Web 2.0 #2....pandora

Today, I completed my second web 2.0 assignment. For this assignment, I created a pandora account and created a couple of radio stations....one of course being dedicated to Hanson :) This process was really easy for two reasons: (1) Pierce talked about how to do during our last class and (2) the website was really user friendly. I basically went to the website, selected the make an account button, and then, once I was signed in, selected some songs and artists to make stations. Having Pierce talk about his experiences with pandora also made this web 2.0 option a lot less intimidating. The literacy practices that I used in this assignment involve both personal communication (with Pierce), blogging (reading about the pandora experience on our classroom blog), and then navigating the internet to actually use pandora. I also gained a new literacy involving becoming literate with the pandora site. In completing this assignment and using pandora, there really were no challenges that I experienced. I think that if I were not familiar with the internet or computers that this would have been significantly more difficult; however, with my daily use of computers and the internet there was a very small and insignificant learning curve. It is clear that my the success and ease that with using pandora was because of my familiarity with the internet and the brief tutorial by Pierce. This type of learing echos what Rogoff (2004) describes when she talks about learning being a process of transformation of participation. “Learning is a process of transformation of participation itself, arguing that how people develop is a function of their transforming roles and understanding in the activities in which they participate” (pp. 209). My learning process was also connected to what Gee (2004) said about identity: "...learning is all about identity and identification"(pp. 37). It is clear that because I identify myself as someone who is literate with the internet that I found adding the pandora application to my tool kit of liteacies much easier.