I have reproduced the graphic below, but the whole story can be found here.

Is it important that the gap is closing? Do students think it is important, helpful and/or beneficial to have social networking and other web 2.0 experiences integrated into the course?

1.  What is the most valuable concept, network, idea, or reading you will take away from Curation Culture?

2.  What grade do you think you deserve in this class? (explain why)

3.  Did you or do you think of Curation Culture as a game?  Why or why not?

We’ll look at responses to these questions in class. In the meantime, here’s a presentation I did on the class that talks about the concept of badges and gaming in learning about information literacy.

Facebook is a kind of vortex.  Every time I get online, it seems, I waste time on Facebook when I originally intended to be productive.  I can have been on Facebook, closed my laptop, get back online ten minutes later, and I check Facebook as if something drastic may have happened in that short span of time.  It’s a problem.  I’m aware that I’m constantly allowing myself to get caught in the same trap, so I decided to attempt giving up Facebook over the Thanksgiving holidays (attempting this while still in school, I feel, would have been beyond me at this stage).  So, I went home for the break with my mind set on succeeding (“It’s not even a whole week!” I reminded myself).

Over the break, I picked up a book that I stopped reading because I’m “too busy,” went to the movies with the family, took my little brother Black Friday shopping at a reasonable hour, cuddled with my dogs, did a little bit of laundry, ate a lot of food, got caught up on the current season of Grimm, worked some sudoku puzzles, watched a couple of TV shows with my grandparents, and got to visit a little bit with my church family after the service.

It turns out, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be!  This is partially because I was not at school, so I didn’t need to be on my computer as much (less time online=less temptation), but I still count it as a success.  I didn’t even miss it!  There were a couple of times when I thought about “just checking for a minute,” but I distracted myself with some other activity and soon forgot about it.  The truth is, I felt so much better not checking Facebook all the time.  I enjoyed not knowing what was going on in everyone else’s lives.  It was freeing.  I just did what I wanted/needed to do, and got to be in my own little world.

This made me realize how much I actually enjoy not checking Facebook. On days when I’m super-busy and don’t have time to get on my laptop during the day, I’m focused on me, not the minute details of their lives that everyone else has posted online.  Sure, sometimes these things are cute or relevant or important, but, for the most part, it’s just a bunch of things that I wouldn’t know about if I weren’t on Facebook and wouldn’t be missing.  Don’t ask me why I’m addicted – I’m not going to rationalize this.  It just is.

With all of this said, we’re back in school, and I can’t avoid the internet and the eventual lure of Facebook forever.  I have been doing better, though.  I check the important groups I’m in for important information, then maybe spend a few minutes glancing over my news feed, only looking into things that seem really interesting.  I’ll admit that I do occasionally spend entirely too long looking through every little thing on my news feed, but that’s only when I’m trying extremely hard to avoid being productive and have run out of other things to do.  But I’m getting better.

Part of what contributes to my success is that I do not possess a smartphone.  Sometimes it’s not convenient, but I think, for the most part, it’s for the best.  When I don’t have constant access to social media, it is much easier to distance myself.  If the day comes when I find myself in possession of a smartphone, I realize I will have to fight myself that much harder to maintain a healthy relationship with my Facebook account.  But I’ll worry about that if that day ever comes.  Until then, I’ll just be attempting to keep up my self-restraint under the current circumstances (and maybe even succeeding!).

I love YouTube to the point that my browser lists it as the first choice no matter how I misspell it. (Its a little game I play with the internet.) So I gave it up for a week in what my roommate called a “Mini-Lent.”

Why YouTube?

Because when I want to goof off online (sometimes against my will/better judgment) I go to YouTube first. I love to look at fan art, Animation Music Videos (AMVs. They frequently consist of fan art slide shows or clips from the show set to music) and read fan fiction of my favorite shows, though I have to go to FanFiction.net for the latter. I also go to YouTube when I get a song fragment stuck in my head so I can listen to it and “complete the circuit.” From Thursday, November 8, 2012 4:30pm to Thursday, November 15, 2012 4:30pm I decided not to enter the website and observe my behavior. I kept a log of the date and time and what video I wanted to watch at that moment as well as other observations.

What Happened?

Most of my entries have a time stamp around 8pm to 12am when I had the most free time. They usually related to a song stuck in my head that I wanted to listen to. Other times I read something online and wanted to find a video to confirm it. For example, I found a list on Cracked.com of iconic movie scenes that happened by accident. One of the listed scenes was the part on one of the Lord of the Rings movies where Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn, breaks two of his toes while kicking a helmet in one scene and manages to channel that pain into a scream of grief for the Hobbits who are believed to be dead. I haven’t seen the movies since I want to read the books. (I have them but I don’t have time to read them.) I wanted to see for myself. I also heard “Aftermath” by Adam Lambert on Pandora and then wanted to listen to it on repeat when I heard the line “Tell a stranger that they’re beautiful.” I’ve heard that song before but for some reason that line never stood out then. Most of the time I just wanted to watch a video that I though was well done or really funny and related to my favorite shows.

How did I cope?

            Something I noticed was my increased usage of Pandora. You would think not having to look up songs myself would take my mind off engineering my means of procrastination but instead I end up trying to will Pandora to play my favorite songs and switching stations frequently. This breaks my concentration and I get nothing done. Then I want to go to YouTube when I hear a song I want to hear again.

I am very whimsical with my internet usage. My brain spouts out something I want to look up and I look it up and explore what I find further through links. Writing it down on physical paper rather than looking it up helped me stop thinking about it somewhat by allowing me to tell myself “I’ll look at it later. I wrote it down. Now I won’t forget.” However, I enjoy being impulsive and there is a thrill involved with doing something in the moment instead of planning it out like I do most things. I’ve looked back over my log and realized I still haven’t watched some of the videos that I craved then. I think I’m also worried that I won’t be able to find it later. That has happened to me on obscure searches before.

Changes Afterward?

Yes. I found out that a lack of YouTube will not curb my bad goof off habits but it did affect it for at least a while. I didn’t go immediately to YouTube after 4:30 on the 15^th since I was at the library instead of in front of my laptop (which I am more likely to goof off on than a library computer with none of my bookmarks.) For a few days after, I managed to get some work done despite goofing off.

I also figured out the probable causes of why I procrastinate more now than in High School: 0) I love fiction. 1) I have my own laptop now. 2) I have more homework now and don’t have time to read like I did in high school. 3) I also don’t have time for video games since I have nowhere in my dorm room to set them up. A side effect of this is my new interest in PC gaming but my laptop wasn’t designed for this so much. 4) Since I have less time or energy for thought I turn to more passive forms of consuming fiction with TV shows and fan works. Though some TV shows are very dense and well produced, the thinking usually happens after. With reading you have to picture what the words are telling you and video games involve input from the player. TV is more sitting and watching. Also, despite some fan works being very high quality, most can be considered cheap entertainment.

I can possibly listen to music while doing homework if it’s some kind of hour long ambiance music with no lyrics and I have no attachment to it whatsoever.

I should try another experiment through finals where I write everything down that I want to look up that is not related to homework and see if that helps.

Foursquare:  friendly competition, public stalking, and venue reviews all in the palm of your hand…

If you aren’t familiar with it, Foursquare is a social network where users accumulate points by “checking in” to places they travel to in their own lives.  When someone “checks in,” they receive a certain amount of points, depending on the type of venue, the number of times they’ve checked in to the venue, if there are any of their friends there at the time, and other categories.  Foursquare totals your weekly point values and displays them on a leader board with your friends, so you can see how much better or (worse!) you are doing compared to them.  If you continue visiting a place and checking in, you can become “the mayor” of a venue, which gives you more points per check in.  For example, I’m the mayor of the AKL hall (where I live), Davis Music Building (where I spend most of my day), the Caf, and a few other buildings on campus, not to mention my church, my home in Birmingham, and a few restaurants.  However, if someone else were to start checking into one of those venues more frequently than me, they could claim Mayorship and I would lose points on my check ins for that venue.

Another fun aspect of Foursquare is the badge system (which we are all familiar with since we are using them on this blog!).  For unlocking certain achievements, users can unlock badges to share with their friends.  These achievements can be rewards from checking in a certain amount of times, checking into a specific type of venue, checking in at certain times of the day, and other criteria.  The Ten Hundred Badge, (one that I proudly own!) is awarded for checking in at least 1,000 times, and the Hot Tamale Badge, (another one in my collection) is awarded for checking into a certain number of Mexican restaurants.  This type of badge is very common, and has a special feature where it levels up as you check into more and more of the same types of venue, (my Hot Tamale Badge is level 3, that’s 10 different Mexican restaurants!).  These badges carry no point values, but are simply a fun “side-mission” to the game.

The Hot Tamale Badge

On Foursquare venues, users can also leave “tips” for other users.  These can be humors, informative, even critical bits of information that can help other users make decisions about which venues to visit.  You can even post pictures to a venue to show people the fun (or not so fun) things about a particular venue.  For example, if I’ve had a terrible experience waiting 30 minutes for my food at the McDonald’s on Main Street, I can post a tip and let other users know how slow the drive-thru is, even if there’s only one person in front of me…. On the other hand, if I just ordered a new dish at a local restaurant, I can leave a tip telling other people to try it, and even post a picture of my plate.  Also, if there’s a restaurant I want to try, I might look it up on Foursquare to see if anyone has left any helpful tips before I go.

But regardless of how much fun I’m having claiming mayorships, earning badges, and posting tips, the fact still remains that I am constantly posting my exact location on the internet, and anyone I am friends with can see where I am at anytime if I’m checked into a venue.  This seems to violate basic internet safety rules, I know, so why do I (and many other users) still do it?  I think that a lot of it has to do with the security we have in our friends.  I am comfortable posting my location on the internet, because I know that only my friends can see it, and I trust them enough not to come and stalk my every move then attack me when I least expect it.  If someone does, however, start to get a little creepy, I can always de-friend them so they can’t see my locations anymore.  Also, I think the competitive aspect of the game overpowers (or at least disguises) the potential risk of posting your location.  In my quest to the top of the leader board, I’m going to check in wherever I go to get the most points, no matter who sees me.

Another issue that can cause concern is checking in while driving.  Some people have created venues for major highways, like I-65 North and South, so people can accumulate points while driving.  Just like texting and driving, this is incredibly dangerous, yet I myself have been guilty of doing it.  Why?  To get more points of course!  But these points don’t really matter at all.  I get no physical reward for being in first place, or earning a new badge, in fact, I could very well receive physical punishment in the form of my head going through my windshield….  But it’s fun….?

So my question for everyone:  is Foursquare safe?  Are the social benefits worth exposing yourself to the public and potentially endangering your life?  I play, and have lots of fun, but I would like to hear your opinions too!

Then I discovered Fanfiction, more specifically Twilighted.net . At the time I did not know that the discovery of this site would eventually lead to me reading novel length fanfics each week. Anyways, I understand you may not know what Fanfiction is exactly. Fanfiction is the result thousands of people wishing books or movies never ended, or in some cases, were completely different.  A formal definition of fanfic can apparently be found at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fanfic. A fanfic is fiction written around previously established characters by another author. In fanfiction the characters can do anything that the author wants. There are no limits.

The community for fanfiction is massive. Fanfiction.net alone has hundreds of categories ranging from Anime to Musicals. There are also Crossover fics, meaning that they used characters from two or more stories to create something completely different.  Within each category there are subcategories. For example the category of Books. There are fanfics for hundreds of books, some books have more than others. On Fanfiction.net there are lots of ways to find a certain type of story that you feel like reading. You can pick a certain genre, a rating, what language it is, how long it is, and what two main characters it includes. Most importantly you can search for stories that are complete.  Or you can metaphorically shoot yourself in the foot and set every option to “all” and sort through 24070 pages, each with 25 stories on it. That is just for Harry Potter stories of course, not including Crossovers.

So with all of the fanfiction to read, my life disappeared. Every now and again there is about a week or so when I just cannot find anything good to read, but then I find the most amazing fanfic ever or a new website. Now every time I am in front of my laptop, no matter what I am here to do, I end up either reading fanfiction or searching for new fanfics to read. I have a serious addiction, I know this. I literally cannot be a real person on the internet because I live in the world of Fanfiction. It is so easy to click on an already opened tab of fanfiction and start reading only to realize 30 minutes later that I was supposed to work on a paper, or a blog post.

I think that I can say my relationship with Fanfiction is becoming tension filled. There are many sleepless, or nearly so, nights. There is procrastination to the extreme. In fact just this morning at 8 am I reasoned with myself that I could finish this chapter and still answer some questions for my 9:30 class. Needless to say it was 3 chapters and 5 horribly answered questions later that I was walking out of the door at 9:21.  This doesn’t always happen but it happens enough.

I have been making an effort to cut back on the amount of fanfiction that I read. This started when I realized that after putting fanfiction on my kindle I read 1177 pages (single spaced, Times New Roman, 12pt font) of fanfiction in just under 10 days. At the time I was able to justify that, somewhat. Just a few weeks ago I want to find out exactly how much fanfiction I am really reading.  Turns out that I read about 1200 pages (single spaced, Times New Roman, 12pt font) in an average school week. I have yet to find out how much I read on the breaks from school but I would imagine that it may be about double that amount because I rarely sleep.

After 5 years of this my body is telling me to either slow down drastically or stop. My eyesight, which has always been terrible, has gotten so much worse. I hardly ever practice proper posture while on the computer and that entire self care check sheet goes out the window when in the world of fanfiction. It is also affecting my laptop. I constantly have tabs open. I have gotten them under control now but there have been times when there were 3 or 4 Firefox windows open each with 80 -100 tabs or more and the same in Google Chrome. Right now I can proudly say that I only have 45 tabs open, 5 of which I will close after posting this. If you are wondering the rest is fanfiction.

So I have cut down on the amount I read only because I am taking 19 hours this semester, but I imagine that over the Christmas break I will sit in front of my laptop and continue to read. Hopefully not to the previous extent though.

I believe that is about it. This has been my life for the past 5 years and I realize that I got what I wished for – the story never ended.

If you ever want to start reading Fanfiction I recommend:

http://www.delicious.com/bowie28/ – Mostly Criminal Minds Fanfiction

http://cmficfinders.livejournal.com/ – Strictly Criminal Minds

http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/ – Strictly Harry Potter

Twilighted.net – Strictly Twilight

http://archiveofourown.org

and of Course

Fanfiction.net

I caution you to read in moderation. Now I am off to read Fanfiction until I fall asleep.

So, when Mary Kate mentioned the “do not disturb” option on the iPhones, I was intrigued. I’d seen it as a new setting, but wasn’t sure whether I would get any use out of it. But once she described it, I was sold. So for the past week I have been using that lovely little switch between the hours of 1AM and 9AM. Needless to say, a lot of my sleep has been saved. I’ve also been practicing the “it can wait” frame of mind. I still get emails all the time about various things, but now I say to myself, “is anyone dying? No? Then wait an hour and then reply.” I’ve had so many more interesting conversations with people since I’ve refrained from tuning out halfway through to answer an email.

But using this nifty little function and postponing my responses put into perspective just how dependent I was on my technology without even realizing it. I mean, I’m talking dead asleep and a single buzz would wake me up so I could answer whatever burning question got emailed to me this time. So, these two little changes has been a wonder for my mental health (because I’m a person that needs at least 5 hours of good sleep to function).

Going home for the Thanksgiving Break was also very interesting. We have no internet at my house. I repeat: NO INTERNET. Now for those of you who know me, I am attached to my phone and laptop.

Just slightly addicted.

So going from an “always on” mindset while dealing with RENT straight to a “not on at all” mindset at home was as cold turkey as you can get. Well… almost. I could still use my phone, but I was very limited. Anyways, I went crazy the first day I was home. I didn’t know what to do with myself. But as the break progressed, I enjoyed several nice conversations with my mom, I watched several hilarious movies in her company, and we had some great bonding time. None of which would have been possible if we had internet because you can bet your butt I would have been on Tumblr the whole time.

As far as information diets go, I know mine is full of junk, junk, junk, junk. By the time I’ve been getting on the computer these past few weeks, I’ve been so exhausted of serious material, that all I wanted to read was mindless drivel. And I’ll admit that, so here’s to hoping that I can actually create a diet of some sort that doesn’t include just  ”junk food” over the next few weeks.

So I’ve made a lot of discoveries concerning my mental health and emotional health with regards to my use of technology. And these changes that I’ve made will be staying. I’ve also set myself goals to have at least two hours of technology-free quality time with my friends and family per week. I’m hoping that as the year progresses, I can increase that time and not feel restless.

There are many definitions of democracy, and a great deal of scholarship out there about the responsibilities of citizens in a democratic state.  I recommend Benjamin Barber’s A Passion for Democracy, Cornell West’s Democracy Matters, and Parker Palmer’s Healing the Heart of Democracy.  Each of these books explores the role of individual people in a larger civic society.  To whom are we responsible, and what should we do in our day to day lives to act as citizens? And to what extent does being informed matter?  Rather than talk about these questions abstractly, I wanted to apply them to a situation in Brooklyn, NY that I’ve been thinking about lately.

As you may know, this fall marks the opening of Brooklyn’s massive Barclays Center, a multi-billion dollar arena that hosts the Brooklyn (formerly New Jersey) Nets, the New York Islanders, college basketball games, and sundry other concerts and entertainment acts.  The arena is like many others in the United States; it was built on public land that was sold to private owners at an extremely cheep rate and was also subsidized by state and city taxes.  The idea behind such systems of funding is that new arenas will “revitalize” urban areas and boost local economies when fans come to shop and take in adjacent entertainment.  However, this is almost always a pipe-dream that plays out at the expense of our poorest citizens.  Instead of “revitalizing” cities, these arenas suck money away from already-stretched government budgets while building capital for private owners (often individuals).  Two years ago, when the arena was still under construction, Huffington Post blogger Daniel Goldstein called the Barclay’ Center and the landgrab on which it is built a “complete failure in democracy.”  The arena project received over $2 billion in public money, and private developers have already profited from building and selling luxury condos and high rise retail space on land that was given to them for free.  What Goldstein means by calling the project a “complete failure in democracy” is that “each branch of the government passed the buck to the other.”  Not all parties are represented fairly in the arena construction.

But the people of New York are complicit in this as well.  There have been an army of citizen journalists (the Atlantic Yards Report blog, and Neil deMause’s Field of Schemes blog are just two examples) writing about the exploitative project, explaining how Brooklyn will be affected, and imploring voters and citizens to put a stop to the process.  This kind of citizen journalism matters.  It is specific, focused on a tangible problem, and often rigorous and prophetic in ways that newspapers and magazines never will be.  And it makes a difference. Citizens in other cities, like Seattle, have previously voted to withhold funding for private owners, even when that means losing their sports franchises.

What this example suggests is that there is a real value in citizen journalism that is created by reporters, bloggers, and writers, who curate information and synthesize it for other people.  Many of our mainstream media outlets have also “dropped the ball” in keeping the citizenry informed, which puts an even greater pressure on the U.S. democracy.  But here’s where the skeptics come in.  Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” is a good example.  Gladwell suggests that even while citizen journalists in the United States and abroad have facilitated real social change, these movements are for the most part snake oil.  They create a false sense of participation and perhaps a false sense of solidarity when in fact the social problems we face today require something much more drastic than “liking” something or “tweeting something out.”

“Social networks are particularly effective at increasing motivation,” Aaker and Smith write. But that’s not true. Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires.

To be fair, Gladwell isn’t talking specifically (or exclusively) about citizen journalism, but his critique of social media, the vehicle for much of this kind of participatory information gathering and sharing is well noted.  Is curation itself a kind of citizen journalism?  What is journalism and its relationship to democracy?  If democracy has failed, does journalism have anything to do with that failure? Come to class prepared to talk about some of these questions.

These are questions I want us all to think about this week, so I’m going to include in this post a plethora of information:  links, videos, articles, and statements on information literacy.  And then we’ll talk about some of these questions when we get to class tomorrow.

First, some definitions.  What is information literacy?  Our own university has defined it as “the ability to obtain, evaluate, and effectively use information to become responsible, informed scholars and citizens.”  Right now, Montevallo is in the middle of a major curricular accreditation process, and we are looking to infuse information literacy learning outcomes into every part of the curriculum.  You’ve probably heard people talking about information literacy in your classes already.  Notice that this definition implies several expectations about students that I’ve taken to be true all semester in this class.  As students, we have a responsibility to obtain information on a broad range of subjects, and we need to do this as thoroughly and as efficiently as possible, given the limits on our time and the boundaries we need to establish in our lives.  Second, we have a responsibility as citizens, as participants in a society, to know what is happening so we can shape the course of that society.  So, it could be more accurate to say that information literacy isn’t something that one studies, but rather it is an ethic, an attitude toward studying, learning, and living.  This is, I believe, why curation is such an important skill to learn; it enables and implies many of the things suggested by Montevallo’s definition of information literacy.

What are other definitions of information literacy?  There are a few well-known examples.  The Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) suggests that information literacy is “a set of abilities requiring individuals to ‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.’”  The ACRL infamously outlines this as a process.  Information literate people can:

• Determine the extent of information needed
• Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
• Evaluate information and its sources critically
• Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
• Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
• Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally

Other definitions resist this lockstep organization but are similar in content.  See, for instance, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) focuses on the various parts of the phrase and helps us to realize that much of what information literacy means depends on what we mean by “information” and “literacy.”  It also never hurts to look at the Wikipedia article for information literacy!

Clearly, one of the important aspects of information literacy is the ability to decipher good and bad information.  This has been Howard Rheingold’s focus for a while, and as he explains in this video, one of the most important literacies to develop online is the art of crap detection.

Another important voice is (obviously) Barack Obama’s proclamation on Information Literacy.  This is a brilliant document that re-inaugurates information literacy as a concept for the digital age.  See also his remarks at a commencement speech at Hampton University in 2010:

So having seen, listened to, or read these links, what do you think? What is the definition of information literacy?  What are the challenges we face? Do you consider yourself to be information literate? Why or why not?  How do you perceive yourself finding and using information in your specific field? Weigh in on the comments or write more about it on your own.