Ella Corcoran IDM 2021

This week, our reading task involved us reading two opinion pieces and an academic paper.   The first opinion piece was “Digital Media Companies Found Lacking in Helping Users Understand  the  Online Environment” by Dr. Niam Kirk. She explains that the E C  has a co de of practice o n  disinformation , and each country has a commissioned code check to make sure that media companies such as Twitter, Google, Facebook and Microsoft are  adhering  to the code.    What I found really shocking about the piece was that  all  these companies had insufficient information for any real analysis to be done  on how much support Irish consumers were getting. Google’s lack of effort was extremely telling by its failure to launch media literacy campaigns in Ireland, when they already had such  campaigns running in the UK and Europe.   Kirk also brings up the interesting point that while Facebook and Google  do fact check th...

  This week for our video task, we watched 3 videos about media literacy. The first two videos were short info-graphic videos about media literacy and why it’s important. The first video, by MediaSmarts, explained that while digital media is more interactive, it’s also a lot easier to fake what you post. This is a really important point, as there’s been many times where fake posts went viral worldwide for their believability, such as the “Eagle Snatches Baby” video. The video was originally a college project made by three Animation and Design students in Montreal, however the mix of the shaky cinematography and the realistic eagle model was enough to fool so many people that the video garnered over 46 million views on youtube. It’s easy to think you can’t be fooled by internet hoaxes, but it’s even easier to create a convincing fake.  The second video, by the University of Derby, talked about the importance of media literacy and the different levels people can have in it. As i...

This week, for our reading task, we were asked to read 2 pages from The Open University about critical reading and active reading. I’ve always struggled with reading longer academic papers, but I found these pages to be a good place to start. I now know what I need to do to prepare for my reading tasks, how to stay focused and how to find the information I need from the text. I was unaware of the SQ3R strategy until I read the page on active reading, and I believe it will really help me in my work.  I never really thought of having questions written down to answer after reading a paper for the first time. Knowing the purpose of the reading, the information I need and the task I need to complete based on my readings will greatly help me in this course.  I put this strategy into use while reading “Using Student-Constructed Questions to Encourage Active Reading” by Ernest Balajthy. I was surprised to find that the paper was written in 1984, I typically wouldn’t question the publi...

This week, for our video task, we were required to watch three different videos. One of them was about the best ways to study, the second one was about active reading and the third one was about media literacy. The first video, titled “The 3 best science based study tips” by Mike and Matty, focused on different, scientifically proven ways of effectively studying. I found that the process of quizzing yourself after studying a topic, called “active recall,” was my main way of studying in secondary school. I find this method of studying really effective! I was able to learn things off really well in a short amount of time since I had come up with the answers myself. I was also more likely to learn the answer off when I couldn’t remember it while quizzing myself. The video also discussed the strategies of spacing (studying when you’ve forgotten most, but not all, of the content you’re studying) and mixing (effectively practicing and using the concepts learned in order to understand them b...