{"id":92,"date":"2011-09-05T22:01:52","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T13:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/?p=92"},"modified":"2011-09-22T21:16:23","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T12:16:23","slug":"hanging-messing-and-geeking-a-family-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/2011\/09\/05\/hanging-messing-and-geeking-a-family-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanging, Messing and Geeking; a Family History"},"content":{"rendered":"

While reading the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur-funded “white paper” (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/3nag5ag<\/strong>) about the new media practices of online “Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out,” I realized that I had witnessed the evolution of this culture and many examples of all three modes of virtual behavior in my now-14-yr. old daughter. Thanks to her, I was familiar with the behaviors discussed in the papers and could fill in many examples as I read along.<\/p>\n

I remember my youngest’s first foray into the online communities with her fascination with a penguin-populated chat room (http:\/\/www.clubpenguin.com\/). All three children were heavily invested in Neopets (http:\/\/www.neopets.com\/)\u00c2\u00a0at one point and I remember the family drama when our oldest managed to get all the family accounts frozen after he defied the game rules by creating multiple accounts in order to rack up loads of game points. He still takes heat for that escapade.<\/p>\n

While I understand the educational possibilities of trying to tap into this youth-culture fascination with being constantly connected with one’s peers and being able to “geek out” in an area of one’s own predilection, there are far too many areas of scholastics which may need to be taught irregardless of a teen’s willingness to geek out in that area. I have watched my daughter do a deep dive into creative writing while creating complex story lines with online co-creators and I have recently witnessed her sudden ability to disassemble and repair a 20-inch iMac by simply looking up the instructions online. Even when she was only nine years old, I watched her successfully dissect a bullfrog using diagrams that she looked up online. She identified all of the internal organs and even discerned the cause of death of her specimen which she had found near the Tama River in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

With the ubiquitous availability of information, where there is a desire to learn, there is also the means to go as deep as one might desire. And from intense study, original creation is often a result. Online tutorials in digital drawing and use of the digital tablet, along with online artistic communities, such as Deviant Art (http:\/\/www.deviantart.com\/)\u00c2\u00a0and websites where participants can collect and modify digital pets, our youngest is learning to hone her abilities with both digital and traditional pen and paper. She has even succeeded in drawing me into this world as I began to collaborate on a children’s book with an artist in Sweden whom we discovered through the online community.<\/p>\n

The challenge remains in finding a way to actively engage digitally-savvy youth to embrace those scholastic disciplines and subjects that do not grab them by their mental lapels and shake them awake. If they are motivated, they will learn far more than we can teach them. But if they are not motivated to learn something, then they will invariably find a way to geek out once again only in the areas that hold their interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While reading the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur-funded “white paper” (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/3nag5ag) about the new media practices of online “Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out,” I realized that I had witnessed the evolution of this culture and many examples … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[208,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruth.ingulsrud.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}