Wednesday, October 30, 2013


LEARNING IN DIGITAL CULTURE

What is culture? And what is the importance of it?
Culture is related to the development of one's attitude. One's culture plays an important role in shaping the principles of the individual's life; culture shapes the personality of a community. The cultural values of an individual have a deep impact on his/her attitude towards life. According to the behaviorist definition of culture, it is the ultimate system of social control where people monitor their own standards and behavior. The importance of culture cannot be stressed enough as it is an integral part of living. On the other hand now the new culture is developing which is called digital or cyber culture.  Digital culture is an environment where teachers and students use   available ICT technology.
Digital culture has following characteristic in contrast to conventional culture:
1.  Constant availability
2.  Wide range of information
3.  Easy access
In spite of above mentioned benefits one major obstacle in cyber culture is growing use of passwords and monetary involvement to restrict information.
On the other hand free information is also available in abundance but authenticity and quality cannot be assured.
As the present world is becoming mainly commercial oriented digital information is also commercialized.
The example of Digital culture is like an umbrella where all sides of cultures merge in to it, where the information can be obtained and passed on without any hesitation, instead of F2F culture where people will be hesitant and shy in communicating with each other.
Recently I completed my PGCTHE course in e-learning in higher education. This course was entirely based on digital culture and it gave me the experience of digital leaning in cyber culture.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Annie,

    I agree with the benefits you mentioned on digital culture; availability, amount of information and easy access. But as you mentioned the coin has two sides. It´s too easy to communicate thoughtless online and there is so much irrelevant information too. Online learning might play here an important role too, to learn people how to behave and use digital media properly.

    Regards, Tuire

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Annie,
    Thank you for your Topic task 2.

    You have raised some relevant issues and special characteristicis of digital culture. By the way, what are the sources/references you have used in this reflection task?

    What is your opinion (Teräs et al, 2012) that a virtual learning community create / negotiates its own culture? What is your reaction to this statement? What experiences do you have of this is based PGCTHE?




    ReplyDelete