Assessment 3: Digital publishing production and reflection

Can we live without digital technology? I think that the answer is absolutely not, as people’s life are completely dependent on digital technology. If the world does not exist digital technology, the life will definitely change a lot. For example, if people do not have a mobile phone, they cannot use Google map to check the location when they get lost. They also cannot call for help. Furthermore, they cannot share their life on social media without digital technology. In the former time, even people do not have these digital products, and they still can live comfortably. Nowadays, people cannot lose these electronic devices as everyone is accustomed to depend on digital technology. None of us can deny that advanced technology brings massive benefits to people.

Computer and laptop has become the need for people, if people without a computer or laptop, they cannot survive and accomplish their target in today world. There are numerous of benefits of laptop. For example, people can communicate with others around the world through laptop, even people travel to another country or other city. Also, people can shop online through laptop and it is easy to buy any kind of product from around the world. According to this picture, each student uses their laptop to take notes in class. This is a really common phenomenon in school as students become increasingly digital literate. Students can use their laptop to access the Internet in order to conduct research in preparation for papers, projects and presentations. Furthermore, students use their laptops to make notes, which enable them save more time whether in response to a lecture or a reading. What’s more, notes on the laptop can be more organized, as they can easily insert some details in the middle of a text and quickly search for any information they want. All of these benefits brought by technology.

This image I took on a tutorial. I want to express a digital world and show the different visual effects for reader, so that I used Wand Tool to cut out the background. However, this picture is hard to cut out as its composition are complicated. Therefore, I used Wand Tool to cut out most of its background at first. After that, I boosted the size of photos in order to use Lasso Tool for more precision in work. Due to the Lasso Tool is essentially a manual selection tool that depends on own drawing skills, as well as on the accuracy and performance of own mouse, the photo falls well short of perfect. Then, I also use Lasso Tool to sketch people and chose box blur to vague people in order to emphasize several laptops. Finally, I added topic words of the picture at the top, which is “Can we live without digital technology?”. Also, I changed these words’ color and front to make it better.

Assessment 3: Digital publishing production and reflection

Image 1: The Good manners is putting your phone away at the dinner table

Smartphones have already changed the world and become a very important part of our daily lives. Also. smartphones now function not merely as communications devices, but as a kind of social cue. Nowadays, over a billion people worldwide have smartphones. However, everything has its pros and cons and mobile phones also has its advantages and disadvantages.

I took this picture in the restaurant. One day, I ate dinner with my friends. However, he played the phone games all the time, which resulted in our almost zero communication in our dinner time. When I look at around, I found that this phenomenon is very common. People get used to the life with mobile phone, and they use the mobile phone all the time. Nowadays, more and more children, teens and adults are high-tech centered on life. Hence, many kids are missing out on learning important social skills that come from interacting with people instead of screens. According to the research (Understood 2016), there is 61 per cent of people thought that overuse of technology had brought a negative impact on family life. Furthermore, 56 per cent of people hate use of electronic devices during family mealtimes. As technology rapidly increases and the information age expands, most people also prefer to share their life on social media. For example, when people date with someone in the restaurant, they would like to take photos before eating. When I eat outside with my friends, they always ask me to wait until she takes all photos. This is because that she wants to share with her followers on social media, such as, Facebook, Instagram. Hence, this is why I would like to use this image to reflect the problem.

The second picture I used Pixlr to edit it. Firstly, I used the filter to vignette the background to reduce the brightness around the image which was resulted in a so-called “hotspot” effect. This step is important as it can make readers focus on my picture’s central point directly. Secondly, I adjusted its hue, saturation, and lightness to make colors more vivid. Thirdly, I used box blur to filter the food as represent to phone is more important than food in his eyes. Finally, in order to keep things simple and clear, I just added three words at the top and then changed the color and fonts.

In my opinion, I thought that playing mobile phone is bad manners of having meals. I hope that people can return to the golden era of good manners, which is putting your phone away at the dinner table.

Reference:

Understood 2016, Should I Let My Child Quietly Use His Phone at the Dinner Table?, Child Mind Institute, viewed 14 October 2016, https://www.understood.org/en/family/events-outings/family-dinners-and-dining-out/should-i-let-my-child-quietly-use-his-phone-at-the-dinner-table.

Week 8: Image and type exercise

(1)

This is the original photo I took in the library. My friend was using Iphone to play the games and watched the drama in the laptop at the same time. There is also a Ipad behind his laptop.

(2)

(3)

We’re addicted to our phones: 84% worldwide say they couldn’t go a single day without their mobile device in their hand. Nowadays, people have become overly dependent on technology. We can not live without the electronic devices as they have become an important part of our daily life. The electronic devices enable us entertain, work, and shop much more conveniently and diversely。

The second and third photos I use Pixlr to edited them. Firstly, I use Adjustment menu to make background more brighten. Secondly, I adjusted the brightness and contrast to improve picture’s quality. Thirdly, I use Gaussian blur to creates the soft, blurry look and give photos a nice glossy shimmer. Fourthly, different texts are used to represent meanings. Finally, I use drawing tool to draw an opaque shape in the layer and move this layer to sit with the text.

Assessment task 1: Reflective blog – Critical

Nowadays, advanced digital technology lead people increasingly dependent on digital devices, so that many people cannot live without a mobile phone or computer. However, childhood is an important period for future health and well-being. Digital gaming is a very promising industry while it presents challenges to current health promotion efforts.

Technology has changed the opportunities for social networks for many people. Today, social media also enters many children’s lives. According to the research, there are double the number of tablet devices for children aged under eight. Meanwhile, 79% of children access the Internet. Furthermore, children used tablet devices for 5 minutes everyday in 2011, while in 2013 this increased to 15 minutes everyday (Kervin 2016 p.65). However, play contexts not only can provide children opportunities to practice using language, but also can learn language from each other. This is because, some games are a powerful tool which can help children to learn and improve life skills. From these styled games such as brain training or quizzes, children can achieve lots of benefits. Furthermore, digital technologies provide a chance to document the play that in turn creates an artifact to share and respect the play experience (Kervin 2016 p.68). In addition, the digital play also provides opportunities for children to study language and literacy. Because of mobile, multi-touch screens of the tablet technologies, children have changed the way to interact with image, sounds and thoughts (Kervin 2016 p.72).

Many young children need to engage with these digital technologies, because it will improve children’s literacy development and also can increase the relationship with significant others. Some people think that playing video games decreases the children’s attention while research shows that children who play video games regularly are better able to filter out distractions. Also, video games can improve children’s problem-solving skills. For example, World of Warcraft needs three aspects which are planning, organization and flexible thinking. Additionally, video games can improve children’s creativity. Nevertheless, every advantage brings with it real disadvantages. Children today compared to 30 years ago are completely drunk on playing games and smartphones. They can sit in from of the computer for a long time everyday and they also do not separate clearly the virtual world and real life. Children believe that they can do anything in the real world which they see from the games. This is because, technology has become mature and games are also more and more true to life.

In conclusion, many children start to use digital devices when they are young. Although, playing video games can help to develop perceptual and cognitive abilities and motor skills, video games have negative effects on the physical health of children. In order to reduce the negative effects of gaming on children, parents need to keep a close eye on the type of games their children play.

 

Reference:

Kervin. L, 2016, ‘Powerful and playful literacy learning with digital technologies’, Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, vol.39, no.1, pp.64-73

Assessment 1: Reflective blog – Critical

With the development of technology, society is changing rapidly. Nowadays, people cannot live without technology, because it brings to people’s life lots of convenience and color. However, the awareness of media, digital and information literacy become more and more important. This is because they deeply affect people’s perceptions, beliefs and attitudes, especially the influence of society and politics (Koltay 2011 p.211).

Digital literacy includes the personal awareness, attitude and skill which are needed in the digital world. It appropriately uses digital tools and facilities to access, manage, evaluate and analyze, construct new knowledge, create new media expression and communicate with others (Koltay 2011 p.216). In addition, digital literacy expresses exclusively the effective use of information and communication technology (ICT). Although digital literacy relates and includes many things, it does not claim to own. For example, it includes information display modes, but it does not subsume creative writing and visualization. Furthermore, it encompasses organizational information while it does not claim to advocate and operate the terminological structure and classification (Koltay 2011 p.216). Because of a high rate of media consumption and saturation of social media, it is vital for people to learn how to effectivity use information in society. Nowadays, most people prefer to spend much time-consuming entertainment media which includes television, Internet, movie and video games. However, media literacy focuses on developing an informed and critical understanding of the nature of mass media. It aims to increase students’ understanding and enjoyment of media work. Therefore, the purpose of media literacy is to provide students with the ability to create media products (Koltay 2011 p.213).

Nowadays, networks brings people great convenience but people cannot ignore the violence on the communities is a tremendous risk. Whether it is through email, instant messaging, cellphones, texting or web sites, cyberbullying is a growing problem. Sometimes, network violence can do serious damage to people. Hence, the awareness of media literacy become increasingly important in social life. However, digital literacy becomes an indispensable subject in school. This is because, technology and the Internet is the part of social life, that brings people lots of benefits, so that students should knowhow to use computer and Internet sources to organize, understand, evaluate and analyze information. Nevertheless, many schools in poor areas do not have the ability to support these digital devices which results in many students not knowing how to use a computer and the Internet. They not only lack engagement with computers, but also lack access and Internet connection. Due to this economic and environmental problem, many poor students have difficulty to learn the computer skills.

To conclude, people need to be aware of media literacy and digital literacy. Media literacy education can improve traditional print literacy skills and digital literacy can help people to organize, evaluate and analyze information (Koltay 2011 p.217). Although technology brings people great convenience and entertainment, people not only need to increase their digital literacy, but also need to increase their network literacy. Additionally, network literacy is essential media literacy for adolescents in the information age.

 

Reference:

Koltay. T, 2011, ‘The media and the literacies: media literacy, information literacy, digital literacy’, Media, Culture & Society, vol.33, pp. 211-221.

Assessment 1: Reflective blog – Critical

In the information age of today, people have realized that the Internet affects every aspect of the life. Firstly, the Internet can be used as a powerful database, which solves students’ study questions. Secondly, the social platform enables users to communicate with each other easily via the internet. However, there are no time and place limitations and there are no boundaries, both geographical and political, people can share their thoughts with everyone.

There are huge differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous users of digital technology. Firstly, over 77% of remote communities have to use the same public telephone. Only 20% of people in remote communities have a fixed telephone (Rennie et al. 2016 p.19). Many remote Indigenous communities cannot live without modern conveniences. For example, they need to connect broadband or Wi-Fi, while these communities not only lose these convenience, but are also missing out on the opportunity of the speed of communication afforded by digital technologies. Secondly, the broadband market and government policy did not consider these remote Aboriginal communities and they also did not encourage residents who lived in remote communities to adopt broadband (Rennie et al. 2016 p.20). However, Indigenous communities do not have the good condition of the digital device which resulted in exacerbating the social disadvantage experienced, especially in access to education and employment opportunities. The majority of Indigenous people long to overcome the problem of remoteness and have better digital access. Nevertheless, there is a lack of fundamental infrastructure, such as roads, water, power and so on which leads to a bleak future for the Internet on many outstations (Rennie et al. 2016 p.23). These remote communities not only lack basic infrastructure, but also lack generators for electric power which results in preventing more computer access

Nowadays, although the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous using the digital device has reduced, more needs to be done. According to Anderson and Tracey, Internet services do not change the way of simple life, but are supporting and enhance lifestyles (Rennie et al. 2016 p.25). In addition, the rate of access in remote communities is extremely low, because there are limit to access to essential services in indigenous communities. For instance, only 10% of adult have their computer and also 10% of people can connect to the Internet at home. Even though some people use the computer, they cannot always get a satellite connection. After the reform of the NBN project, the museums, schools, libraries and community centers now provide high speed access. Therefore, communities members receive a reliable internet connection and functional hardware. With the development of technology, the Internet has become increasingly important in daily life. This is because, many fields need the Internet to work, such as education, healthcare, business and government. As a result, access to Indigenous communities is becoming significant to ensure provision of service, especially in education and health and to keep technology developments up to date. Digital devices play a vital role in overcoming Indigenous social disadvantage. As time goes on, development of modern science and technology, fundamental issues in communities can be solved.

To sum up, in order to reduce the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous using digital device, the government not only needs to encourage residents who lived in remote communities to adopt broadband, but also needs to improve their living conditions

 

Reference:

Rennie, E., Hogan, E., Gregory, R. Crouch, R., Wright, A. & Thomas, J. 2016, ‘Introduction’, Internet on the Outstation: The Digital Divide and Remote Aboriginal Communities, pp.13-27.