Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.

Cyberspace, Research, Web/Blog Tools, Writing & Research Tools

New media literacies and collaborative work in academia and ministry

A selection of links that intersect around the role of new media in educational environments. Henry Jenkins has an essay (in two parts) that looks at the tension between participatory media and traditional educational models, and in particular emphasises the critical application of the following skill set:

  1. Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal.
  2. Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information source.
  3. Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize and disseminate information.
  4. Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative sets of norms.

See:

Connected to this, is Mary Hess’ post about a review of her book on theological education promoting this type of critical engagement with new media by teachers and students. See:

Then AKMA has this post on reflecting on a meeting to discuss related matters – AKMA’s Random Thoughts – Retrospect and Prospect.

And then Tim chimes in with this post (connected to AKMA’s) – SansBlogue: Bible, Babel and Web 2.0. (Some long comments there – including some from Mark which he refers to here: E-BCNZer: Brighouse – “On Education”).

The integration of digital technologies, with existing pedagogues and technologies, will be here for a while yet. I know that I’ve found it frustrating as both a student and teacher that the roles I’m being trained for/are training people for are collaborative – they stand or fall based upon healthy, dynamic relationships (both in IT and religion) – and yet the systems promote individualism (for assessment particularly) and work to stamp out collaborative efforts (it’s called cheating). Intellectual property discussions (esp. academic ones) also connect here. There must be a better way.

2 Comments

  1. John

    As it stands the exam system is not really all that collaborative, however at other points along the way it seems to me that there are lots of collaborative points. A student collaborates with their professor, with other students either in formal settings such as a tutorial or outside formal setting, say in an exchange of ideas.

    One might even suggest that when a student reads an article or a book, that they are possibly collaborating with the author. Albeit somewhat remotely.

    I would however be very interested to see the issue of IT and religion developed. It is my experience that most people who have not been born in the computer age, have scant regard for IT, limiting their activities to the use of email and wordprocessing an occasional letter. In an information society I’m wondering if this has some limiting factor on religion.

  2. Yes, you’re right that there are degrees of collaboration, including ones that aren’t two-way as others.

    If you’re interested in the IT/Religion things have a look in the Resources link at the top of the page, some of the blog links, and Wikiklesia project link too.