I am so lucky to have taken this class because the focus was on blogging. Now, some of my friends have blogs, but they write about their personal lives. I'm much more interested in how blogs can be used in my classroom, and I feel overwhelmed by ideas. Web 2.0 is the future of education, and I want to be the one that persuades my system into opening up blogs to its students. Once they see how successful students can be with such powerful tools, administrators might be more open to opening up other tools.
I make my students keep journals in my class, and I've noticed over the last two years that fewer and fewer of my students are bringing in the specific spiral-bound notebook that I request. That problem is easily remedied with a blog. Even if a student has to stay after school to complete the assignment, he always has the required "notebook."
Long before I started Full Sail, I learned about iTunesU and had downloaded several classes that I thought were interesting. Eventually I listened to enough of them and kept the ones that actually were interesting. Right now, I've got five lectures made by Alice Walker that I want to use in the future when I teach Modern and Contemporary Literature. Even if I don't use iTunesU in my classroom, I still benefit from the podcasts. I learn more about my content area just by listening to the lectures, and I can then choose to include the content in my own curriculum.
Twitter is another Web 2.0 tool that I'm eager to use in my classroom; however, I know that this site is blocked in many districts. I've written about Twitter's potential in the classroom before, so I won't go into a lot of detail here.
I'm almost giddy with my new-found knowledge of Web 2.0 and the ideas I have to use the various tools in my classroom. My plan is to revamp my entire American Literature curriculum so that I use Web 2.0 in every lesson every day.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Week 4 - Blog Posting #7 -Second Life
I consider myself very open to new technologies and learning environments, as long as they aren't too invasive. That being said, I have not been able to open myself up to Second Life. A year or so ago, I heard about Second Life through a blog posting and decided to try it out. When I got in and looked around, I didn't really see anything I liked. Most of the people that I met were not friendly, and most of the places I visited seemed to be very seedy. My first impression of Second Life was not positive, so I uninstalled the program from my computer and stopped using it.
In May, my MLR professor had my classmates and I join Second Life and report our findings on educational uses of Second Life. My group's findings still didn't convince me that Second Life is useful. After looking at some of the locations provided for this posting, I am starting to come around to Second Life as a place to explore individually. As a matter of fact, I had a lot of fun exploring the Multiple Intelligences site.
In May, my MLR professor had my classmates and I join Second Life and report our findings on educational uses of Second Life. My group's findings still didn't convince me that Second Life is useful. After looking at some of the locations provided for this posting, I am starting to come around to Second Life as a place to explore individually. As a matter of fact, I had a lot of fun exploring the Multiple Intelligences site.
Swinging in the Naturalistic Intelligence Exhibit.
I did join two groups. One group was an extension of real-life group Freecycle, which operates to help members get rid of unwanted stuff without throwing anything into the garbage and without the exchange of money. The other group I joined was for cat lovers. Neither group had a landmark to visit. The International Society for Technology in Education and universities such as Princeton and Ohio University have set up virtual campuses in Second Life. It was easy for me to join the ISTE group, but I could not join the groups for Princeton or Ohio University because they were for faculty members only.
This video comments on the educational uses of Second Life:
Even after going into Second Life and playing around for hours this afternoon, I don't see SL as a platform for educational use. It isn't a program that I will ever use in my classroom. When I go into SL, I spend hours customizing my avatar than I do exploring. When I did a web search for criticisms of Second Life, I did not find much. People mostly commented on the financial difficulties of SL or that people could find legal prostitution. The lack of criticism should help me trust SL more than I currently do, but I can't ignore my guy instinct. Overall, I find Second Life to be creepy, for those who don't have a handle on real life, so they join SL to escape the reality.
References
gatorbyte99. (2008, March 14). Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruMi3MAGkvc
MaryAnnCLT. (2007, August 10). Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA
Monday, September 21, 2009
Week 3 - Blog Posting #6 -Communities of Practice
According to Etienne Wenger, "Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor..." People who have something (whatever that something is) join groups of other people with that same commonality to meet those people and share ideas.
One of the first communities we join is our families. It is through our families that we learn to survive in the world, including our church, another community of practice. When I was pregnant, my church really came together for me at my baby shower, and I received a lot of useful stuff for my daughter. My church threw another shower for me when I got married last year.
Other communities of practice that we join are professional memberships. I am a member of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators (PAGE) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
Communities of practice also exist unofficially. Facebook has thousands and thousands of groups that its members can join: English Majors Do It Better! for English majors at Valdosta State University; You Know You're from Georgia If..., and open group for anyone from and/or currently living in Georgia. Yahoo, Google, Flickr, MySpace, and ICQ all have groups that its users can join. People join these groups because they all have the groups' subject in common. Joining these groups helps keep us connected in our fast-paced world.
The following video from the UK helps to explain how communities of practice work.
References
Stephendale. (2008, October 17). Communities of practice explained. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2paN0Ox-Ia0
Wenger, E. (2006 June). Communities of practice: A brief introduction. Retrieved from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/
Week 3 - Blog Posting #5 -Social Media
Wikipedia defines social media as media that are "designed to be disseminated through social interaction."
Examples of social media are:
Examples of social media are:
- blogs (Blogger, Xanga, LiveJournal, Twitter)
- social networking (FaceBook, MySpace)
- wikis (Wikipedia)
- social bookmarking (StumbleUpon, Delicious)
- photo sharing (Flickr)
- video sharing (YouTube)
- aggregators (NetVibes)
I've been a user of StumbleUpon since 2007, when I saw a piece on it in Parents Magazine. I installed the toolbar onto my browser, and when I am bored, all I have to do is click the Stumble! button. That button takes me to a website that has been catered to my interests. If I like the website, I click the thumbs up button; if I don't like the site, I click the thumbs down button. The more I use StumbleUpon, the better it becomes at finding websites that I will like. When I received my MacBook from Full Sail, I immediately downloaded the StumbleUpon toolbar for FireFox. Since June, I've amassed almost 3000 bookmarks from StumbleUpon alone, and all of those are stored in my browser on the Mac. I've got about 5000 stored on my browser on my HP laptop.
Social media is powerful. A few years ago, most respectable companies and corporations didn't participate in social media. They had a website that was updated hourly or daily, and that was it. Now, these same companies have joined the bandwagon because they know that social media is the best way to reach individuals. The Centers for Disease Control have their own social media site set up where viewers can go to follow the CDC on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. The CDC even has its own island in Second Life.
The following video sums up the infiltration of social media in our daily lives:
References
m0serious. (2007, November 23). Social Media Addiction Rap. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwAjur3_08Y
MJBrito. (2009, February 26). Learn Social Media in 1 minute and 12 seconds. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF6lBztZSMo
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Week 2 - Blog Posting #4 -21st Century Skills & Lifelong Learning
Earlier today, I watched and watched again the video from Jeffrey Gitomer on lifelong learning. Here's his video for reference:
I think that all humans are lifelong learners, whether we want to admit it or not. For some people, a formal education through a college or university is a necessity. That's why we see so many people with PhD's. For others, they learn on their own and don't care for a formal education. These are the people who don't go to college and still manage to make a name for themselves.
I'm one of those people who require a formal education. My parents raised me to believe that if I wanted to be successful in life, then I would have to go to college and "get educated." When I graduate from Full Sail, I'll be the only person on either my mom's side or my dad's side of the family to have a Master's degree. If I had the money, I'd be a career student. My parents may have raised me this way because neither of them had a formal education. My mom took some college courses after she graduated, but she does not hold a degree.
My dad graduated from high school in 1972. A year and a half later, he married my mom. He never went to college. I grew up poor and didn't really have access to the technology that everyone else seemed to have until I was halfway through high school. When my parents bought that old Hewlitt-Packard, they learned how to work it at the same time I did. When they bought their second HP, they learned how to work that one on their own as well. My parents may have raised me to want a formal education, but they have a natural curiosity that carries them through life. When the situation arises, my parents learn the necessary skills to carry them through.
My mom is still a housewife, like she's always been, but my dad works two jobs. During every weekday, he is a well-respected plumber and electrician. Every Monday night, he is Mayor Pro-temp of my hometown. Not bad for a man who doesn't have an education past high school.
My husband is also one of those people who learns best on his own. The only formal education he has received is a few tech school classes over the years and AIT this past spring. For as long as I have known him (going on four years now), I have never taken any of my vehicles to a shop to be repaired without him first looking at it himself. If he can't figure out what is wrong with my car, he'll then tell me to take it to a shop to get fixed. He has this natural curiosity towards cars because he was allowed to tinker with them at a young age. About a year ago, my dad let my husband restore this old-as-dirt riding lawn mower that he bought off of someone. J (my hubby!) began working on the mower before he left for Basic training and finally finished it when he returned home from AIT in April. There were days when he'd be outside cussing at it and calling that mower all kinds of names, but he only quit working on it if he ran out of parts.
The moral of my story is that sometimes our kids don't necessarily need a formal education. We already know that only a handful of them are going to college, university, or tech school. The majority of our students will end up in the military or work force right outside of high school. Our jobs as teachers are to teach our students to be lifelong learners, to continue learning no matter what. So, 10, 20, 30, or even 40 years into the future, these students won't be afraid to learn something new.
References
BuyGitomer. (2008, April 19). Life Long Learning. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh6yd6wfCgU
ProfStephanie. (2008, January 28). Life Long Learning. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzJDylq_UTQ
Monday, September 14, 2009
Media Literacy - Part 2
**This post is not part of the post that I completed for class, so please don't consider it to be one. This is completely separate and is intended to be a reflection of my personal beliefs and thoughts only.**
We've all seen that Apple commercial from 1984...the one that ends with "...and you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984." If you haven't, watch this:
Well, I had an epiphany just a few moments ago, and it started with the above commercial. Please understand that I have never read 1984, but I do know enough about Orwell's novel to understand that it is basically about a society that os completely controlled by its government. The citizens have no access to the arts, sciences, or any literature so that they completely devote all their time and energy to their government. Everything is controlled by the government. If it helps to understand, the term "Big Brother" was coined by Orwell for this book.
So, I'm sitting at my desk, after just putting my daughter down for bed, when I realize that our schools are turning into Big Brother. Now, in some cases that may actually be a good thing. It keeps us teachers on our toes, makes us put our best foot forward, gives administrators and teachers alike accountability. On the other hand, this whole Big Brother thing is just creepy. I certainly don't like the idea that someone is constantly watching me and monitoring everything that I do. It makes me nervous, and I am more prone to make mistakes. I wonder sometimes if they (meaning "The Man") can watch what I do online, can they watch what I do when I'm not online. Do they watch me when I play blocks with my child? Do they watch me when I go to the bathroom? The very idea of Big Brother is unsettling.
According to the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), any school that receives funding from the E-rate program must have Internet safety policies in place that prohibits students from accessing pornography and elicit content online. The E-rate program helps schools with the high cost of Internet access for all computers. So any school that participates in this program must adhere to the CIPA guidelines. All the K-12 public schools that I have been in have some sort of filter on their computers.
So here's a list of stuff that I think should be blocked at school:
I totally agree with the first three, but to block sites that lack academic value? That takes out 90% of the Internet. How can we realistically do that?? Part of our jobs as teachers is to teach and promote media literacy. We need our students to know how to go online and filter out all the crappy stuff for themselves. We need them to know how to find and use academic websites in their research. We need them to do this on their own without us holding their hands all the time. How can I show my students that the Poe Museum website is a better website for research than The Poe Decoder when one of those sites is blocked due to advertisements?
In theory, CIPA is a God-send. It helps promote positive, academic research on campus, not the hours of time wasted by some of us on Facebook or MySpace. However, with my new-found knowledge of Web 2.0 and media literacy, I've realized that there are some educational values to the social networking sites that CIPA has us blocking (apparently social networking has no academic value). I would also hate to know that one of my students has been getting his jollies while looking at porn on one of my computers when he was supposed to be researching or working on a class project.
So here's where Big Brother comes into public education. For the past two years, I've read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne with my students. It usually takes me three to four weeks to read, analyze, and test over the novel. As with any unit that I teach, I include some kind of project to tie all the parts of the novel together. For The Scarlet Letter, I have my students create an Alphabet Book. It's a simple little assignment where the students associate each letter of the alphabet with something important from the novel. The students must write in complete sentences and must include a picture that is relevant to their sentence and letter. For example, for the letter A I could write "Hester Prynne committed adultery when she thought her husband was dead." I might include a picture of Hester Prynne with the letter A on her chest or a picture of an ornamental letter A. I had my students create a PowerPoint with one letter/sentence/picture per slide. It is a simple assignment and uses minimal technology, but my students love the assignment and do very well on them, and they actually reinforce their knowledge of the book through this assignment.
So, this past spring I read The Scarlet Letter with my students like a always do. We were almost at the end of the novel, so I told my students about the project, gave them their assignment sheet, and passed around an example Alphabet Book. By this point, I had already booked two days in the computer lab, so I told my students to mark those days in their calendars. We spent the rest of that class period working on our sentences, so we could maximize our time in the lab. The next day my school system blocked Yahoo and Google images. I found out through two students in a different class.
There was no warning. There was no email stating why images were blocked. There was no faculty meeting explaining why the system had taken this measure. NO FORMAL EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER!! So I asked my media specialist why images had been blocked, and she said that we had to follow the CIPA guidelines and by allowing image searches to be conducted, the system could possibly lose E-rate funding, and they couldn't afford to lose E-rate funding given the economy at the time. I deduced on my own that a student accidentally came across a pornographic picture of some sort, the administrators freaked out, and forced our media specialists to block images on our computers. Thanks to someone briefly losing control of their common sense, my students lost out on an engaging project that would have helped them understand a hard-to-understand novel.
It was foolish to block all image searches because someone accidentally found porn. If the filters were working like they were supposed to, the image never would have appeared in the first place. I bet the student didn't even react when the picture came up; someone else over-reacted and thus punished the entire student population.
Now, this idea of Big Brother isn't limited to just the Internet. I have a friend who has been teaching in a major college town in South Georgia for two years; she is currently in her third year at an elementary school there. After school one day at the beginning of September, she posted a Facebook status that said that all schools in her system were not allowed to watch President Obama's speech to America's students. My friend gave no explanation as to why the superintendent of the system would make such a move, and the town's newspaper gave no explanations on their website. Granted, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the President's speech, but the transcript of said speech had been available online for several days before Obama's scheduled appearance. So why would the Superintendent feel the need to censor our children from a motivational speech from our nation's President?
**UPDATE** I received an email on Sept. 15 from my local news station that says that this particular college town is asking the Superintendent of schools to step down over his decision to ban the President's speech last week.
As I delve deeper into my studies for my Master's degree, the more I realize that the things we are trying to keep from our students are the same things that are going to help them survive in the 21st century. I find myself getting fired up about ideas that I didn't even think about six months ago. As an English teacher, I think it's important that my students know how to read and write the old-fashioned way with paper, pens, and a physical book in their hands. I find value in reading The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, and The Scarlet Letter. As a teacher in the 21st century, I also find value in my students knowing how to survive in a media-rich society. We can't continue teaching our students as if we are stuck in the 1990s.
Our students have spent much of their lives online and connected to each other because they are social people, but yet we want them to be engaged in class without the tools that engage them. How can they be attentive in class when they aren't motivated or engaged? We want our students engaged, right? We want them to be curious about the lesson at hand. The core academics aren't going anywhere, but we teachers can't expect our students to learn and enjoy dry subjects on their own. I enjoy reading, I always have, but I know that some people don't. Take my husband, for example. He won't read books unless they hold his attention (he has ADD), but he'll read a magazine from cover to cover if the subject is something that interests him. I've seen him read 200 page magazines about diesel engines in one sitting.
My previous school had a 20-minute Silent Sustained Reading time where the students were supposed to read and only read. And, luckily for them, they were allowed to read anything they wanted. Magazines, books, newspapers, anything they wanted, as long as they were reading. I would have enjoyed those 20 minutes of quiet to read. If my husband were a student who had to endure those excruciating 20 minute reading periods, he would have gone crazy. Imagine taking away the freedom of choosing his reading material. Thankfully, my school did away with SSR before they decided on the reading material for the students. I'm glad they never became that controlling.
So I guess my point is this: If our intention is to make our students media literate, then we need to expose them to all kinds of media, good and bad. We need to teach them how to discern the good from the bad. We need to let them be their own filters. Our students know what pornography is, and I don't advocate the non-filtering of pornographic material. But if it accidentally comes up, the answer isn't to freak out and draw attention to the issue. Ideally, we teachers should be walking around the students as they are at our computer; we should be monitoring what they are looking at, so if they do come across something inappropriate, we can take that opportunity to explain why it was inappropriate and move on from the subject. If a student somehow finds a way around the filter and is purposely looking at said banned sites, then punish that student, not the entire student population; it isn't fair to those students who did nothing wrong.
The more we try to keep our students from the media surrounding them, the more our schools essentially become Orwellian micro-societies. If we continue to move in that direction, more and more students will eventually resent us and hate school in general. That could lead to more and more students dropping out or being at school only because their parents said they had to. I don't want to teach students who are only motivated by their parents say-so. I want to teach students who are eager to come to class because they know that they will get to use some sort of new technology that will keep them engaged in class. Therefore, I'm going to fight Big Brother to ensure my students that their creativity and curiosity will not be suppressed. It is not 1984, and we should not treat our students like it is.
We've all seen that Apple commercial from 1984...the one that ends with "...and you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984." If you haven't, watch this:
Well, I had an epiphany just a few moments ago, and it started with the above commercial. Please understand that I have never read 1984, but I do know enough about Orwell's novel to understand that it is basically about a society that os completely controlled by its government. The citizens have no access to the arts, sciences, or any literature so that they completely devote all their time and energy to their government. Everything is controlled by the government. If it helps to understand, the term "Big Brother" was coined by Orwell for this book.
So, I'm sitting at my desk, after just putting my daughter down for bed, when I realize that our schools are turning into Big Brother. Now, in some cases that may actually be a good thing. It keeps us teachers on our toes, makes us put our best foot forward, gives administrators and teachers alike accountability. On the other hand, this whole Big Brother thing is just creepy. I certainly don't like the idea that someone is constantly watching me and monitoring everything that I do. It makes me nervous, and I am more prone to make mistakes. I wonder sometimes if they (meaning "The Man") can watch what I do online, can they watch what I do when I'm not online. Do they watch me when I play blocks with my child? Do they watch me when I go to the bathroom? The very idea of Big Brother is unsettling.
According to the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), any school that receives funding from the E-rate program must have Internet safety policies in place that prohibits students from accessing pornography and elicit content online. The E-rate program helps schools with the high cost of Internet access for all computers. So any school that participates in this program must adhere to the CIPA guidelines. All the K-12 public schools that I have been in have some sort of filter on their computers.
So here's a list of stuff that I think should be blocked at school:
- Non-educational gaming sites
- Pornographic sites and pictures
- Non-educational social networking sites
- Sites that promote terrorism and/or violence and hatred
- Sites that feature copyrighted materials, such as movies and music
I totally agree with the first three, but to block sites that lack academic value? That takes out 90% of the Internet. How can we realistically do that?? Part of our jobs as teachers is to teach and promote media literacy. We need our students to know how to go online and filter out all the crappy stuff for themselves. We need them to know how to find and use academic websites in their research. We need them to do this on their own without us holding their hands all the time. How can I show my students that the Poe Museum website is a better website for research than The Poe Decoder when one of those sites is blocked due to advertisements?
In theory, CIPA is a God-send. It helps promote positive, academic research on campus, not the hours of time wasted by some of us on Facebook or MySpace. However, with my new-found knowledge of Web 2.0 and media literacy, I've realized that there are some educational values to the social networking sites that CIPA has us blocking (apparently social networking has no academic value). I would also hate to know that one of my students has been getting his jollies while looking at porn on one of my computers when he was supposed to be researching or working on a class project.
So here's where Big Brother comes into public education. For the past two years, I've read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne with my students. It usually takes me three to four weeks to read, analyze, and test over the novel. As with any unit that I teach, I include some kind of project to tie all the parts of the novel together. For The Scarlet Letter, I have my students create an Alphabet Book. It's a simple little assignment where the students associate each letter of the alphabet with something important from the novel. The students must write in complete sentences and must include a picture that is relevant to their sentence and letter. For example, for the letter A I could write "Hester Prynne committed adultery when she thought her husband was dead." I might include a picture of Hester Prynne with the letter A on her chest or a picture of an ornamental letter A. I had my students create a PowerPoint with one letter/sentence/picture per slide. It is a simple assignment and uses minimal technology, but my students love the assignment and do very well on them, and they actually reinforce their knowledge of the book through this assignment.
So, this past spring I read The Scarlet Letter with my students like a always do. We were almost at the end of the novel, so I told my students about the project, gave them their assignment sheet, and passed around an example Alphabet Book. By this point, I had already booked two days in the computer lab, so I told my students to mark those days in their calendars. We spent the rest of that class period working on our sentences, so we could maximize our time in the lab. The next day my school system blocked Yahoo and Google images. I found out through two students in a different class.
There was no warning. There was no email stating why images were blocked. There was no faculty meeting explaining why the system had taken this measure. NO FORMAL EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER!! So I asked my media specialist why images had been blocked, and she said that we had to follow the CIPA guidelines and by allowing image searches to be conducted, the system could possibly lose E-rate funding, and they couldn't afford to lose E-rate funding given the economy at the time. I deduced on my own that a student accidentally came across a pornographic picture of some sort, the administrators freaked out, and forced our media specialists to block images on our computers. Thanks to someone briefly losing control of their common sense, my students lost out on an engaging project that would have helped them understand a hard-to-understand novel.
It was foolish to block all image searches because someone accidentally found porn. If the filters were working like they were supposed to, the image never would have appeared in the first place. I bet the student didn't even react when the picture came up; someone else over-reacted and thus punished the entire student population.
Now, this idea of Big Brother isn't limited to just the Internet. I have a friend who has been teaching in a major college town in South Georgia for two years; she is currently in her third year at an elementary school there. After school one day at the beginning of September, she posted a Facebook status that said that all schools in her system were not allowed to watch President Obama's speech to America's students. My friend gave no explanation as to why the superintendent of the system would make such a move, and the town's newspaper gave no explanations on their website. Granted, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the President's speech, but the transcript of said speech had been available online for several days before Obama's scheduled appearance. So why would the Superintendent feel the need to censor our children from a motivational speech from our nation's President?
**UPDATE** I received an email on Sept. 15 from my local news station that says that this particular college town is asking the Superintendent of schools to step down over his decision to ban the President's speech last week.
As I delve deeper into my studies for my Master's degree, the more I realize that the things we are trying to keep from our students are the same things that are going to help them survive in the 21st century. I find myself getting fired up about ideas that I didn't even think about six months ago. As an English teacher, I think it's important that my students know how to read and write the old-fashioned way with paper, pens, and a physical book in their hands. I find value in reading The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, and The Scarlet Letter. As a teacher in the 21st century, I also find value in my students knowing how to survive in a media-rich society. We can't continue teaching our students as if we are stuck in the 1990s.
Our students have spent much of their lives online and connected to each other because they are social people, but yet we want them to be engaged in class without the tools that engage them. How can they be attentive in class when they aren't motivated or engaged? We want our students engaged, right? We want them to be curious about the lesson at hand. The core academics aren't going anywhere, but we teachers can't expect our students to learn and enjoy dry subjects on their own. I enjoy reading, I always have, but I know that some people don't. Take my husband, for example. He won't read books unless they hold his attention (he has ADD), but he'll read a magazine from cover to cover if the subject is something that interests him. I've seen him read 200 page magazines about diesel engines in one sitting.
My previous school had a 20-minute Silent Sustained Reading time where the students were supposed to read and only read. And, luckily for them, they were allowed to read anything they wanted. Magazines, books, newspapers, anything they wanted, as long as they were reading. I would have enjoyed those 20 minutes of quiet to read. If my husband were a student who had to endure those excruciating 20 minute reading periods, he would have gone crazy. Imagine taking away the freedom of choosing his reading material. Thankfully, my school did away with SSR before they decided on the reading material for the students. I'm glad they never became that controlling.
So I guess my point is this: If our intention is to make our students media literate, then we need to expose them to all kinds of media, good and bad. We need to teach them how to discern the good from the bad. We need to let them be their own filters. Our students know what pornography is, and I don't advocate the non-filtering of pornographic material. But if it accidentally comes up, the answer isn't to freak out and draw attention to the issue. Ideally, we teachers should be walking around the students as they are at our computer; we should be monitoring what they are looking at, so if they do come across something inappropriate, we can take that opportunity to explain why it was inappropriate and move on from the subject. If a student somehow finds a way around the filter and is purposely looking at said banned sites, then punish that student, not the entire student population; it isn't fair to those students who did nothing wrong.
The more we try to keep our students from the media surrounding them, the more our schools essentially become Orwellian micro-societies. If we continue to move in that direction, more and more students will eventually resent us and hate school in general. That could lead to more and more students dropping out or being at school only because their parents said they had to. I don't want to teach students who are only motivated by their parents say-so. I want to teach students who are eager to come to class because they know that they will get to use some sort of new technology that will keep them engaged in class. Therefore, I'm going to fight Big Brother to ensure my students that their creativity and curiosity will not be suppressed. It is not 1984, and we should not treat our students like it is.
Week 2 - Blog Posting #3 - Media Literacy
What is Media Literacy?
When I was in the eighth grade, my Social Studies teacher assigned all of her classes a project where we students were supposed to find so many articles from physical newspapers, cut them out, write a summary of those articles, and post them in a physical scrapbook. The Internet was just coming to our area and not many people had service at home. My, how times have changed!!
Media literacy in 2009 is much different than it was in 1997, when I had to do that scrapbook, because we have more media surrounding us. Twelve years ago the only media that we were exposed to was television and newspapers. Now, we can add digital to that list. Even the way we view television has changed since the FCC has completely done away with analog broadcasts. That means that the only rabbit ears that my daughter will know will be the ones on real rabbits!
The classic definition of media is not new. Humanity has been creating media since the dawn of time with cave paintings. However, media today and how we create it is new. The students in our classrooms today will need to know how to read, analyze, and create the following in order to survive in our media-rich society:
- Newspaper articles - The physical newspaper (especially small town newspapers) will never truly die off. There are too many people who like to hold a newspaper in their hands while they read them.
- TV ads - We need to understand why certain advertisements and TV shows are geared towards certain demographics.
- Digital media - Some newspapers are posting their articles online with the ability for readers to make comments, and out students should know how to properly comment without making themselves sound uneducated. If students want to create something and post it to the Internet, this "something" should be useful to others; it should be created with a purpose in mind.
The best way to let our students learn about new media is through trial and error because if the student makes a mistake, he will learn from that mistake. It may take time for him to learn his lesson, but eventually he will get it. In a world where we value instant gratification, this "time" concept may not be good enough for some people, but in some cases it's the best teacher.
When I was in my sophomore year of high school (a full four years after the newspaper scrapbook!), my parents finally broke down and bought a computer with Internet access. DSL would not be available in our area until I was in college, so I was stuck with dial-up access for the remainder of high school, but it was better than nothing. My own personal media literacy began that day when my parents old Hewlitt-Packard arrived at their house.
The idea of research changed dramatically. I grew up learning how to do research with books (something today's students are almost clueless about). With that HP, I was able to write my research paper on Woodstock '69. I think I may have used one or two books sources. The majority of my sources were online (Wikipedia was in its infancy then so it was no help). I learned, through trial and error, which sites on my Works Cited page were valid.
I didn't own my own computer until I was in my junior year of college. With the help of a huge Christmas bonus from my grandfather, I bought my first car and my first laptop, a top-of-the-line Compac Presario. I wrote countless essays on that computer, did all of my research from it, and completed my Teacher Work Sample (from student teaching) from it. That Compac made college life easier for me. I cried the day the hard drive died.
The truth is that the advent of the Internet and personal computers has made life easier for everyone. That being said, I think that many teachers (especially those who began teaching 20 or 30 years ago) are in this mindset that the Internet has made students lazy. Well, guess what? We're going to have lazy students, no matter what, because we are human and not every student is going to go home and study like he's supposed to or stay completely focused in a 90-minute class like he's supposed to. If you want to engage your students, let them play with the toys that they think are fun. Work that iPod Touch into your curriculum somehow. I bet your students will thank you.
I've learned from my own observations over the years that what they say is true: "You only want what you can't have." If we tell our students that cell phones are banned in our schools, they will find a way to use them. Even the teachers will use them. I can't tell you how many times I've pulled out my phone in class to check the time (even though there was a clock in the room) or used the stopwatch feature when my students were giving speeches and presentations or used the calculator feature when we needed to find a quick sum. I even went as far as designating one of my students with an iPhone as the class Dictionary. It was easier for him to look up a definition on his iPhone than it was for me to pull out a dictionary or look it up online. I didn't care that he had his phone out as long as he was using it for some educational value, but I always warned him to be careful lest an administrator or Nazi-teacher found out he even had it.
Do we want our students to be successful in life beyond high school? Yes, absolutely. Then we need to foster their creativity and curiosity. Every time a new piece of technology comes out, we scramble to learn how it works, even if it isn't ours to play with. So in the words of Juliette LaMontagne, let's create "a culture of life-long learners who make no distinction between formal and informal learning environments, who learn whenever and wherever they are curious."
References
LaMontagne, J. (2009, August 12). Please turn on your cell phone. Retrieved from The Design Observer site: http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=10277
Media Literacy, Education & Choice - Extra Feature. (2008, August 4). Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzeVjAM-drg
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Week 1 - Blog Posting #2 - Learning 2.0
Learning 2.0 is basically how students make sense of and learn from the Web 2.0 tools available to them.
Our students want to learn. They want to be challenged. They want to create. They want to use the technology that is available to them. As long as we keep our students from this emerging technology, they will stay bored and unengaged in our classrooms.
If a teacher takes her students on a field trip, chances are the students will be bored with the location before they step off the bus. Instead of keeping them in one huge group and telling them to listen up, lets give them a smart phone (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) and have them write snippets here and there of what they are learning and post that somewhere online. The students are using the technology that they so desperately want to use, and they are engaged!
If the school systems truly want their students to succeed in life after graduation, then we have to let them learn with the technologies that they are already familiar with. We have become a society that is so scared of the things that might hurt us, so we shield our children from these things. Of course we want to protect our children, but we should teach them how to appropriately react and respond to the situations that might hurt them. Thus, instead of completely blocking Google Images and Yahoo! Images because the students may find pornography when searching for a picture of a bunny, let’s teach our students that the bad images they did find are inappropriate and move on!
According to ACPL, “The thing about Web 2.0 isn't the technology. It's the way people use it.” How do we expect our children to learn, if we don’t let them use it?
References
Allen County Public Library. (2007). Learning 2.0 Introduction. Retrieved from http://www.acpl.lib.in.us/acplib2/
Learning 2.0. (2008, March 31). Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r4_bnCdWnM
Week 1 - Blog Posting #1 - Web 2.0
What is Web 2.0?
Simply put, Web 2.0 is any website that fosters sharing and collaboration amongst people. The software is completely online and is available to anyone with access to the Internet. People have been using Web 2.0 tools without really knowing that they are Web 2.0 tools. Some examples of these are blogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networking.
The term “Web 2.0” started with Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media. At a Web 2.0 conference in 2004, the term was coined to describe the way that people change and use the Internet. Despite its use in everyday life, many people still disagree about what Web 2.0 really is. In response to this argument, O’Reilly Media created a page on their site that really explains what Web 2.0 is and how people are using it (http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=1).
Blogs
A blog is a set of regularly updated entries by a group, organization, or an individual. These entries can be personal in nature, updating readers on the goings-on in that individual’s life, or they can be regular commentary updating readers about subjects important to that group or organization. Most blogs feature text as the main way to communicate to readers; however, some blogs feature music, pictures, and video.
Most bloggers start out using blog sites such as Blogger (www.blogger.com); however, these sites are probably not appropriate for classroom use (although teachers are more than welcome to use these sites if they want) because these two sites are used by all kinds of bloggers, including those who write adult material. Thus, students would have access to material that would be inappropriate for the classroom if they just happened to come across the material. Blogs have been designed for the classroom in mind, including Class Blogmeister (http://classblogmeister.com). Teachers have control over the material that students post, and the site actually requires that teachers supervise such material (Solomon and Schrum, 2007).
The possibilities for blogs in the classroom are endless. English teachers, for example, can have their students write reaction blogs to the literature that they read. A teacher can assign a poem, short story, or chapter in a novel to be read as homework. The student can write his thoughts or any questions that he may have had about the literature. The students can follow each other’s blogs and make comments, and if the blogger had questions, answer those questions and add clarification. Those students who don’t necessarily like talking in class now have the ability to share their thoughts without having to speak aloud in class. By using this technique, teachers can open up the class period for discussion rather than wasting the time by reading the literature in class.
Wikis
A wiki is a website that allows its readers to collaborate, share, edit, and revise information on that website at any time. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is probably the most well known wiki on the Internet. Readers and collaborators of Wikipedia can update the articles at any time. If one reader notices that the information is incorrect or out-of-date, he can change that information so that it is correct and/or up-to-date.
The possibilities for wikis in the classroom are endless as well. Many teachers have their students create portfolios that contain the assignments that the students have completed and perfected over the course of a semester or year. Instead of turning in a hard-copy portfolio, students can now turn in electronic portfolios with the help of wikis.
Podcasts
A podcast is a digital media file that is released through web syndication. The term is been made famous by iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes). Thousands of podcasts on thousands of different subjects are released daily through iTunes for free. Anyone who has access to a computer, a microphone, and the Internet can create a podcast.
In addition to blogs and wikis, podcasts offer endless educational possibilities. A teacher can have her students create podcasts throughout the course. For example, the English teacher can have her students create one podcast per unit of the course. This podcast can cover almost any subject within the unit. So one student could create a podcast that covers the vocabulary terms from that unit, and another student could create a podcast that covers a particular poem from that unit, and both students would receive credit for the podcast assignment.
Social Networking
Social networking sites are those websites that promote online communities and friendship through common shared interests. The most famous social networking sites are Facebook (www.facebook.com) and MySpace (www.myspace.com). Most school systems have blocked social networking sites because students tend to go to these sites and waste time when they should be working on school-related assignments.
Social networking sites may not have the educational possibilities that blogs, wikis, and podcasts have, but they do have some value. Some educators who have joined Facebook use the site to network with other educators. These teachers and administrators join groups for educators and share education-related links that their peers may use in their classrooms.
Those educators who are looking to use social networking in their classrooms will want to seek sites that are designed for the classroom, such as Imeem (http://imeem.com) or Whyville (www.whyville.com). These two sites are more responsible than more popular social networking sites (Solomon and Schrum, 2007).
Twitter (www.twitter.com) can be categorized under two Web 2.0 headings. It is both a microblogging site and a social networking site. Twitter is a microblogging site because its blog entries cannot exceed 140 characters (including spaces), and it is a social networking site because users can follow other individuals and organizations that interest them.
Like the Web 2.0 tools mentioned above, Twitter has many educational possibilities. If a teacher has one of those days where she is lecturing, she can stop her lecture every 10, 15, or 20 minutes and have her students write a few sentences about what they learned on Twitter within 5 minutes. Once those five minutes are over, the teacher can move forward with her lecture and stop again in 10, 15, or 20 minutes. The students have to compress their information, since they can only submit 140 characters. The learning becomes theirs because the students have to determine what was the most important information out of that 10-20 minute lecture and send that in within those few minutes. If the students follow any of their classmates, then they have a great study guide for an upcoming test, since they will have their tweets and the tweets of their classmates.
Many school systems have Twitter blocked for the same reasons that they have blocked other social networking sites. Most of the tweets sent in by users are of no interest to other users, anyway. A simple web search of microblogging sites at a public school may find some safer alternatives to Twitter, especially for those educators who are worried about the implications from school officials and parents. However, there are educators who find value in using Twitter in the classroom because it “promotes writing as a fun activity” and it gives students “a chance to record their cognitive trails and … use them to reflect on their work” (Grosseck and Holotescu, 2008).
References
Grosseck, G., and Holotescu, C. (2008). Can we use Twitter for educational activities? In Proceedings of The 4th Annual International Scientific Conference eLSE “eLearning and Software for Education”. Bucharest, Romania.
O’Reilly, T. (2005, September 30). What is web 2.0? Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Retrieved from http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=1
Solomon, G., and Schrum, L. Web 2.0: New tools, new schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.
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