New Media Literacies by the NML staff

This short YouTube video was interesting to watch, and more importantly, it makes you think about what media literacy is. As one of the NML staff stated, media literacy is "a set of skills that everybody needs to deal with our culture today" (www.youtube.com/user/NMLstaff08). I think that the New Media Skills are obvious because every single time a person searches the internet, they have to judge the content, negotiate, and play in order to fully understand what it is that they are reading or researching. Some of the New Media Skills mentioned are judgement, play, negotiation, multitasking, and simulation. Those are just a few of many New Media Skills needed in order to be able to participate in today's culture.

I think that the New Media Skills are 21st century skills needed to be effective artists, citizens, and workers because the 21st century is all about media and technology. I do think that these set of skills were needed even before the 21st century, even though technology was not prominent. An everyday person needs at least some of these skills in order to function in everyday life. To effective in life, people have to determine what is reliable (judgement), how to participate in groups (negotiation), how to problem solve (play), and how to function many things at once (multitasking). These skills are very important for today's society with there being so many different opinions and or facts out on the internet and in the media, but even when media or internet did not exist, people still needed these skills just to function in a society.

I would like to think that I possess every single New Media Skill; however, I probably realistically possess half of them at least. A lot of these skills people do or have naturally, and they do not really think about them. As mentioned before, people use these skills on a daily basis, and more times than not do people even not know that they are using the skills. On a daily basis, I possess the judgement, play, negotiation, multitasking, performance, and visualization skills. Actually when really thinking, most people, including myself, really use all of these skills at some point throughout the day or week at school, work, or home. To acquire the other skills that a person does not have, he/she needs to find out what the skill means, and then try to use that skill at some point. For me, when I make a point to use a skill, whether it be a New Media Skill or not, I practice using that skill until it becomes natural for me to use it.

I really enjoyed watching this video on New Media Skills. I think that people will be more aware of the skills that they possess or do not possess after watching it because people can use them and not know it.