After I finished the test I think. I got a sense of direction on those skills I need to improve, and focus on. The shocking thing for me was to know that I need to work on the communication & collaboration part, and the identity and well being, as I knew from the beginning of the test that I will have weaknesses on the create and innovate part, but I never guessed that I will have to work on these other 2 field, and that I will need to explore and understand my digital identity more.
I really enjoyed reading the article “Knowing the Difference Between Digital Skills and Digital Literacies, and Teaching Both”. It was very beneficial that after finishing the course to understand from the instructor herself how she was teaching. I really liked the experience. Most of the professors I had in my 3 years at AUC. None of them was actually focusing on the why ?
The most important thing what I really loved about the article and the course in general is focusing on the “why” in every course I always wondering why I am learning this and how I will use it ? but most of the time I don’t found answers professors and even the students are so busy with the assignments, exams, and grades that they don’t focus on why they are learning this or that. This point was perfectly summarized in the article itself in these few sentences “It means teaching progressively rather than sequentially, which helps learners understand better and more clearly over time.”
Another part that I really liked in the course and the article is on even focusing on the limitations of the of digital tools. I think even teaching the limitation of the the digital tool can be more important than learning how to use them. Because in the digital world your always addressing a lot of people who are very different, so you have to understand how to address them, and even more how to accept their criticism.
Another article that I had the chance to read, and I really learned from, and enjoyed is “Understand the issue”. The article is mainly discussing to what extent does the internet invades our own privacy, but what I really liked about the article is the explanation of 2 concepts that I wasn’t familiar with the first one is “the great privacy awakening“. Which is the huge shift in public awareness about privacy and security in the digital world that happened in the last of couple of years. I really liked this term and its explanation because usually articles that tackles this issue specifically are always so pessimistic, and they usually pictures the users as the weaker side of the equation who have nothing to do rather than to accept the digital world as it is, but in this article things were different. The start of the article has this empowerment of internet users which I think we are in desperate need for in order to win this battle with greedy corporates. We need to empower people’s awareness and built upon to win this battel. Another explanation that I really enjoyed, and I think that it summarizes the whole situation in a couple of sentences is ” the dominant business model and currency of today’s digital world is based on gathering and selling data about us“. that is exactly the problem our own privacy is the currency in today’s digital world, and this few sentences explain Cambridge Analytica scandal perfectly that exactly what happened, and this is what we need to understand and teach others about until we find the way to change this dominant business model.
Despite that I really enjoyed the reading of the first 2 articles, but this upcoming article is definitely my favorite one. The “Your mobile apps are tracking you” article is the kind of article that shocked me from the very first sentence. It started with a study from oxford university that studied nearly 1 million free android app. The study found out that all the Apps had utilities that track and send data about users to the developers of the app. Furthermore The researchers wasn’t even able to identify what types of data do these companies harvest exactly, but this part is the most dangerous part, as the researchers warn that the app developers can collect info and data that isn’t even directly related or used by the app. Furthermore, with this lack of transparency about the type of the data that is harvested , the researchers believes that if the data harvested form multiple apps are put together , alongside other online history and behavior. This can be used to create a very detailed profiles of individuals that can expect the interests, sexual orientation, health status of the users, but one of the greatest thing about this article is that it did provide solution to minimize all the damage mentioned before such as turning off or reset advertising identifiers on your mobile phones, and on computers use safe browsers that takes privacy as a big deal such as Tor.
Finally the last thing that I want to discuss is the the path I choose, and explain why did I choose, and finally what the goals that I want to achieve from my choice . My first choice was definitely the theory path from the first moment I opened the theory path link, and saw the article I knew that this is the path that I will work on till the end of the semester. The article was really interesting and attractive for me. I always was obsessed with the how companies such as Facebook and Google are collecting our data and even central intelligence agencies. I was obsessed with this topic since the Snowden incident in US. To be honest also when I got to choose any topic for discussion in any of my core courses. I always picked this one. because I believe that we need to understand perfectly how to protect ourselves in today’s world.
Sources:
Karim Shawki 
One reply on “Choose your Digital Literacies Path”
Hey Karim- where are the rest of the articles you read and their reflections and links?
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