Instructional Technologies

This course is fabulously designed and provides critical perspectives to Education and Education philosophy and theory. Its major component is Technology and the way in which the radically changing technologies could be harnessed for Education.
It has provided with onhands learning of technologies such as podcasts, wikis and google search.
The entire thrust of the programme is towards the Emancipatory value embedded in Educational Theory and this is taken to full length.
It is one course which could provide Critical ideas - for the use of technologies in the Library and for those who do Cultural Informatics and Information Architecture and Design to be enriched through cultural theory and criticism.
It definitely bears great scope.

You Tube !

As instrumental technology my assessment of the medium gives it some positive value. It does certainly involve sharing both the output and congeniality between users. It has the scope of developing into a proper film making medium.
However, it has structural flows which is not a plus and its search possibilities are not enhanced to whatever causes.
The Internet being a private space and not being provided by the Government as a Public Forum status means that issues of copyright do work against the users.
For making social and political documentaries or films, it needs to be investing into proper equipment which would allow the cinematic justification.

Podcasts as Instructional Technology

Some how I found the idea of podcast and being able to have RSS feeds to one's created piece resonates powerfully as a medium of Instruction. Perhaps it has to do with the auditory rather than visual aspect of the outcome, more akin to a radio.
Alas, it too needs some investment - some good gadgets which would provide high quality sound and end product.
However, for educational training and providing such programmes which could be employed over the Internet, it is definitely one of the powerful pieces of technology.
One could envisage rich socio-historical documentation which embrace marginalised racial, gender and individual voices to provide them a platform to reflect the plight of the human condition.
Or a lighter use for artistic creations as well or for lighter drama and events.
Rather than the end, it is the means to do things which is quite powerful.

Instructional Technologies & Democracy

Instructional Technologies seem to provide means for realisation of democracy. However, the factors of commodification of culture and corporatisation of technology itself are an anethema to this realisation.
The measure of the success of the utility of culture and technology is largely correlated to individuals being able to buy these means. It also depends upon the factor of the Internet - which is largely a corporate entity in which individual groups struggle to create a commons. Unless the Government accords the Internet some specific status such as a Public Forum through its judicial process, the Internet remains to a great degree a huge private enterprise.
The question of democracy vis a vis Instructional technologies is tenuous.

The Google Experience - Ceding Memory

The McLuhaneque idea that electronically based machines more than the mechanical ones not only radicalise the nature of information but also mould the human thought processes themselves is apt in understanding Google. Google's booking keeping all agendas, schedules, newscasts or interests, means necessary shift in concentration, behavioural changes individual and collective in relation to information and one's own thinking and contemplation. It is the question of cessation of one's memory to the electronic one. One is confronted with the problem that one is able to accumulate electronic information versus what one actually is able to do with it, whether one uses it or just disposes it off having an impact directly on one's behaviour.
The question of Google also confronts us with the routine notions of efficacy, immediacy and currency of information. A mythic importance is rendered to information, its utility and value. Most information is considered necessarily valid information on account of its facticity and currency. The myth is propounded on the basis of the rapid availability and churning of information.
Whereas information within the processes of the human mind deals with its long term ontological relation through interpretation, memory and history beyond the mathematical and statistical based notions of facticity. Human thoughts and ideas pertain to memory, dreams, collective consciousness and not the expediency of information. Google's ability to react with immediacy to electronic automation, collection, transmission and to say the least manipulation of information is largely akin to an inverted Taylorist instrumental logic - scientific and mass produced. Such Taylorist precepts are replete with the commodification, utilitarianist and efficacy of information which have deeper problematic in view of the ontological relation of information vis a vis the human minds. The functioning of time and motion and mechanical perfection of an inverted form of Taylorist information keeper such as Google is not necessarily the basis of knowledge production.
Two important problems underlying the principles on which the Google scheme is based. Google seems to operate on the principle of the market solution. An example which serves the market solution is the manner in which the scholarly community is affected by the notions of provision of information and its utility. The UCL studies demonstrate the 'promiscuous' nature of scholars relation to information seeking and 'consumers' of their own creative work. Otherwise known as skimming, this nature says the list about the manner in which the psychic and ontological nature involved in one's seeking of information. This view of information is based entirely on instrumental and mathematical logic. The studies themselves which monitor how a scholar applies a rationale for viewing information online are not critically examined for their own methodology and computer generated models. Secondly, a deeper problem of surveillance ensues. Google maintains various tools to retain the researcher's information habits and information sought which in a country like China, it works hand in glove with the Government to obtain and retain this information against its very own citizens. Hence there are challenges to the furtherance of democracy and one's rights.
I veiw Google in terms of the ontological cessation of memory, market solution and surveillance.

The Wikipedia and Education

The raison d'etre of the Wikipedia, an Internet based Encyclopedia, is the democratisation, pragmatisation of knowledge through circumventing the hierarchical nature of knowledge in the traditional sense. However, it is critically debatable whether the self-claimed Encyclopedia could be termed as one. True, it does provide a vast spectrum of information about topics under the sun, however a close scrutiny does question whether it subscribes to the provision of Encyclopediac knowledge or simply dubitable factual information. The few positive characteristics give a glimpse and challenge the notions of an Encyclopedia in a traditional sense. Its self-claims are that it is a non-profit organisation and democratic. It supposedly considers the views of H.G. Wells and Frederick Hayek who promoted the notion of social principle of knowledge through 'world brain' which presupposes collaboration and an ahierarchical basis to knowledge against the classical Descartian concept which informed the European Enlightenment. In reality, the democratisation comes only at the stake of rigorous scholarship. The wikipedia begins with not too benign a beginning. It is afflicted by the problem of gender and anonymity. Only a mere 2% of its registered users contribute towards the wikipedia, 80 % of its users are male, operating along the post modernist principles, it sacrifices the notion of Truth and beset with the problem of research and factuality. It rings with the post modern strain that "Truth could be anybody's". Its merit for Educational use ought to be examined thoroughly but its various links and reference citations could be useful. The wikipedia is not in the classical sense an encyclopedia but a few notches underneath it.

SNS Experimentation

There is certainly a qualitative distinction between Popular and Professional SNS. Looking broadly at the popular sites, one comes with the idea the there is a sense of obsolescence, sense of Time fleeting away and a question of Time and Memory. The popular SNS seem to have a place where one can create multiple identities and hence portray a post modern sense of one's own self. It provides the fizz in the ability to use the SNS in its novelty and its sheer possibility of widening the social groups and one's sense of community. Paradoxically it acts as a sword of Damocles, the very reach of multitudinal individuals prohibits the active socialisation. The Professional SNS appear more sedate and cater directly to the point of a particular social and professional need.

Social Networking Sites

Are the sites for socialising or consignment to the Internet Graveyard? My foray into the SNS has only marginally ameliorated my perspectives slightly shifting from deep to neutral scepticism. In my mind, the question of ideology is central to the problem of social networking. Does the SNS genuinely allow for "mediated publics" or is it an hyperbola? There are three contentious issues which came to my mind whilst experimenting along the SNS. One, popular social networking is intricably linked to commodification of the Internet. As the Internet has proved it tends to lay several sites to rest in its dark graveyard without a memory. The marriage between popular SNS and advertisement revenues is an uneasy one. Revenues play a key role in sustaining the SNS hence the commodification of technology is the central determinant of whether the popular social sites can truly act as mediation. Two, SNS as aspects of public socialising and creation of social groups through technology necessarily impinges upon the public and private domains. It may appear that technology blurrs this distinction however in reality the Internet and the SNS are confronted with legal and ethical issues. The question of free speech, privacy and surveillance are directly correlated to the SNS. Three, a social site the SNS begs the question of one's identity, what and whose identity there exists. In light of the foregoing issues, can educators truly enhance the social contexts of their students? The factors at play are far too greater than the sum of them for a considered and measured educational role. For education, the sense of reality and truth far exceed in importance than the question of the use of SNS which offers facile means to communicate.

Lesson Plan

I have an affinity to History and am considering any Thematic study of relevance of a History lesson from any epoch. A pedagogical approach would allow a critical understanding of the development of that through textual and data base resources.

Tagging - Ideological ?

The question of Social Tagging can be viewed as a direct correlation to ideology. Tagging is not simply an instrumentalist basis for education as the question of who owns and can access technology are important critical features involving education.

Tagging- Democratic ?

The concept of social tagging has within itself an implicit ideal of democratisation of learning and sharing knowledge. This assumption is possible because technological access allows empowering a learner. Tagging operates to allow key words which act as representations of concepts and thus as signifiers of an object represented by meaning and its signification.However, the reality remains that knowledge by virtue of its anthropological basis and by its construct has some hierarchical structure and organisation which tagging may not be able to overcome entirely. As Freire demonstrates, however much the argument for democratisation of learning through dialogical and intersubjective processes, the knowledge structuration is difficult to obliterate. The relation between the human mind and its object of learning operates through schematic processes. The instructor is empowered and in turn seeks to empower the learners.
Social Tagging certainly allows the possibility of empowering learners to seek words which represent some concepts of some representation.The modernist and post-modernist perspectives show that the human individual is an agent is highly individuated and hence operates ever more subjectivity.
The claims of tagging as largely democratic beg to be empirically verified through sociological, pychological and linguistic studies. Social Tagging also involves the critical element of gender, race, cultures and social and economic contexts of human individuals which may be important factors in the consideration of tagging and its potential for an ideal shared democratic platform for meaning. To top it all, there is the question of the ownership of technology and the 'participation gap' which has been engendered on account of the digital world and economies of information.If these fundamental factors are taken into consideration normatively, there is the potential of social tagging to become one of the modes in which objects could be represented meaningfully through cultural and pluralist semiotics and become more meaningful way of representing reality. Afterall learning is an endeavour to seek one's place within the Universe and the world we live in and a democratic ideal of learning where everyone gets an equal chance to make meaning and becoming human.

The Library - Participatory

Question: What is the potential of the Web 2.0 in a radical conception of the Library and School and can these institutions enable the normative possibility of emancipation.The Web 2.0 act as a platform which allows the interconnectivity and interactivity of the proliferated range of content in the World Wide Web. It thus facilitates communication, information sharing, interoperability and collaboration for users, and development of services and applications through social-networking , video-sharing, wikis, blogs and folksonomy sites. In this manner it has become an 'architecture of participation'.Such a participatory architecture has implications for the Library and through employing instructional technologies in Education to enhance learning.
The idea of 'architecture of participation' resonates with Jenkins notion of 'convergence culture'. Jenkins three central concepts 'media convergence', 'participatory culture' and 'collective intelligence' descriptively explain the cultural logic of media and how media congruity has occured.
Similarly The Web 2.0 can be viewed as a convergence culture with a critical function in the Library and for Instructional technologies. The technological and cultural shifts have changed the relationships between technologies, market, genres and audiences to the level in which human communication and learning can be furthered and facilitated.
However, particpation leads to critical questions such as the digital divide. Can every individual access information in the converged borderless culture and hence the idea of 'participation gap'. The 21st Century Library and Schools can address the critical issue of participation and fill the normative role of democratic rights egalitarianism through the concerns of emancipation through education.
It is the Library and Schools central role in enhancing the democratic culture through the technological and cultural shifts affecting communication world wide. The issue of 'participation gap' is crucial therefore to the institutions of culture and learning.

Making Sense of Media Literacy

Both disciplines of education and Information Science would be enhanced through Media Literacy. As Informational and Media technologies mushroom with hastening pace, they could be harnessed to further critical foundations of literacy in Schools and the Library as technologies and literacy both presuppose culture and politics.
McLuhan's argues the centrality of electronic technologies in modern societies having profound social and psychological changes operationally and practically. He likens the complex intertwining of electronic technology and human mediation to a biological system in which the media become an extension of man. Such development is a force which leads to massive differentiation, specialisation and alienation in the Weberian sense and equally powerfully on the evolution of societies unparalleled in history hitherto mechanised by simple mass processes.
The pervasive extent of technologies leads to a complex phenomenon, a 'media event', involving most human activities, leisure, educational or personal mediated through electronically based technologies and Medium.
In my opinion a basis for Media Literacy would be a critical and normative affirmation of the spectrum and diversity of communication which electronic technologies enable. A critical and functional relationship needs to be drawn between societies, individuals and their interaction with technologies as they are governed by complex social, economic, political, capitalist infrastructures and consider their effective literacy merit. Underlying the informational technologal superstructure lays the infrastructure which enables the production of the media messages.
The central question for media literacy is normative, how could media messages be accessed, evaluated, analysed and eventually produced through the Library and School institutions. It bears incidentally upon the learner's education to master these complexities and produce them withn their own cultural, societal and personal literary tradition within a critical pedagogical framework. This idea presupposes understanding technologies and development of educational pedagogy through Freirian perspectives.
As a new field, Media Literacy is replete with diverse educational philosophies and goals centrally bound by common educational interest, critical outlook and production of media (Hobbs). Its scope is based on constructivist foundation; awareness of socio-economic, political, historical and aesthetic context; the science of hermeneutics; a linguistic framework which reflects the diverise langauge forms, genres and symbolic systems of communication; and prompts the comprehension of social reality.
Hobbs enumerates its tenets within a Freirian critical framework whose key issues are deliberated in Media Literacy. These principles provide a critical foundation for the inquiry based field of Media Literacy. It engages with the racial, gender or class disparities; civic consciousness, commodification of culture and personal growth.It underlines the phenomenological mode of human experience as fundamental and employing its education tools through creativity, empowerment, collaboration and ethics. It provides validity to popular culture and its texts, whose ideology could be deconstructed.
Central to it all is the autonomous learner and her subjectivity and consciousness. It aims to unravel critically the aesthetics, ideology and political presuppositions underlying literacy.
It assumes the shortfalls of formal school, its conservative nature and instrumentalist approach which could be overcome by Media Literacy pedagogy.
However it is confronted by issues of financial support from Media Institutions. In all a 21st Century educational framework judiciously combines criticism, literacy and the media.

The Medium is the Massage

McLuhan's conceptions about technological development involve complex modernist and structuralist ideas. He employs Weberian differentiation i.e. the fragmentation and bureaucratisation of technological life whose impact if felt through all the levels of human operations and practical life. He thus famously claims that the Medium is the Message meaning that the interaction of these complex structures can only be understood in a total unity of the message and the medium.
The impact of the Medium, an 'extension of ourselves' is both social and psychological, basically scaling up through technology. As technology is scaled up, it demands new and newer roles within the automated processes, as previous roles become redundant.Human relationships themselves are restructured via the machines, both vis a vis others and to oneself.McLuhan distinguishes between the fragmentation of human relationships in machine technology, and the decentralisation and integration of relationships through 'automation technology'.McLuhan extends the structural idea beyond the relationship between the signifier and the signified, to understand the relation of technology and society. He draws an analogy of electric light arguing that a surgery or night sports are inescapably the Medium as they form the "content" of light on the rationale that without light, they cannot take place or even be thought of.

TV, Literature- Ecological and Critical Medium

Reading the fascinating case between Oprah Winfrey and the author Frantzen, as well as Don De Lillo's conception of 'The Barn' teases out important critical moments of relations between media, the media industry, the publishing industry, the questions of gender, race. The frivolities manifested through the Oprah Winfrey TV Show and other elements epitomize a dynamic interplay within two sub strata, the show itself and what goes underneath the Medium.Media ecological and critical insights are helpful to subvert the manifest argument by providing the context and critical focus on the modus operandi of the TV production. The Oprah Winfrey Show is the facade camouflaging layers of technologies, TV network corporate philosophy, publishing industry philosophy, the domination of race, gender political power in the 21st Century both overt and covert, and the programme itself with its interactive TV audience. Thus the TV is a Medium in the McLuhanian sense in which the social dynamics of race, gender, literature and power although seen as a public domain is actually a TV Medium.Adorno's aesthetic theory suggests how aspects of culture e.g. literature and music are experienced through aesthetic modes and the Text, all provide a critical mediation between a subject and the object. His idea of the High and Low cultural artefacts are an ideological critique of the corporate publishing whose guiding force is profits. The authors of the Novel who stake the ground of a High culture and imply the subservient order of the ordinary mass of audience, hold a moral and semiotic presumptuousness of a higher ground.Can a writer fix meaning or elevate his creative Text to a ‘high ground’ obey the rule of hermeneutics? Don De Lillo aptly demonstrates, in a post modern American society, meanings lose their significations about 'The Barn' through post structural semiotics. Baudrillard argues that the cultural signifiers are vastly abundant and absurd in the sense of a ‘hyperreality’, which are employed by corporations and the culture industry to the degree that the relation between the signifiers and the signified is rendered meaningless leaving empty signifiers without referants.In the post structural world combined with 'layers' of technology, corporate media and publishing industries and their ideologically vested interests, power plays through race, gender and the individual herself through the TV culture employing media ecological perspectives. The TV is simply one of the myriad metaphors which demonstrate all the critical fields that form the undercurrents of American culture in which both Oprah and Frantzen are specks.

Medium: Ecological & Critical

As I embark upon making sense of the act of blogging, this very Blog itself is a basis for ruminations and self-reflexivity. It seems strange to ask the question what is a Blog? Hitherto I have taken it for granted and regale in the ability to put my views into the open and to share it with the class. What I can see through my eyes, the product of my thoughts and I sitting here hammering away at the computer key pad. Rather a mysterious affair to dwell upon. I had had not thought of making meaning of Blog as a Medium before and only vaguely had sensed its potential.In order to understand it there must be some gravitas and legitimation, sociological and epistemological as it pertains to Information Science and Literacy.
The Blog is contained in a nebulous territory, both in its intrinsic structure in its outward manifestation. As I can produce and view myself the surface, there is a vast sub structure laying covertly in the sub caverns of the Internet and the Web. Hence the Blog is only one of the various media which are available for one's use and expression.I begin with Postman's postulate that the medium is a metaphor which moulds thought which intertwines questions of information, education and epistemology. So is McLuhan's idea about the dynamic reciprocity between creation of machines in a society creates which demands reconfiguration of perspectives and thoughts. These media ecological views are a starting point for my own thinking pertaining to the Blog as a Medium.However, Postman's cultural critique is deterministic demonstrated by his analysis of the 'Age of Explosion' based on the 'sovereignty of the printing press' as well as the Telegraph enabling a possibility of a 'unified American discourse' but becomes irrelevant as source of information, because society is divorced from its very social and intellectual context.
Boyd's ‘Blog as a Medium’, has critical and media ecological perspective. She demonstrates the problem of defining a Blog to understand Medium meaningfully. Conceptions of the Medium are irreconcilable than how social Bloggers themselves view the blogging phenomenon. She concludes that a Medium such as a Blog "is not a self-descriptive term".Various definitions reflect predominant corporate and marketing interests, as a computer mediated genre of Information Communication, which can be "evaluated in content and structure"; the linear Social and Information Science researcher's description of the blog which "frame" their research objectives; or the several mass media definitions.These conceptual, semantic or analytical definitions obscure what the Medium and do not show a critical depth. Thus the "intent" of the individuals who "practice and act" is undermined. It is this phenomenological ground of the social practitioner which provides the critical framework for the understanding of the Medium. The Blog is at once a Medium, a creative and individual product of the blogger.
In McLuhan’s term, the Medium as a Blog is an "extension of man". Not the technologies but the social constructivist and creative moments define the Medium in which all textual and oral, corporeal and spatial, and public and private borders are eliminated.The sociologist Fuller also views how important media ecologies are in understanding media dynamics although the term is 'susceptible to interpretation'.Fuller argues the problem of studying Medium as an isolated feature and suggests that the complex manifestations of media through their forms and organizations should be looked at. Aesthetics and politics as key dimensions underpinning the study towards exploring the relationships between form and practice of media thus it is a critical exercise. In this way, the materiality of the media processes can be explored via the relationship between the production of culture (media artefacts) their integration into cultural life and subsequently as knowledge through hermeneutics and discourse. Fuller’s theory includes critique and power to understand media and particular Blogs.Fuller challenges the linear-discursive standardisation method applied to make an object meaningful to a subject. Although standardisation may manifest meaning of an object, culturally and aesthetically it redresses its potential and scope. Thus to frame a Medium in a uniform way will curtail its understanding. Medium such as a pirate radio station, photographs, Cctv web images demonstrate the powerful interplay of politics, ethics and aesthetics domains in media ecology. Fuller argues that media ecological perspectives, help to understand the complex layers of technologies, software designs, legal framework through their "dynamic mulitiplicity" demonstrated through patterns of action of society.An individual seeks to find her own self through the media, will resist the overarching layers of technology owned by corporations and their institutional and ideological modus operandi. The autonomous subject seeks empowerment by resisting those very technologies and media she is using within the framework of media ecology in order to subvert and become a creative subject through any Medium.In summing up, my own understanding of the Medium Blog was enhanced when examined through interdisciplinary glasses such a literary theories (structuralist and post structuralist), media ecological, cultural theory and sociology in order to appreciate its radical potential in education and literacy. Hence I take a Blog to be a media ecological and critical Medium. In terms of the Medium's application as a pedagogical tool, it appears to hold great potential for educators who employ technology to enhance learning. By affirming the student as a subject and allowing the development of the literary creative processes, it would permit the phenomenological and critical approaches which Boyd and Fuller both underline above.

Critical Literacy: The Radical Illiterate Returns

In my second blog, I shall introduce the profound impressions of Paulo Freire on my outlook on education, a beacon in the world of philosophy of education. The principles he carefully adumbrated have given the spark to innumerable teachers and learners in ways of developing the human mind and gaining experiences through the phenomenon of educational literacy. Through and through, Freire's educational philosophy exudes the humanism based on critique. In this way, as many have found and so have I, that education is a process which can truly invoke change, not only cognitively but intellectually. His principles have given voice to the voiceless. From my second reading of his text the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, my ideas are reinforced with his full vision.
I shall also examine Elborg's thought provoking ideas as he suggests the employment of Freirian pedagogy to the Library, in particular to what he terms Information literacy.
Finally I shall draw the implications and discuss how relevant the theory of critical pedagogy is to the field of Library Science. I still remain the radical illiterate as there is a lot to learn yet.
Freire applies important philosophical principles as the basis for his theory of critical pedagogy centred upon existentialism and phenomenology. For Freire, Education has a telos, namely freedom, what he calls 'liberation'. The pedagogy he propounds to underlie his philosophy of education is 'critical' by which he sees to make education in societies an important process of change. This process must be critical in order for the learner to understand the world and make meaning. The critical function of education based on transformational dialectics encompasses Sartre's theory of consciousness which Freire's terms the relationship between I and the Not-I. Thus in critical pedagogy 'otherness' is pivotal towards any educational transformation. The idea of otherness is a central plank in the critical philosophy of education which applies social-psychological principles, particularly social-interactional, to develop the learner's self-hood. Critical Literacy therefore implies the development of complex cognitive tools built within the educational pedagogy framework with social, psychological, cultural and philosophical perspectives and empathy.
Freire similarly suggests the combination of thought and action, philosophy and praxis as a basis of educational transformation. He calls the banking concept of education which limits learning through instrumentalist approaches in classrooms. It is a pedagogical paradigm which imposes ideas upon learners not allowing awareness and criticism to develop in the learner's minds. In the banking concept, ideology is covertly hidden within educational methodologies which leading to passivity and subtly laying it dormant in the learner's mind. Whereas critical pedagogy based on dialectical method allows the opportunity for critical engagement which leads to uncovering the ideology, questioning its basis and problematising it. The logical outcome of the application of the banking concept pedagogy is the systematic replication of dominant ideology of a particular group and its vested interests thereby re-establishing the political and cultural status quo in the wider society. This can be racial, cultural, ethnic, religious, economic or any ideology. Whereas the starting point for critical pedagogy is the understanding of the learner's ontology and historical situation, as well as her social and economic conditions. Understanding this, the teacher then leads the learner to seek authenticity and freedom. In the Aristotelean sense politics and the political world are realities which the critical pedagogy fully takes into account. Two important issues underpin the critical pedagogy. The function of criticism is fundamentally social and the role of culture is to create new subjectivity (Eagleton). Both inform the view of critical educational method.
The principles of critical pedagogy are highly relevant to the cultural environment of the Library, to which Elborg employs the term Information literacy. Libraries are not 'neutral cultural spaces' Elborg alleges rightly. He critically identifies the reductionist banking model of education with its sterile and passive universe of information and culture taken largely for granted leading to prescriptive approaches in several structures of the library's institutional hierarchy. The very structure of the library, its acquisition and storing of knowledge, cataloguing and classification, reference services and management suffer the passivity of learning through information.
Elborg calls for a new approach in the libraries moulded upon the principles of Freirian critical pedagogy. This approach demands the librarians to understand and employ these principles through 'extensive' knowledge of pedagogies, cultures and discourses of the communities of higher education, affirming the information seeker's historical background and ontology. This awareness would similarly be able to problematise the socio-cultural direction of the library and view its cultural and political roles. Hence it moves away from the prescriptive nature of seeking knowledge in the libraries to more engaged and critical modes.
Information literacy in this manner would thus provide epistemological and critical foundations for the central questions of technology, discourse, knowledge and identity of the community which lay at the heart of the library. Otherwise, the banking model of Information literacy would divorce students as agents from their social, psychological, cultural and economic contexts. This is reflected in Howard Gardiner's theory of 'multiple intelligencies' which takes into account the cognitive standing of each learner, rather than privileging a group of students with a blanketed model of intelligence to compare others with.
The significance of literacy in society cannot be understated as Bourdieu attests that "students accrue cultural capital through education". But what literacy is prioritised, whose cultural capital becomes privileged in society and which are marginalised, lead to the pedagogical question whether a student's 'primary discourse' is affirmed or challenged and excluded by the educational institutions.
In the library, information also embodies a 'Grammatical Dimension' through its communication mode, i.e. the organisation and structure of information itself in such forms as MARC, and Subject Headings. It also therefore begs the question what information is privileged over others within seeking of knowledge through grammar and technology sophistry.
An added component to Information literacy could be the value of games which Gee claims provide the context for literacy practice and gameplay, through the immersion and interactive digital environment as a mode for achieving literacy. He suggests three key contexts in which video games act as a pedagogy for literacy through semantic domains where meaning can be situated and literacy can occur.
To sum up, I argue for espousing Freire's Critical pedagogy and Elborg's Information literacy, as a basis for the Reference Library, a place where knowledge is sought. Reference in the library is through and through a political act, where any small query has a significant educational validity in the learner's mind. It cannot be dismissed as a factual or negligible question. The questions anticipate a full-fledged critical pedagogy, taking into account the learner's stand point of her 'primary discourse'. It is a moment upon which Brunerian scaffolding takes place and leads on to the possibilities and presaging of further structuring. Libraries and reference in particular are places where a life long learning and love of knowledge can be inculcated. These can be later built for the seeking of the Good, the Beautiful and Truth. Reference can be a liberating moment.

1st Blog- The Illiterate Blogger Sets Out

This is a first attempt at a blog. My ignorance is my forte, quest for a meaningful world, my telos. Such levels of technological illiteracy does not pale nor damp my quest. Technology- which I have never used that extensively, has given me ample space of silence. Even without technology, not poorer have I been as the mind can never rest and it seeks to venture through distant horizons in order to open and reach them. If I cannot reach, atleast I tried. My eyes have gazed at the space above in the blue orb and stars. They have not been focused on to the deeper and darker space within the web. For my premier try at a blog, I ruminate upon how the social and the symbolic are constantly bridged, never do we as humans take the skewed view of one forsaking the other. From the lofty heights of the experience of oneself within one's place in the universe, to the rudimentary interactional social ground of day to day life, a vast bridge is intellectually spanned. Education is central to this. Within the spanning arc, meaning is not given but is sought, discovered and shared. No one can own or claim it, but we can create meaningfulness and share it. The giveness of meaning, is the ossification of ideology structured in the mind. To uproot the ideology would take the entire span of one's life, or perhaps never. Hence one can die in ignorance through the claims to ownership of meaning. To understand what is human, is to jettison all claims to meaning. From the radically-illiterate-itinerant in New York 2nd February 09