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Class Concepts Week 1

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Netsmart. How can we use digital media so that they help us become empowered participants rather than passive consumers? In Net Smart, I show how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and, above all, mindfully. Download the introductory chapter (PDF) here. Mindful use of digital media means thinking about what we are doing, cultivating an ongoing inner inquiry into how we want to spend our time. I outline five fundamental digital literacies, online skills that will help us do this: attention, participation, collaboration, critical consumption of information (or "crap detection"), and network smarts.

I explain how attention works, and how we can use our attention to focus on the tiny relevant portion of the incoming tsunami of information. There is a bigger social issue at work in digital literacy, one that goes beyond personal empowerment. CCI. The Digital Journalist's Handbook - ON SALE NOW. What The F**K is Social Media? Social Media. Thinking. Vygotskian Approach - Tools of the Mind. Lev Vygotsky Dr. Lev Vygotsky The concept of “tools of the mind” comes from the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. He believed that just as physical tools extend our physical abilities, mental tools extend our mental abilities, enabling us to solve problems and create solutions in the modern world.

When applied to children, this means that to successfully function in school and beyond, children need to learn more than a set of facts and skills. They need to master a set of mental tools—tools of the mind. According to Vygotsky, until children learn to use mental tools, their learning is largely controlled by the environment; they attend only to the things that are brightest or loudest, and they can remember something only if has been repeated many times. One of Vygotsky’s contemporaries, psychologist Kurt Lewin, was known to have said, “There is nothing more practical than a good theory.” STOP. Fish trinity. Human.