Jeff and Lila's Article

Understanding the Net Generation through LiveJournals and Literacy Practices

Assignment:
Summarize describe the study, data, sample size, methods, what they found out.

• method- Ethnographic case study
• Conducted fall 2005
• Pilot for a longer study
• sample size- One Students experience (single college student aka Darla)
  
• Conducted by Dana J Wilber
  

Description:
The ethnographic case study focused on the experience of one student in order to discern how her experience with a particular tool, LiveJournal a SNS, reflected the development of distinctive literacies that merit further consideration by educators. (quote from paper).

• Provides a description of Live Journal
• Provides an overview of social networking
• offers connections to higher education research and pedagogy.
  

Method:
Ethnographic case study

• random contact of student from LiveJournal
• lasted 3 months
• printed blog posts
• interviewed her via email once a week

Sample size:

One Students experience (single college student aka Darla)

Data:

• Darla reported being online => 10 times a day (email, LiveJournal and IM)
• considered herself fairly proficient with technology
• LiveJournal (L J)- is a SNS
• Darla not sure if L J was like a "real journal" never kept one
• Darla interview:
  • used L J to express anger
  • hybrid of public/private allows post things they know others would see
    

What they found out:

• Mirror's data collected by other researchers listed
• Faculty needs to understand new literacy practices and consider regarding them as resources for creating new, multi-modal practices.
• Darla was able to develop talents that her academic assignments rarely asked her to tap by using semiotic and intertexual techniques
• Students are more likely to find personal blogs as meaningful, authentic, and creative spaced for self exploration as they are for academic performance.
• Blogs connect students to other students around the globe.
• Faculty has the responsibility to help students make the connection from past and outside experiences to new things learned
  • this is best accomplished by building upon things the students know well
• Students who create and maintain blogs for their classes create something both personal and scholarly by weaving their own experiences and reactions into course material.
• Life is shifting and to best teach students faculty must shift too.

Written Summary for use in papers:

In a 2005 ethnographic case study one student who was fairly proficient technically was followed via a blog and then interviewed via email for a period of three months. The study showed that students use these net spaces and blogs to make meaning of their worlds and as such faculty should reach out and embrace such tools rather than ignoring their existence.

Reference:
Wilber, D. (2007). Myliteracies: Understanding the net generation through livejournals and literacy practices. Innovate, 3 (4).