Week Three: Participation

 A Peek at the Week

This week, we were tasked with reading chapter three of Net Smart by Howard Rheingold, "Read the Room!" by Driscoll et al. in Writing Spaces, "ChatGPT: Bullshit spewer or the end of traditional assessments in higher education?" by Rudolph et al., and the Social Networks presentation. Each of these readings are summarized below:

• This chapter of Net Smart discusses participation. Rheingold begins by stating that participation can lead to power for anyone. As the chapter progresses, the author relates his experiences with others that he views as role models. For instance, he uses Henry Jenkins "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century" to define participation culture. Rheingold later states "Digital participation literacy employs a toolbox of skills...and spans a range of involvement" (Rheingold, p.114). This excerpt is a rough summary of the entire chapter. The end of the chapter discusses participation in blogging and through Twitter. 

• In this section, the authors discuss how to "read the room" which they defined as "...identifying the values and circumstances that shape the new social context so we can communicate confidently and appropriately" (Seeley, et. al, p.282). To begin, the authors quote John Swales discourse communities' guidelines. Using these guidelines, the authors compared TikTok, Kelly Xu, and Matthew Chen. Each of these topics compared either the site or experience to the guidelines and elaborated on how they were met or not. Kelly's medical oncology lab experience and Matthew's ecology lab experience both had similarities to one another. For example, both of these student's felt like outsiders coming into these opportunities and left getting validation through someone they considered an insider. 

• In this journal, ChatGPT is discussed thoroughly as the writers' dive into how it can be used in education. The beginning of the journal elaborates on the history of ChatGPT and its founding company OpenAI. Then, the authors list the sources that they used to provide the data throughout the journal as well as the steps to accessing ChatGPT. In addition, the journal goes on to state the challenges, limits, and benefits of AI technology. According to the text, "Baker and Smith (2019) categorize educational contexts as student-facing, teacher-facing, and system-facing..." (Rudolph, p.9). With each of these categories, the authors discuss what they mean and the context of AI in each. Lastly, the journal has recommendations made for educators and students for the future of ChatGPT and the immersing AI technologies. 

• These slides discuss virtual communities and networking. The presentation defines virtual communities as the place where ideas of common interest are shared and social networking as the act of interacting online. In addition, the slides state the importance of many things like cooperating, collaborating, and participating in virtual communities. Also, the slides discussed the four levels of community engagement: lurkers, opportunists, contributors, and creators. With those described, media richness and leanness were elaborated on as well as social presence theory. It can be concluded from the slide that in order to be a member of a virtual community, an individual must participate to build rapport, rise to be a leader, demonstrate trust, and use a public voice.

Connections

These readings all demonstrate the importance of participation, but connections can be found from these sources to previous ones we have studied. In chapter three, Rheingold states "The good news is that learning to participate effectively online (like learning attention and crap-detection skills) is a matter of mind-set and practice" (Rheingold, p.114). This shows a connection between this chapter and chapters one and two. In addition, the ChatGPT article mentions credibility and attention to detail. These are two topics that were brought up in chapter two. 

Visual of the Week

The image below represents this week’s agenda well because it shows an individual with various social media presence. 

Alt Text of Image Description: There is a woman on a computer that has various social media icons surrounding her. 

Contributions to Learning

This week's writings have contributed to my learning of digital writing because it made me aware of what kind of social presence I have in the media. It brought to my attention my habits and how I should be participating in the media. 

Ponder This

Do you participate in the online realm in a way that benefits your online community and yourself?

Sources

Jurgen Rudolph, Samson Tan, & Shannon Tan (2023). ChatGPT: Bullshit spewer or

the end of traditional assessments in higher education. Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching. https://doi.org/10.37074/jalt.2023.6.1.9

Rheingold, H. (2012). Net smart: How to thrive online. MIT Press. 

Sarah Seeley, Kelly Xu, & Matthew Chen (2022). Read the room! Navigating social

contexts and written texts. Writing Spaces.

Stock images, photos, vectors, video, and music. Shutterstock. (n.d.).

https://www.shutterstock.com/