Mapping My Learning Ecology
Litearcy. The practice of reading and writing… Right? The definition of literacy can be interpreted as numerous definitions. The base definition: the ability or understanding of a subject. For example, reading literacy, the ability to read. However, what if we can take it even further to say Snapchat Literacy? The ability or understanding of how to use the app, Snapchat.
While we’re on the topic of Snapchat Literacy, as the world is evolving and coming up with newer technology, so does literacy. New Literacy is an area of evolving literacy which is much more collaborative. Take Snapchat, it allows you to post “snaps”, or photos, on a group story. Where there are multiple people on there posting their snaps.
Of course in order to Snap, you’ll need to be media literate, and understand how to communicate through snaps. Essentially, any online posting service is qualified as a media literacy such as Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, or TikTok. As long as you can post and people can interperate the meaning behind it, you’re media literate!
As you’re posting online, you are also participating in participatory culture. It’s as the name declares, you are committing to engaging in doing something. A perfect example of participatory culture are fanbases, where people around the world participate as a fan of a celebrity. Swifties, for example, are followers of the legendary Taylor Swift. You know they’re Swifties if they have names related to Taylor. Take @briannaswift13 for example, Brianna has 13 in her name which is Taylor’s favorite number, and if you didn’t catch it, Taylor’s last name, Swift.
While participating in participatory culture, people are also participating in discourse, discussing a certain topic. The Swifties will go on and on about Taylor Swift’s hidden secrets she leaves for her fans to find, like a picture of five holes in a fence…
Is she announcing new music in those five days? Is she releasing new music in five hours? Is she dropping an entire brand new album that no-one expects with five letters in the album name?
Acknowledging this, how can we interperate literacies into our knowledge? Learning Ecology is the relationship of someone’s learning and where they learned it. Where did you learn to tie your shoes? Your mom? Dad? I learned through my godfather and the ‘Loop De Loop’ song, but that’s besides the point. You learn everywhere you go, there isn’t a day that passes by where you don’t learn anything. It’s where you learn things, that most don’t think about…
I know what you’re wondering, where else do I learn besides my godfather and Spongebob? The answer is simple, there’s fundamentally a countless amount of places I learn from, such as TikTok, or school. But instead of listing them off, here’s a picture explaining the where I mainly take my knowledge from. I separated the chart into two halves, formal and informal learning. I did this in order to view where I learn the most from…
This is the formal learning side of my learning ecology. As you can see, I’ve learned a lot from school, which is where I put the most boxes. Each one of these have their own little or long stories behind them. School, I’m majoring in computer science and that’s where I learn most of my coding from: teachers, textbooks, and classes. Working, I learn a lot about buisness and selling. I learn about how to check if candy is good enough to sell (I work at a candy shop), or how to deal with ‘Karens’ or ‘Kyles’ who are threatening my life over chocolate. When I am confused about how to calculate the integral of who knows, I seek videos on YouTube, where professors upload teachings of how to do something.
The inernet heavily assists my learning in college. I am an extremely shy person, most of the time I need help reaching out for help. Reaching out is my last effort, so I always try my hardest to Google a website or YouTube a video that’ll teach me how to calculate a function or learn how to code in general. I could also use the online thesaurus in order to find labyrinthine words that makes me look smart.
Right up here is my informal learning side of my learning ecology. I go on social media every single day, which is pretty unhealthy, but I do alot of learning on there too. From life hacks to tutorials, I am constantly learning with every swipe and scroll. I also learn a lot from the people around me, my family teach me new words in spanish, my friends show me how to make ‘whipped coffee’, and people I don’t even know show me how to open paint cans or teach me how to do certain things. The internet itself is an amazing place to learn, when I am in bed spirling in videos teaching me about how many people jumping it would take to cause an earthquake to how to install a shed I’ll probably never have.
Honestly, analyzing the graph, I’ve done more informal learning than formal learning. The only reason for that is that I don’t learn on purpose. When I’m in bed scrolling on social media I would come across a life hack on how to seal a bag of chips without a clip, or being deep in my thoughts wondering how someone invented knitting I’ll search on Google. With my access to technology, came more knowledge and learning. Useful or not.
As an example, I am a huge music head. I love not only listening to music, but playing around with music. I quickly learned how to edit and remix music into extending them or having them fit into different tracks. Essentially, my love for music evolved into me remixing tracks, putting my own spin on it. With access to my computer and software that helps me edit music, I hopped onto YouTube to find ways to remix music, and created a masterpiece! I love playing with music, so in a way, my love for editing random music and not being able to sleep at night without needing a song for longer than three minutes could turn into a career someday.
