sections. Such as background information for digital literacy, went under the background information for your topic section...etc. We worked on the information gathering together but then Violet put all the information into the Digiteen wiki.

March 9th, Design Specification and Brief

Design Specification:
1. Must be related to the topic of Digital Literacy.
2. Must include outlook into the majority of grades to show how it differs in different levels.
3. Recommended to be the time of about 4 minutes.
4. Suggested that it be tested with a survey to completely random students, and they should be from all different grades.
5. Suggested that it use images and photographs.
6. Should be bright so that it attracts attention.
7. Must be informative and educational.
8. Suggested that it also be fun so that people are interested.
9. Must include a bibliography in MLA format.
Design Brief:
To solve this problem, we are going to create a Microsoft PowerPoint. I decided to make a PowerPoint because my group and I were trying to show Digital Literacy in all grades, one at a time. My group and I decided that a PowerPoint would be the best way to show different grades one at a time. After we decided what we were going to do, I decided to do a bit of reading and reviewing documents on the web. We have done a lot of research so far, but I plan to do more, more specifically; for grades 10, 11 and12.
I am also going to use the photo from our Google docs as the opening picture on the first page because it says “I want YOU for digital literacy!”, and I feel it sums up what we are trying to communicate to the public in this PowerPoint.

Digiteen.ning Reflection on Research for Digital Literacy

Today we worked on researching and developing our Digital Lieracy powerpoint. Violet had already began the powerpoint so Johara and i looked at what she had done and worked on building on it. I was assigned to making sure that the grammar and spelling was correct in the powerpoint. I also learnt that digital literacy is not only practiced in school but in colleges and universities. We decided that Johara and I would do digital literacy in high school and Violet would do digital literacy in elementary school. We are now going to ubduvudually work on our parts of our final powerpoint presentation which is going to be our digital artifact.

Digital Health and Wellness

Digital Health and Wellness is described as steps to follow to stay healthy and not damage yourself when online. Ways being on the computer or using anything digital can damage your health can include damaging your posture, harming your vision, and just not getting enough excercise anymore.

This is the article i found:
http://123digitalcitizenship.wikispaces.com/Digital+Health+and+Wellness

Overview of the article:
I found that this article was impeccably helpful. It includes a summary of what digital health and wellness is and than goes on to explain the things you must avoid. Things such as addiction, and bad posture should be avoided, and they suggest ergonomics. Ergonomics is what they call "a simply concept with a complicated name". The website describes ergonomics as the ideology of safe physical use on the computer. They then go on to explain ways to better your use on the computer such as sitting on the chair correctly, holding the mouse lightly, and not sitting down for too long without getting up at least once in a while to make sure you don't develop any physical pain.

Another thing i liked about this video is that after they suggest ways to help your progress, they then refer to a video on youtube and give the link so that you can see how you should be sitting...etc.

Here is the link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cyumcU_3G8

Article on Digital Etiquette

Definition:
Digital Etiquette is being polite online, on the phone, and through an email. It is not waiting too long to reply to something, answering emails nicely, and not sending things that people would not want to receive. A few rules for digital etiquette are as follows:
1) Don't copy & paste other peoples work;
2) Reply and do things on time, don't wait until the last minute;
3) Don't do or say things online that should be done in person (divorce, breaking up, apologizing);
4) Make sure you get to the point when writing, nobody will be able to hear your tone- or detect sarcasm- so make sure there is no chance of hurting someone when you didn't mean to!
5) Don't download music or movies illegally;
6) If someone has sent you an MSN message, respond and send, don't get sidetracked and forget to reply...the person might think your ignoring them!
7) Say goodbye before you leave the person, that shows that you actually had interest in the conversation but you just have to leave now;
8)Avoid writing in capital letters because it looks like your shouting;

These simple rules of etiquette online help you to be polite to the person to talk to, or your readers. Follows these simple steps and you won't insult, or offend anyone by accident.

Article On Cyberbullying

This is the article I found on cyberbullying:
"

Ryan Halligan was taunted for months. Classmates spread rumours via instant messaging that the 13-year-old boy was gay. A popular female classmate pretended to like him and chatted with him online only to copy their personal exchanges and share them with her friends. Unable to cope, Halligan, of Essex Junction, Vermont, killed himself.

Gail Jones, a 15-year-old from Tranmere near Liverpool in the UK took her life after receiving, at one point, 20 silent calls on her cellphone every 30 minutes. Her father, Glyn, suspects a final call in the middle of the night pushed her over the edge.

These are extreme but far from unique examples of the devastation wrought by cyber-bullying. Since Halligan died in 2003 and Jones in 2000, more and more children are logging onto the internet, so it's likely that online bullying, including sending threatening messages, displaying private messages and posting embarrassing video and photos online, is also increasing.

A study last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project based in Washington DC found that one-third of US teenage internet users have been targets of cyber-bullying (New Scientist, 7 July, p 23). Meanwhile, as online communication evolves from instant messaging and chatrooms to social networking sites and YouTube, the venues where bullying occurs are becoming both more central to young people's lives, and more public.

Research into the causes and effects of cyber-bullying is still in its infancy. But it is becoming clear that aspects of online communication encourage people to act aggressively, prompting them to do things they wouldn't dare to try in real life.

What's more, the ability to reach more people, and the always-on culture of the internet, means that cyber-bullying can have an even more detrimental effect on the victim than conventional playground bullying. "It's school-yard bullying taken to the next level," says Justin Patchin, a criminologist at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. A study by UK-based internet market research firm YouGov in 2006 found that for 1 in 8 young people cyber-bullying is even worse than physical bullying.

One reason for this is the sheer number of people who can view something that is posted online. "It would be bad enough to be cyber-bullied by one kid and nobody else knew about it, but a video seen by hundreds or thousands of your peers could be devastating," says Robin Kowalski, a psychologist at Clemson University in South Carolina and co-author of the book Cyber Bullying: Bullying in the digital age, which will be published in October.

Ghyslain Raza, also known as the "Star Wars Kid", learned this the hard way. In 2002, the somewhat overweight and slightly awkward Canadian adolescent made a video of himself playing with a pretend light sabre and left it lying around at school. When his classmates found the video in 2003, they posted it online as a joke. Raza was so upset he finished the school year from a psychiatric ward. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't just his friends who found the video amusing. According to UK marketing firm The Viral Factory, it became the internet's most downloaded video of 2006."

I thought that this would be a good article to use for my study because of how it even mentions one of the little boys from the Growing Up Online series. It also mentioned things that were not in the series such as how the popular girl shared the msg's with other classmates and made a fool out of Ryan. Along with other examples of children and teens being cyberbullied, it mentions other interesting facts. The articles mentions how its one thing to be bullied by one kid, it's quite another for your embarrassment to be posted online for everyone to see.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526136.300-the-rise-of-cyberbullying.html

Growing Up Online article by article...

1-
I felt that the first part was really just showing us what kids were doing at home. It discussed everything that they do to make sure their parents don't see what they are doing. They have more than one computer, codes, and all other sorts of secret trap doors. The first part discusses one boy in general and something that he got in trouble for. A bunch of people from his class and him skipped school one day, got drunk, and went to a concert...when the photos were posted online, parents found out and many people got in a lot of trouble. the article says "90% of teens are online, immersed in a world hidden from their parents".
2-
The second part of the clip began with teachers pointing out that they must keep up with technology in order to keep the attention of students today. The teacher say that they have LCD projectors, smart boards, and podcasts so that students may re-visit their class to listen to the teacher teaching again. Whilst one teacher is saying that he feels in order to keep students focused, you must stay ahead of the and technology, another teacher has little technology in her classroom and feels that the attention spans of students today has decreased compared to students 30 years ago. The second teacher made the interesting and true point that students have gotten used to immediate responses and having it all at their fingertips. This also included interviews with students saying how myspace, facebook, etc. are all things that are nessecities in their everyday life and that having the most friends-even if you don't know them- is a constant competition...
3-
This video basically evolved around one particular person named Jessica...or Autumn Edows. I found it slightly scary but i was able to understand what she was saying. She felt like she didn't have to hide online and also that she was finally liked...popularity is like a drug and she was just indulging. Then, her parents found out and made her delete all of her photos even though to this day she never thought anything she published was pornographic...it was art. I think that i would disagree but i still felt that it was unfair what they did to her because she obviously had problems and all they did was punish her!

4-

This video was slightly disturbing, not gross as much...but scary. It was about sexual predators online and the dangers that teenagers encounter just by turning on the computer screen. It was very true though when one of the teachers mentioned that most of these encounters are half as bad as the real ones teenagers encounter on their own free will. It mentioned that 1 in every 7 people have been approached by a sexual predator and that was a bit shocking...i would have thought there would be much, much, less!

5-

This video was about how teenagers are able to keep a whole private world online, away from their parents. It first talked about all the anorexics that meet online and discuss their problems. When the teen being interviewed was asked what her parents know, she simply replied "nothing". Then, the video went on to the event of a rock concert where underage teens skipped school, rode the train to Manhattan, all to see a concert. There were videos of teens being arrested, hospitalized, and taken away in wheel chairs. I thought this one was just a normal, fairly regular occurrence, not the anorexia, but the videos being posted and people being caught.

6-

This video was about a little boy in grade 7 being cyber-bullied. It first talked about how the little boy was getting his dad to teach him how to fight, in case it was ever needed. Then, the little boy told his parents that the bullying had stopped, and a few months later he killed himself. This video talked about how there are websites that teach you how to kill yourself, and give you quizzes, like how to kill yourself judging by your favorite color and band. I felt that this was incredibly sick and horrifying that people on the internet were encouraging other people to do theses things!

Overall. my impression of this video is that it is very interesting, educational, and enlightening; it brought new things to my attention and I'm betting it did the same for a lot of people. I learnt about the ratio of child predators to internet users, more and new dangers of being online, and ways to be able to avoid all of it.