4. NETRO - THE ELECTRONIC LEARNING SPACE

4.4.2 The Bank

- guided references on web literacy related topics

PANKKI, the Bank, can be understood as storage of information related to the concept of web literacy. It is in the Bank where the new knowledge that the Netro passengers produce is stored.

The Bank consists of short introductory texts, references to on-line links or other literature on topics related to web literacy. It is created to support the Path and its tasks, but can be used as an independent source for information, too. The Bank is open and incomplete, and leaves room for the passengers to reflect and decide themselves, which aspects of the web are of more importance to them than others. Furthermore, in the lines of the Multiliteracies concept of the Redesigned (ch 2.2.1), the Bank is modified and reshaped by the Netro-passengers as they move on to the final Phase of the course and improve the Bank by creating a new knowledge which builds on to the Bank, yet adds the passengers own voice and conceptions of how they understand the concept of web literacy.

The Bank consists of two sections, which are parallel to our goals of the learning space. As has already been presented, in the present study we define web literacy as having three interrelated sections, those of skills, content knowledge and metacognitive knowledge (ch 2.3). The Bank's main focus is on content knowledge and metacognitive knowledge for, as we have already argued, knowledge on these areas support the development of actual skills. For as our aim is on a larger scale in supporting autonomy development, the choice on the metacognition and the content knowledge goals is natural.

The first section of the Bank focuses on web literacy as a meaning making process, in which the reader is seen as actively constructing meanings on the basis of the Available Designs and his/her prior knowledge and expectations. We chose to present the meaning making processes involved in all literacies through the New London Group's (2000) ideas on Designs, Designing and the Redesigned (ch 2.2.1). The first section of the Bank introduces this socio constructive view on literacies as meaning making as it aims at giving the passengers the framework in which they are to travel in Netro.

Figure 15. How meanings are constructed

The other section of the Bank has its focus on the web and its characteristics. The web is presented in the Bank as having the characteristics already introduced in chapter 2.3.2. The section is divided into five main sub sections which are parallel to Karlsson's (2002) four web parameters as well as an additional parameter for finding and assessing web content in which we also refer to the knowledge construction processes. The titles of the sections are in a question format and are translated below (Table 2).

Table 2. Bank's sub-sections and content knowledge of the web

Even though our aim is to provide the passengers with both content knowledge and metacognitive knowledge related to web literacy, we do not distinguish between the two in the Bank. Both areas of knowledge are present in all the sections depending on the viewpoint taken.

The content of the Bank is built in a hypertext form illustrated by a mind map in which the phrases are links to the content pages of the Bank (Figure 16). On those content pages the Netro passengers can read about the topic and if interested, go further and check the references or some of the suggested web links. The images, the virtual characters who ask the questions in the Bank, represent the idea that the Bank has several voices, and is far from being complete. It is not so much meant for the passengers to read and learn by heart all the information the Bank has to offer than to trigger the passengers to think. By scratching the surface of the topics on web literacy we provide the passengers a beginning of a metalanguage (ch 3.2.2) and bring out topics and elements of web literacy which might not have appeared in Netro otherwise.

Figure 16. A mind map in the Bank of the content knowledge of the web