Metamorphosis into the Metavisual

It's time that something needs to change around here. I have recently learned that improvements must be made on this blog because I realize how boring and plain it was. Hopefully now I can up the ante and make this more interesting. I don't want my readers to be bored by what they see.

Don't be this guy!

In order to present information well it must be attractive and engaging to a certain extent. This is the topic of a MOOC talk "Connecting Visual Literacy to Metaliteracy". Metaliteracy is closely connected to social media and the online world. People of the modern world are captivated with first looks and visual information. Like any designer would argue: the product, the information, must be visually pleasing in order to get consumers attracted to it.

This is also what I learned in class, which is why I've updated my blog. Hopefully it will be everchanging, a metablog, if you please. Like metaliteracy is on a higher defined order of literacy, I shall make write and transform this blog on better criteria and expectations I should have. Its in a constantly evolving state.

Like an evolving Pokemon

And as we are metaliterate readers I welcome any insight to improve upon my posts.

Metaliteracy simplified and re-freshened

Hello meta-audiences! There has been something on my mind lately: life is busy and time is short. We all have our own thing going on and we give priorities and spend time on what we value. Truthfully, my talks of metaliteracy are academia related and serve as a requirement for me. My enthusiasm for it varies. Metaliteracy does seem like an abstract concept after all, probably because it sounds too weird and it's hard to get motivation going.

But as I may have mentioned, many of us in some way are metaliterate. Now if we forget about learning this meta-monster for a moment, put a pause on academics, and think about actual forms of metaliteracies, maybe we can learn without the weird taste of being schooled in your mind, welcome this word (metaliteracy) into our dictionaries.

I’m sure at some point we all went on Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter. These are 3 big websites of the modern social world. We may like to watch videos, find out whats happening in people’s lives, read tweets and so on. We know this as social media and entertainment (in academia: media literacy). Ok taking this one step further, let’s contribute to the video, post, or tweet that we have just witnessed (and walk into the realm of metaliteracy). And I’m not talking about just a thumbs up I mean like really say something about whatever you looked at or listened to.

You ever saw how passionate people can argue especially online? (Though sometimes the essays of conversation could turn your attention away.) 

Well if you find that they make a good point or you ever thought “Hey, I didn't think of that” or “that’s something new” then behold what you see is an example of metaliteracy. And let’s turn our minds to education mode and keep this piece of knowledge.

The back and forth of information and ability for discussion is what drives this word: metaliteracy.

From what I gather every time we learn and expand our mind we are becoming more literate, any other form besides meta-. To transform our literacy into metaliteracy gives a little effort when we spew out a little information like kids at show-and-tell.

Metaliteracy on a Global Perspective

"Metaliteracy in Beta" This was the topic from the 4th MOOC talk I listened to.
But exactly what does that mean? During the talk, the speaker was speaking on metaliteracy which was shaped by his personal views. This is true on any source of knowledge; information is never neutral.
People's understandings of literacies are influenced by their surroundings and personal dispositions.
Think of it as an argument: each side has its own agendas, information presented in the way they view it and new information can contribute or argue against it. This is why we must be critical when we take in information as a metaliterate.
Tabloids, news agencies, and so called experts in a field are all producers of information which we must analyze the purpose of their information, what claims are made, and what supports or refutes their knowledge.
So now that we are learning about metaliteracy, we must analyze what has shaped our knowledge and how our understandings are affected by various discourses.

Openness

The best part of the internet and social media is how freely I can open up to you and empowers me to write things I wouldn't normally say. That however is not the point of the title of this post.

The topic of openness in this post is related to "Open Content".
It is also the topic of the 3rd MOOC talk that I am listening to.

As information is easily spread and shared digitally, sometimes we encounter problems:
Ownership, licensing, and giving credit where credit is due.
In today's world people often share, modify, and build upon each other's ideas. You can imagine the arguments and legal troubles associated with this.
Of course open sourced materials are a great thing, to be able to freely access something for your own personal use, entirely beneficial to you. But what about the authors of the work you take and use? What do they gain? This is where the decision of copyrighting and licensing come into play.

There are various ways to get pass this. There are many open education resources available, which are provided in this website: http://www.oercommons.org.
Creative Commons is an organization dedicated to reserving licenses while expanding creative works available for others to legally build upon and share.

So as there are ways to freely maintain access and build upon others works, we as metaliterate learners face no difficulty in doing what we do best: Collaboration.

Metacognition?

Cognition (noun) - The psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning

Source: Wordweb

Metacognition (noun) -  The knowledge and experiences we have about our own cognitive processes.

Source: wordwebonline.com

So what exactly is metacognition? Do we even know what cognition is? I know, sometimes big words can be confusing when you're not using them on a day to day basis. This has what got me thinking while listening to my second MOOC talk. Enthusiasts in this field may explain this in further detail and at length but I shall share a short video which I believe clarifies this well enough:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVE21QhY-lI

Even if these explanations and definitions fly over your head. We are constantly cognitive and metacognitive thinkers. As information flows into your brain, you learn and think and reason. You are sorting this information and building up your knowledge. This is cognition as far as I can explain.

Metacognition is a step up from this, in fact this blog is a form of expressing metacognition!

If you're still not getting this, metacognition is "a literacy of awareness". This description was taken from the MOOC talk. 

Being aware of your own knowledge and evaluating yourself is what I believe metacognition is about. Reflecting upon your thinking process and incorporating yourself into your thoughts.

Can we think about our own thinking?

It sounds abstract and may be confusing but believe or not we are probably doing it all the time.

Into the MOOC

Hello you all. Sorry I haven't been posting as much as I should have. Personal things going on and lethargy got the better of me. Quite the lazy metaliterate learner. Now what is a metaliterate learner you may ask? Now this goes back the my interpretation of metaliteracy and I'll side track a bit. Generally metaliteracy is any form of information that inquires you think and learn. Lately I have been going over some MOOC talks as a critical part of a course I'm taking. (A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course, but more on that later you keep our minds drooling.) In the first MOOC talk, there were speakers introducing the concept of metaliteracy and how it differs from information literacy. Now to give you a taste of this talk I've incorporated an image from their Prezi presentation.

Are you getting the idea now? Are we becoming metaliterate learners? Now here's the tricky part. We can't be metaliterate learners without one crucial thing: collaboration.

Anyone can go and absorb information. There are actually many forms of literacy. This page lets you in on that: http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/5066

But the point here is that a metaliterate learner is a participant of the information they are receiving. Contribution is key. These couple of diagrams, also taken from the MOOC talk gives a sense of this.

Read the outermost circle of words on both of them. See? At this stage we are only information literate. Only once we added a bit of our own thoughts into the pool of information can we truly be metaliterate.