The Socialist Liam

In the video The essential elements of digital literacies: Doug Belshaw at TEDxWarwick, the quote “The medium is the message”. 

This can relate to digital media due to the abundance of images and videos layed out throughout the digital world. As each image and video can be interpreted differently by other people. For example memes are the epiphany of the quote bespoken before. Just like Doug Belshaw in the latter video showed a meme of a police officer pepper spraying a crowd and then remixed into one where the officer is spraying down the US soldier raising the flag in Iwo Jima. And just the original photo of the police officer was interpreted as oppressive or something negative. 

And just like the image of the officer, people can find reasons to create a media which all can vary. Such as people being upset by individuals, groups, ideas, etc.

For example when Logan Paul posted a video of a dead body of someone who committed suicide on YouTube, he was ridiculed and condemned for his actions.

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/youtuber-logan-paul-sued-over-suicide-forest-video-n1252610. 

And the many ways that people showed their anger was creating memes that made fun of his actions. 

When I first came upon digital media, I thought of video game development, web development, photography, etc. In which I am right on that first conclusion, but I realised there were more aspects to the workings in digital media that the 3 videos showed:

Digital Media Are Networked | Digital Literacy 101

Digital literacy and why it matters

The essential elements of digital literacies: Doug Belshaw at TEDxWarwick

And it’s that digital literacy is the life blood of digital media. The ability to understand, evaluate and navigate the digital world.

And it’s also a tool that I did not know practitioners of digital media used for their creation. I thought the only tools that they needed were devices like computers, phones, etc. And the creative use of memes is one thing I have been exposed to a lot but never thought that medium would be associated with digital media.

The medium of memes is one I found to be surprising as I thought that memes are just funny images or videos. However they instead have power to communicate to others, as it has the structure of a language in another form. 

As for active reading I somewhat feel like a child lost in a store, for the majority of my time in primary and secondary school the class goes through a session of making notes together in which the teacher designates the notes. But with this video 5 Active Reading Strategies for Textbook Assignments - College Info Geek, it shows me a lot more to active reading, such as pseudo skimming which is used for long reads. As said before I went through a group active reading, which I didn’t exercise methods like these and are foreign to me.

But there is the method of leaving notes on the book which I am familiar with, for I have been doing this since primary school. This is one of the most effective methods of active reading I have employed. The questions I would have for this very concept would be where the next step for this concept would take? As all things change over time and adapt I can ask the same of this.

If I were to compare the ideas of the videos of studying and reading that I watched to my previous conception of the aforementioned and the concept of media literature. It would be the grandeur of the introduction of fire brought upon by Prometheus to humanity if somewhat over exaggerated and theatrical.

My preconception of studying was that of an inefficient system of just reading it until you learn it. But comes this video The 3 BEST science-based study tips which showed a more effective and less time consuming way of studying. Some of the 3 methods in the video are ones I am familiar with. I do remember following the first method of quizzing myself in my early years of secondary school. But I have forgotten the method and was left to the method aforementioned inefficient way of studying for the leaving cert. But if I were to use the quizzing method I can confidently say I could earn higher CAO points.

I am also familiar with the second method of spacing, which I somewhat follow but more lean towards studying at the end or in any words, cramming. But the final method of mixing was foreign to me that I didn’t think that mixing things up would be more beneficial than just studying the same topic. As the video said that you’d be training your muscle memory if you study one topic but if you mix it up with more you are using more parts of your brain.