I have heard many people use the phrase “digital immigrant” referring to the capabilities of technology and the Internet. Up until today I considered it to be a phrase to describe others and not myself, after all, besides the usual word processing and database management via Word and Excel, I can use e-mail, I can search for information through two university library systems and I can do desktop publishing using Quark Express. Today after reading Tim O’Reilly’s article, “What is Web 2.0” (2005) I have decided that I belong in the pre-immigrant group. I don’t understand the vocabulary and I can’t always make meaning from what I read.
For example, here is a sentence from the O’Reilly article containing English words, all of which I know in isolation, but do not comprehend when joined together to create meaning for some readers, “Every banner ad is served as a seamless cooperation between two websites, delivering an integrated page to a reader on yet another computer. Akamai also treats the network as the platform, and at a deeper level of the stack, building a transparent caching and content delivery network that eases bandwidth congestion.” What is a stack? What does it mean to build a transparent caching? What part of speech is a transparent caching? Will I understand the explanation when I find a knowledgeable person to guide me through the words?
As a visual artist I think that I could better understand the concepts in the article if I could see the relationships. The following sentence is an example of what I think I could understand if I could see it. “Much as synapses form in the brain, with associations becoming stronger through repetition or intensity, the web of connections grows organically as an output of the collective activity of all web users.” I would like to be able to look at a mind map and have someone point to one spot on the map that defines where a platform, application or program is located. It feels like I went to bed with the tape recorder playing a lecture and the information in that lecture is floating around inside my head, but I cannot gain access to it directly. I may find a bit of it as it passes behind my eyes or wisps across my brain from one ear to the other, but I cannot put my hands on it, touch it, feel it, really see it or hear it. It feels ethereal. Maybe this is what communication in the after-life will be like?
Did our forebears feel this way about either radio, telephone or television? You cannot touch the waves that convey the visual or aural messages, yet somehow we manage to believe in them and use them.
The author states that the Web 2.0 service gets better the more people use it and that there is cooperation built into the workings of it. He says, “Multiple uses enhances connectivity.” He equates blogs to bulletin boards, something that I understand well, since I am an avid reader of those because I like to share information that I find and pass it on to others who might like to know about an upcoming event or opportunity. So, I should be pre-disposed to like blogs if I can figure out how to use them with a little more ease.
What are in the dreams of today’s visionaries? The author says that many of the ideas in use today have been around for a long time. Could I even speak to them and understand the vocabulary and concepts? For example, the writer talks about “the long tail,” referring to how the new concepts work. He says, “to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.” So here is a visual, and I should be able to paint it but even if I did, I still don’t think I can understand what the image represents.
How can Web 2.0 be useful to me as a second language educator?
This week I am learning how to use the tools of the Web 2.0 visionaries and finding my brain spilling over with so many options. Perhaps those designers think that I am like someone who needs a drink of water, who will benefit from drinking from the glass of the Web 2.0 water. The glass can hold only so much before you have to drink some, to make more room in the glass. If you keep filling the it to overflowing, no matter how long you let the tap run, the water will do nothing to satisfy you and slake our thirst until there is room to hold more water.
Despite my flooded brain, I believe that some of the input will remain inside my head once I leave the CARLA technology workshop. I believe that just like in learning a new language, the input can be overwhelming at the beginning, but gradually as I make meaning in specific situations here and there, I can build on that knowledge, feel more comfortable about it and apply it in other settings.
Mainly I have addressed my feeling of being on the edge of something new, of not knowing how to grasp the information in my usual visual methods. Perhaps I can better understand how an immigrant feels surrounded by a new language and a new culture, and will find more ways to have empathy. Perhaps I will find ways to share the second languages that I teach using offerings from Web 2.0, ways that will be reception to multiple learning styles and intelligences.
Very nice images! You give vent to the frustration of trying to make sense of what is now commonly referred to as the "Cloud." -- a very imprecise concept of location/space/concreteness. The image of water flowing over is very much like the cloud, uncontained by a glass, flowing over and leaking out everywhere, dissipating -- perhaps forming the long tail, exploring possibilities at the edges and seeing where that leads. As Marlene indicated yesterday, information overload is here in abundance, as is concept overload. I like your comparison to language learning, being exposed to a system that only makes sense in snippets, and even then you are not sure you grasp what you seem to comprehend. There are visuals in O'Reilly's article that certainly help me to understand the concept that he tries to convey, but perhaps they, too, are too abstract. You take away from the article a sense of empathy for those starting out in a new language. Take a look at Rachel's piece and see if her notion of reaching out to students where they are technologically might help you find application for these interactive technologies that O'Reilly writes about.
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