Topic 1 Reflective Summary

The past two weeks have been a massive learning curve for me, considering that I had never personally blogged or interacted with others through blogging before.

I feel that the reading was very useful in understanding the relatively new concepts of digital ‘residents’ and ‘visitors’. However, I definitely learnt far more through interacting with the other UOSM2033 bloggers and responding to their comments on my own blog.

Charlie’s comment on my post was very insightful and allowed me to consider whether the ‘visitor’ and ‘resident’ ideas are totally necessary since White and Le Cornu place a lot of emphasis on the spectrum which they say is integral in explaining the concepts. Opinion seems to be divided on this and it has been interesting to read how some people do not think that the ideas of ‘visitor’ and ‘resident’ completely solve the problems posed by Prensky’s ‘native’ and ‘immigrant’ ideas.

My first comment was on Jess’s blog. I thought that her point on our generation being “brought up” with the internet and technology was a really important one to make. On the other hand, Adam posed a very  good question on my blog asking whether generalising internet users is facilitated by White and Le Cornu’s definitions. I concluded that the continuous spectrum which is clearly defined reduces the tendency to stereotype in this context.

Sophie also commented on my post and stated that she liked the embedding of the David White video in my blog post. I am glad that this was well received because I think it’s often useful to include different media in order to make something stand out and reiterate the points you are making.

Overall, I am pleased that comments on my own blog sparked interesting interaction amongst my course mates. I am now looking forward to doing the same with the up-coming topics in this module.

Thanks for reading!