For this blog my classmates read and blogged about chapter 4. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying attention and a few weeks ago, my teacher alerted me and told me that I had done the wrong chapter. So since I have already blogged about chapter 4, I am going to blog about the chapter that I should have done a few weeks ago, which is chapter 5. The things in Chapter 5 that I would like to discuss is Wikipedia being used in classrooms, Copyright infringement, and cyber bulling.
I always feel like I go back to previous blogs I have posted and I state the same things over and over again, however, I feel that these blogs are in conjunction with each other. So with that said, I am a child of the 90s. I remember doing middle school projects and having to go to the library to look up things in world book encyclopedias. Even when I was in high school (I graduated in 2005) I had to have 4 reference from books and 2 from the internet. It was a widely common knowledge that the things on the internet were not as factual back in the day. Fast forward to today, and we have many viable options as far as internet research goes. Wikipedia is a very controversial topic among teachers and professors. The fact that it is a community written encyclopedia is often the factor that many educators have a problem with. For example, a few years ago, comedian Sinbad had woke up with calls from his daughter. His daughter asked him if he was ok. After assureing her he was fine, his daughter told him that his Wikipedia page had stated that he had died. After getting it cleared up, it was reported (again) that he had died of an heart attack. Anybody can put information on this site, which is why this is an highly controversial site. I personally think that most of the information is true on Wikipedia, but question what is and what isn't. So as a future educator, I would allow students to use Wikipedia, only if they could back it up with another viable source.
Copyright material is always a very scary thing to me. I value my education and have many times been passed with plagiarism and copying/cheating while in college. Once because I simply didn't know. I had copied sentences from a book for homework and didn't cite my material. My teacher let me off the hook because she genuinely believed that I had no idea (which I, being 18 at the time, was very grateful for this). Then while in Art history, we had to review the movie Psycho. I got mixed up and gave a summary of the movie. My art history teacher accused me of copying and pasting my information from websites. This I knew was wrong. I had spent hours working on this and coming up with a great summary with my own words. And I was not going to get in trouble with plagiarism again. I wrote her a strongly worded letter apologizing to her for the misunderstanding of a review and summary and would understand any docking of grade for this, but that I had put in a lot of work and hours in to writing a summary in my own words, and if she thought I had plagiarized then she needed to come up with the proof and there wouldn't be any. I believe I got a B- on the homework. A year later a friend copied a test paper word for word with mine, and of course I was in the dean's office. I was thankful my friend had came clean and told them that she had copied me, But after these situations, I have decided that I am done with these problems. I try to stay clear of anything that can become copyright issues. I know that after doing these blogs that you can only use domain free items and is happy to do this.
The last thing I would like to talk about is cyber bulling. This isn't something I had to deal with growing up with too much. The main ways students are cyber bulling others are through sites such as facebook, snapchat, twitter, and instagram. I didn't have any of these when I was a kid. Although we did have chat rooms, I wasn't allowed on them and there for, I didn't notice it too much. I know as an adult and a fan of youtube, that people can be mean when they are not face to face with you. They tend to feel a little more powerful behind a keyboard. I know I have talked about this recently, but I was able to teach technology in a summer program a few years ago. In this class the kids were able to maintain a kidblog. They were given strict orders to be careful with what they put on these blogs and that I had the power to see all of their post. They knew if they wrote bad things about another camp member than I would report them and they were kicked out of the program. Unfortunately, the district that we were in wanted me (a non teacher in their county) to be kicked out of a technology program. I later became the photography teacher and I did that for the rest of the summer so we only were able to do two weeks of blogging. But the kids had a blast and they were very well behaved. I know that is not the case, and especially when you think no one is watching you write horrible stuff about someone. One of my campers a family friend of mine and she had me as a friend on facebook. I noticed that she and another girl were tearing this other girl apart. The things that they said about this girl were awful. The extremely sad thing was they were in 5th 6th and 7th grade. To put that in another perspective, they were 10, 11, and 13 years old. I am an adult and I don't say the words they were saying about the 10 year old. I told (the family friend) what she was doing was awful and even if the other girl was saying it, she was agreeing and how it would make my friend feel she was the one being bullied. I think I resolved the issue, but there are many more cases out there that turn deadly and for a 10 year old to have to experience this is just plain heartbreaking.
In conclusion, as a future educator, I will do my best to be fair with Wikipedia, teach my students about copyrights and the importance of copyright in college, and bullying in general, but also online bullying.
Reference:
Maloy, R., O’Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Digital Badge # H
For this digital badge #H, we had to read chapter 9. Three topics that I would like to discuss are power point strategies, YouTube and online streaming video websites, and video editing software in the class room.
PowerPoint and Prezis are very popular in teaching. As I have stated before, my parents (who are teachers) use PowerPoint and Prezi on a weekly basis. These are great tools for teaching, as well as great for students and projects. Some presentations that I have been able to teach using PowerPoint are about me (the students) and something we called Personal Electronic Data Notebooks. We had the students create PowerPoints that examined their grades, FCAT scores, and behavior for the year. It was a great way to keep the kids in check with themselves as well as put their own influence in the design. Prezi's are great to do this kind of thing as well.
YouTube is a great thing to use for education. At first, my thought was that anything on Youtube has to be examined carefully before showing to students and especially younger students. But I have noticed that YouTube has something called YouTube Education. This allows for safe YouTube streaming. Also, Khan Acadamy and Discovery Education are great educational video streaming that I have used before.
Finally, I would like to discuss video editing. Having being certified in Adobe Premier Pro, and a small side business of making videos for education, graduations, weddings, reunions, and ect; I have used a few video editing software. All of my computer's in my house are macbooks. So I am very familiar with iMovie. I use iMovie quite a bit. As well as have used Microsoft Movie Maker in the past. Like I just said, I am certified in Premier Pro, so I now use an editing software that's a little more expensive, but I can say, for movie making in the class room, that iMovie and Microsoft Movie Maker is just as impacting as Premier Pro for what students can use it for.
References:
Discovery Education streaming. (2008, December 4). Retrieved October 19, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=illMlepgrDM
Maloy, R., O’Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
PowerPoint and Prezis are very popular in teaching. As I have stated before, my parents (who are teachers) use PowerPoint and Prezi on a weekly basis. These are great tools for teaching, as well as great for students and projects. Some presentations that I have been able to teach using PowerPoint are about me (the students) and something we called Personal Electronic Data Notebooks. We had the students create PowerPoints that examined their grades, FCAT scores, and behavior for the year. It was a great way to keep the kids in check with themselves as well as put their own influence in the design. Prezi's are great to do this kind of thing as well.
YouTube is a great thing to use for education. At first, my thought was that anything on Youtube has to be examined carefully before showing to students and especially younger students. But I have noticed that YouTube has something called YouTube Education. This allows for safe YouTube streaming. Also, Khan Acadamy and Discovery Education are great educational video streaming that I have used before.
Finally, I would like to discuss video editing. Having being certified in Adobe Premier Pro, and a small side business of making videos for education, graduations, weddings, reunions, and ect; I have used a few video editing software. All of my computer's in my house are macbooks. So I am very familiar with iMovie. I use iMovie quite a bit. As well as have used Microsoft Movie Maker in the past. Like I just said, I am certified in Premier Pro, so I now use an editing software that's a little more expensive, but I can say, for movie making in the class room, that iMovie and Microsoft Movie Maker is just as impacting as Premier Pro for what students can use it for.
References:
Discovery Education streaming. (2008, December 4). Retrieved October 19, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=illMlepgrDM
Maloy, R., O’Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Digital Badge # G
For this post, we read chapter 10. Chapter 10 was about students with cultural, academic, and physical differences and they way technology can help them in everyday learning. The three things that I chose to talk about today are multicultural students and online language translation services, the digital accommodations of low-tech, mid-tech, and high-tech, and the use of interactive electronic storybooks.
The first thing I would like to elaborate on is multicultural students and online language translations services. I have said many times while on this blog, that I worked as a after school tutor for a local middle school. I have been very discreet about which middle school in which town because of this being on the internet and even though, these post are for grades, I realize that random people are looking at my blog. My Digital Badge #A has around 31 views and I am pretty sure my professor isn't viewing my first blog post that many times. But if my professor is familiar with the local schools in our area, she will know which town I am referring to when I say, I come from a migrant community. This town is a migrant farming community. Our main produce is tomatoes. The diversity of the students are Hispanic (being mainly Mexican and Guatemalan), Haitian, White, and Native American (in that order). All of that to say, As a tutor I am very familiar with online language translations services. By far the one that we used the most was Google translate. This allowed the Spanish speaking and Creole speaking students to communicate with me the problems they were having as well as I communicating with them on what I wanted them to do. The upside to this was that I got to learn a little Creole and Spanish as I went along (I brag that my first words in Creole were close your mouth and sit down.) A small side note, I also worked with a deaf/ hearing impaired student as well. My boss asked us if anyone knew American Sign Language. After no one said anything I told them I knew the alphabet and they sit me with the student. After a year of working closely with her, I was able to sign somewhat fluently with her. I won't go into much detail on it because I talked about it in my disscussion post, but we used a site called Signing Savvy. This sight was an online dictionary for ASL. It did great and I still use it today to look up a word. Going back to Google translate, they now have an app. So it's great to use in classrooms.
Another thing that stuck with me as I was reading this chapter was the low, mid, and high tech accommodations. It seems so simple, but it's really good information. I found myself really going back to the chart and taking notes of situations and their low, mid, and high tech accommodations were. I would also research and in some occasions look closely at some of the apps. These are great solutions to everyday things.
Lastly, I am going to talk about the use of interactive electronic storybooks. This isn't a huge surprise because it seems like I often talk about Reading Rainbow and the app that they have. I do plan on using this when I become a teacher and I am excited about this. But I have talked about Reading Rainbow too often in these blogs, so I will spare you the lecture on it. Instead, I will talk about the use of storybooks and ebooks in the classroom. I don't think that anyone is arguing that online storybooks or ebooks are ruining the classroom. They engage students both visually and audibly, they help students decipher words that they may not know the spelling of, but have heard the word said before, and they teach students to pronounce words phonically. I suppose some would consider it a lackadaisical approach to reading, but I don't see it that way. I see it doing more good than bad. I am not an advocate of ebooks only. I do believe students should be able to pick up an actual book from time to time, but ebooks in the classroom are a very smart decision. Every post in this blog we have to add a digital tool. We have these tools to chose from and some that I have been looking at using (but haven't really found a good use for it yet) are two digital storytelling sites called Story Bird and Zoo Burst. My grandmother has a book published. Because we are of Christian faith the book is called Children's Parables: Earthly Stories With Heavenly Lessons for Children. And my shameless plug is that you can buy it and order it from amazon here. So it's no wonder that I wrote a short story a few years ago. I lost it when my computer was stolen and I am rewriting it now. Everyone that had read it told me I should have it published. My dream of course is to get it published one day when it is ready. I believe that these sites (Story Bird and Zoo Burst) are great sites to make story books and have your students read them.
To recap I think that Google Translate is an amazing app and works great with students who speak a different language. The chart in the textbook that shows everyday situations and the low, mid, and high tech accommodations for them are very informative and I will be using these notes for when I am teacher. And lastly, digital storytelling and ebooks are a must for classroom technology.
References:
Children's Parables: Earthly Stories with Heavenly Lessons for Children Paperback – December 5, 2013. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2014, from http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Parables-Earthly-Heavenly-Children/dp/1490816755/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413208276&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=Christian Children Books Karen Frantz
Google Translate. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2014, from https://translate.google.com/
Maloy, R., O’Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Storybird. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2014, from http://storybird.com/poetry/poem/48jq26brrw/published/
The first thing I would like to elaborate on is multicultural students and online language translations services. I have said many times while on this blog, that I worked as a after school tutor for a local middle school. I have been very discreet about which middle school in which town because of this being on the internet and even though, these post are for grades, I realize that random people are looking at my blog. My Digital Badge #A has around 31 views and I am pretty sure my professor isn't viewing my first blog post that many times. But if my professor is familiar with the local schools in our area, she will know which town I am referring to when I say, I come from a migrant community. This town is a migrant farming community. Our main produce is tomatoes. The diversity of the students are Hispanic (being mainly Mexican and Guatemalan), Haitian, White, and Native American (in that order). All of that to say, As a tutor I am very familiar with online language translations services. By far the one that we used the most was Google translate. This allowed the Spanish speaking and Creole speaking students to communicate with me the problems they were having as well as I communicating with them on what I wanted them to do. The upside to this was that I got to learn a little Creole and Spanish as I went along (I brag that my first words in Creole were close your mouth and sit down.) A small side note, I also worked with a deaf/ hearing impaired student as well. My boss asked us if anyone knew American Sign Language. After no one said anything I told them I knew the alphabet and they sit me with the student. After a year of working closely with her, I was able to sign somewhat fluently with her. I won't go into much detail on it because I talked about it in my disscussion post, but we used a site called Signing Savvy. This sight was an online dictionary for ASL. It did great and I still use it today to look up a word. Going back to Google translate, they now have an app. So it's great to use in classrooms.
Another thing that stuck with me as I was reading this chapter was the low, mid, and high tech accommodations. It seems so simple, but it's really good information. I found myself really going back to the chart and taking notes of situations and their low, mid, and high tech accommodations were. I would also research and in some occasions look closely at some of the apps. These are great solutions to everyday things.
Lastly, I am going to talk about the use of interactive electronic storybooks. This isn't a huge surprise because it seems like I often talk about Reading Rainbow and the app that they have. I do plan on using this when I become a teacher and I am excited about this. But I have talked about Reading Rainbow too often in these blogs, so I will spare you the lecture on it. Instead, I will talk about the use of storybooks and ebooks in the classroom. I don't think that anyone is arguing that online storybooks or ebooks are ruining the classroom. They engage students both visually and audibly, they help students decipher words that they may not know the spelling of, but have heard the word said before, and they teach students to pronounce words phonically. I suppose some would consider it a lackadaisical approach to reading, but I don't see it that way. I see it doing more good than bad. I am not an advocate of ebooks only. I do believe students should be able to pick up an actual book from time to time, but ebooks in the classroom are a very smart decision. Every post in this blog we have to add a digital tool. We have these tools to chose from and some that I have been looking at using (but haven't really found a good use for it yet) are two digital storytelling sites called Story Bird and Zoo Burst. My grandmother has a book published. Because we are of Christian faith the book is called Children's Parables: Earthly Stories With Heavenly Lessons for Children. And my shameless plug is that you can buy it and order it from amazon here. So it's no wonder that I wrote a short story a few years ago. I lost it when my computer was stolen and I am rewriting it now. Everyone that had read it told me I should have it published. My dream of course is to get it published one day when it is ready. I believe that these sites (Story Bird and Zoo Burst) are great sites to make story books and have your students read them.
To recap I think that Google Translate is an amazing app and works great with students who speak a different language. The chart in the textbook that shows everyday situations and the low, mid, and high tech accommodations for them are very informative and I will be using these notes for when I am teacher. And lastly, digital storytelling and ebooks are a must for classroom technology.
References:
Children's Parables: Earthly Stories with Heavenly Lessons for Children Paperback – December 5, 2013. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2014, from http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Parables-Earthly-Heavenly-Children/dp/1490816755/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413208276&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=Christian Children Books Karen Frantz
Google Translate. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2014, from https://translate.google.com/
Maloy, R., O’Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Storybird. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2014, from http://storybird.com/poetry/poem/48jq26brrw/published/
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Digital Badge # F
This week's blog was centered around Chapter 8 in our text book. To me this was one of the more interesting chapters in the book. I feel like now we are getting into some pretty good tools to use for classrooms. The topics I would like to discuss would be Blogs, Wiki pages, and briefly on understanding Textspeak and Textisms.
Blogs are a way for people to explain things, showcase work, or to create a community in which people can come and interact with. Blogs in classrooms can be very good in the sense of creativity. I know if given the chance many kids would gladly tell you about their day and all of the events that are coming up in their lives. I had the chance to work with middle school aged students one summer in the Boys and Girls Club. I taught technology (for only a week due to me not being a Collier County Certified Teacher) and during that time the kids kept a blog. A few things that I wanted to make sure of. One, when working with minors, what they say and do should not be posted for the rest of the internet to see. So I needed to make sure that this was a closed blog. I found a blog site called Kidblog.org. This was amazing. I made 8 different classes (we had 8 different groups) and the classes were able to post and only see their classmates blog. The kids would get excited about writing what they did that day, or what they were expecting to do during the weekend. I also had to explain to them that if they had a crush on some one or had information that they didn't want people to know, this was not the place to express that. This was not a virtual diary and that everyone else could see this post. I got very positive feedback on it. I know this would be a great English assignment to use in schools today.
This class is making Wiki pages to talk about Marzano's strategies. If I am honest with myself (and with my professor who is reading this) I was terrified of this project. I have never created a wiki page and I have only been aquatint with it for about a year now. So when the professor said it was time to make a page with other classmates I had a mini panic attack. I was very nervous. After working with it for a week now, I feel more comfortable with it. Although, I still have a hard time thinking of things to put in it and understanding my classmates on direction, I am working as hard as I can to make a wiki page with as much information as I can find. With all of this said, I would recommend middle/high schools include this in their curriculum. It's a great way to show researched information. They can be very informative as well.
The last thing I would like to discuss would be textspeak. I have talked about growing up in the 90s and getting my first cell phone when I was a senior in high school. Although, I had friends with cell phones when I was in middle school, my parents felt that I shouldn't ever be anywhere that an adult is not and therefore, do not need a cell phone. I ended getting my mother's hand-me-down cell phone when I was 17 years old. I know own a smart phone and I don't like texting on it very much. My fingers always press other letters, and I am not as fast at texting as I am at typing. So I am cursed in this texting world that we live in. I remember texting lingo when I was a kid being "LOL," "BRB," "TTYL," ect. I remember when people started putting numbers into words like "L8er," and "@mb3r." I once read a sentence on myspace that looked like this:
"H! My n@m3 !s @mb3r. ! l!k3 th3 c0l0r gr33n!"
My head would often hurt when reading this. I hated seeing things that looked like this. Then the thing was not to use vowels at all:
"Hy, My nms mbr! I lk th clr grn!"
Which was not any better. Just a few years ago I noticed people duplicating the ampersand when they would say and like "&&I was like..." and the last thing I saw (about a year ago) was the replacement of the letter "G" with the letter "Q". Some things I understand, like the since of abbreviation and phonetic abbreviation. But I don't know if the last couple of examples show phonetic abbreviation. I once had a student ask me if it was illegal to spell her (future) son's name with a number. I had no idea if it was but I hope that this child changes her mind when she is an adult. I do honestly think that text talk needs to stay out of education and stay between friends. (Although, I have to suppress writing LOL many times while turning in discussion posts.)
References:
Maloy, R., O’Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Safe and Simple. (n.d.). Retrieved October 5, 2014, from http://kidblog.org/home/
Blogs are a way for people to explain things, showcase work, or to create a community in which people can come and interact with. Blogs in classrooms can be very good in the sense of creativity. I know if given the chance many kids would gladly tell you about their day and all of the events that are coming up in their lives. I had the chance to work with middle school aged students one summer in the Boys and Girls Club. I taught technology (for only a week due to me not being a Collier County Certified Teacher) and during that time the kids kept a blog. A few things that I wanted to make sure of. One, when working with minors, what they say and do should not be posted for the rest of the internet to see. So I needed to make sure that this was a closed blog. I found a blog site called Kidblog.org. This was amazing. I made 8 different classes (we had 8 different groups) and the classes were able to post and only see their classmates blog. The kids would get excited about writing what they did that day, or what they were expecting to do during the weekend. I also had to explain to them that if they had a crush on some one or had information that they didn't want people to know, this was not the place to express that. This was not a virtual diary and that everyone else could see this post. I got very positive feedback on it. I know this would be a great English assignment to use in schools today.
This class is making Wiki pages to talk about Marzano's strategies. If I am honest with myself (and with my professor who is reading this) I was terrified of this project. I have never created a wiki page and I have only been aquatint with it for about a year now. So when the professor said it was time to make a page with other classmates I had a mini panic attack. I was very nervous. After working with it for a week now, I feel more comfortable with it. Although, I still have a hard time thinking of things to put in it and understanding my classmates on direction, I am working as hard as I can to make a wiki page with as much information as I can find. With all of this said, I would recommend middle/high schools include this in their curriculum. It's a great way to show researched information. They can be very informative as well.
The last thing I would like to discuss would be textspeak. I have talked about growing up in the 90s and getting my first cell phone when I was a senior in high school. Although, I had friends with cell phones when I was in middle school, my parents felt that I shouldn't ever be anywhere that an adult is not and therefore, do not need a cell phone. I ended getting my mother's hand-me-down cell phone when I was 17 years old. I know own a smart phone and I don't like texting on it very much. My fingers always press other letters, and I am not as fast at texting as I am at typing. So I am cursed in this texting world that we live in. I remember texting lingo when I was a kid being "LOL," "BRB," "TTYL," ect. I remember when people started putting numbers into words like "L8er," and "@mb3r." I once read a sentence on myspace that looked like this:
"H! My n@m3 !s @mb3r. ! l!k3 th3 c0l0r gr33n!"
My head would often hurt when reading this. I hated seeing things that looked like this. Then the thing was not to use vowels at all:
"Hy, My nms mbr! I lk th clr grn!"
Which was not any better. Just a few years ago I noticed people duplicating the ampersand when they would say and like "&&I was like..." and the last thing I saw (about a year ago) was the replacement of the letter "G" with the letter "Q". Some things I understand, like the since of abbreviation and phonetic abbreviation. But I don't know if the last couple of examples show phonetic abbreviation. I once had a student ask me if it was illegal to spell her (future) son's name with a number. I had no idea if it was but I hope that this child changes her mind when she is an adult. I do honestly think that text talk needs to stay out of education and stay between friends. (Although, I have to suppress writing LOL many times while turning in discussion posts.)
References:
Maloy, R., O’Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Safe and Simple. (n.d.). Retrieved October 5, 2014, from http://kidblog.org/home/
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