Week 3:The Sudden Explosion of E-Books and E-Book Readers

Until a few months ago, I was not much interested eBooks or eReaders. I definitely preferred paper books to electronic ones. For example, whenever professors upload articles for the classes in Oncourse, I always print that out and read it in paper version. However, about two months ago, I had an opportunity to change my personal preference for eBooks.

In the middle of the semester, I had to visit Korea because of a family issue. Because I did not finish my courses, I had to continue doing coursework via email and Oncourse while I was in Korea. I had two final papers to write and I needed resources such as books or articles for my references. However, it was not that easy for me to buy books in English in Korea because of its availability and expensive costs. All of a sudden, it came to remembrance that I could buy eBook in Amazon site with much lower prices. So, I directly went to the Amazon site, and I purchased several books that I needed to read to write final papers, which was the Kindle version. Even though, I had no Kindle device, I could open the files with my MacBook, and it was pretty convenient and its costs was much cheaper compared to buying the original paper books in English in Korea. Afterwards, I realized that eBooks are very useful because I can read texts whenever and wherever I want to with only my laptop, smartphones, tablets or eReaders. I do not know for sure if eBooks will completely replace paper books, but I have to admit that eBooks are very good substitute for paper books. 

Week 2:Digital Literacy Skills

Even though, I am one of the ‘natives of cyberspace’, when I face new kinds of digital technology, I oftentimes struggle to be familiar with. For example, I used one of the social web sites called ‘Cyworld’ in Korea, but I came to America, and I get to know other kinds of social web pages such as ‘Facebook’ or ‘Twitter’; these were totally new to me. I didn’t know how to post things, and how to be friend with other users, or how to communicate with them. However, as times goes by, I gradually get used to those things, and now it is very comfortable for me to interact with others through ‘Facebook’, ‘Skype’, and so on. Of course, I have to admit that young people are more easily adjust to new digital technology than older people, but it is not true that they are born digitally savvy people. This is why education about digital literacy for both young students and older people should be provided to assist them to be quickly adapt to rapidly changing digital technology.

During I was reading articles for week2; there was an interesting comparison between digital/visual literacies and language acquisition in the article ‘Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century’. The author of the article mentions, “Children learn these skills as part of their lives, like language, which they learn without realizing they are learning it. Adults who did not grow up with technology continue to adapt from iteration to iteration. The senior population approaches the new literacy like a foreign language that is complex and perhaps of questionable use.(Jones-Kavalier R. B. & Flannigan L. S., 2006)”.

Barbara R. Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan (2006). Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century. Educause Quarterly, 29(2), Retrieved on January 24, 2011 from http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm06/eqm0621.asp

Week 1:Neo Millennial and Web 2.0 Learners

          In recent years, there is a big change regarding e-learning and Web 2.0 as a social learning tool. Many educators and administrators have been showing the tendency of thinking out of the box that education should occur in a classroom and they are trying to use social media as learning tools.

         One of the biggest changes made in few years is that young students have been using social web sites such as Twitter or Fackbook using their computers or smart phones or tablets to communicate with their friends. They are not just absorbing information that is portal sites are providing, but rather they create something and post it in their blog and they listen to others feedback and respond back to it. Twitter or Facebook does not have their own content in it, but they provide an environment that user can make their own content by themselves and interact with others. By communicating with others, users can obtain new knowledge and deliver it to others effectively. These activities can be one of the forms of learning and education. But, we need to know it that the Internet is still changing and Web 2.0 will be evolved into 3.0 and 4.0, therefore, educators should care about the change of the e-learning environments to keep up with it and adjust to it to provide effective learning opportunities to young learners.