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.)

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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/