Friday, February 15, 2008

The Internet Connection

Ivan Chew, giving the most engaging power point presentation I've seen


Yesterday's blog would be impossible not to tie into the Davies Forum on Digital Literacy's speaker Ivan Chew and his talk at USF yesterday. Chew, expert blogger (he has 8 blogs- his main blog link is here) and Singaporean librarian, spoke mostly about the connections that can be and have already been created through blogs and the internet. It seems the couch on the street I spoke of is a symbol for the internet! and perhaps more specifically, blogs. I will elaborate.



The most interesting part of the talk for me was his mention of IG (Inter-Generational) relationships in his segment on seniors and blogging. I guess this part was so interesting to me because I do think about the divide between old people and young people. Maybe it is just as simple as that there's no relationship there because the two generations can't relate. But old people have stories to tell, and young people have so much to learn, that it seems there should at least be an attempt at a connection. What if, for example, kids in elementary school who were assigned a project about something that took place in recent history could have the choice to go to the library and check out a book, or to connect with someone who had actually experienced this time in history- through a library hosted blog? I think this would be great.

Some seniors don't blog or may be apprehensive about it because the internet in general is still foreign to them, not to mention that negative view the media can give blogging and the Internet. And also seniors are more private- they come from more traditional times. One thing that does get them into blogging, Chew pointed out, is so that their great great grandchildren can read about them. They usually don't trust the Internet otherwise. Maybe the library hosted blog could remedy this apprehension. If they were to realize that sharing their stories created positive results, and then saw the beauty of newfound connections, they would be more into it. The key is showing seniors the beauty of it. The Internet truly does get a bad wrap in the press- sex stalkers, identity theft, etc.

All seniors have stories, and do have motivation to tell them, they just need to be asked. A guest in the audience, identifying himself as a senior (he was in his late 50s or early 60s), pointed out that also most seniors don't want to write their own stories but dictate them to someone who will type them, or they will sit in a front of a camera- a videoblog.

I don't know, it seems pretty cool to me. I think if when I were in elementary school or high school and could have seen a videoblog of someone talking about what the depression was about, rather than learning about it in a book, I would have been wayyyy more interested. Hopefully this is the future.

The theme of Ivan's talk was -we are so alike-. His ideas may even be so profound to say that if more people used the Internet and connected with each other and realized this idea, there would be less war. He concluded by showing us a video he had made, with his own computer created music too- called, "Dolphins Galaxia." The music was lovely and inspirational and the visuals were a decoupage of visuals of different lights from all different settings (like stars in the sky and the sun and the earth and sun rays in water) so that while watching it I was thinking the lights represented the connections made by the Internet, and the dolphins swimming around represented the innocent bystanders, affected by the lovely connections. Like the couch provides a place for.

6 comments:

Amber said...

I love the connection between this post and your couch post. Very cool. I agree that hearing real stories from people's lives about history can be so much more engaging.

On a different note, I noticed that you just pasted the URL for Ivan Chew's blog instead of making it a link. You can make text into a link really easily by clicking the little button at the top of the text box that looks kind of like a globe and a chain link (just to the right of the text alignment buttons). You select the text you want to be a link, click the button, and paste in the URL.

lissle said...

thanks amber! i was wondering about that.

Ivan Chew said...

Hi lissle, try this blogger help document also.

Very thoughtful analysis re: the seniors + blogging + IG gap. There's a nice connection from your ideas (I'll blog about it soon).

And I love your interpretation of the Dolphin Galaxia video! I've never thought about that angle, but it makes excellent sense to me. So cool.

Kelly said...

Picture this: I'm researching "Great Depression" and "American History" at my local library. I type in these as keywords. What if, in addition to holdings i.e. books which have this keyword, links to video clips of seniors' recollections which also contain these keywords come up. A searchable and easily accessed database to enhance research, with real, human recollections. As an oral historian, I am salivating. This idea (originated by Ivan and flushed out by you) is inspirational. Let's make it happen!

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you that it would be way more interesting to learn someone who has personally gone through the expearience. I remember I heard a talk from a woman that went through the civil rights struggle and it was way more powerful than reading a book

lissle said...

I agree Kelly! I'm in