UB English Ning

The UB English Education Ning can be a useful tool for me in many ways. First, it helps me keep in contact with any fellow English Ed. majors that I have met over the course of time, and it gives up a sphere where we can communicate. Secondly, we can post our ideas and get feedback for them...without any pressure, or obtain ideas (beg, borrow, and steal). The UB Ning is a place where we can share our success stories, horror stories, and works of art that our students presented to us. It is an awesome educational tool.

The Learner

A learner is like an canoe. While it will still be a canoe able to drift around in the water, in order for it to reach a specific destination, the canoe needs to be filled with a team of people directing where the canoe will wind up. In addition, the number of people can shift, teams can shift, and strength and speed will change over time, but as long as there are people rowing that canoe, it will eventually reach it’s destination. I can relate this analogy back to the theory of connectivism, which states, “Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories...[it] is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations,” (George Siemens, 2005).

In my analogy, the people in the canoe symbolize the information change that occurs over time because of the informational flow of data. Siemens argues that, “Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity,” (2005). Because the canoe is now filled with people, it represents that “tectonic shift” and the rowing the canoe is no longer an individual activity. Consider this analogy when comparing social networks. If there are twenty teachers without any type of social network, than they stand alone, possibly drifting like the empty canoe. However, once you present the idea of connectivisim to the equation, because of a network such as a blog or wiki, the teachers can work together and "stay current and continue to learn from each other," (Siemens The Impact of Social Software on Learning). Connectivism clearly has shaped the way we learn!

Sources:

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age George Siemen

The Impact of Social Software on Learning

Are you paying attention?

I found the video, "Pay Attention", to be informative and thought provoking. The video asks the viewer to question whether he or she is paying attention to the way students learn in this day and age. Because of the influx of ways technology can be used in the classroom, the video inspires educators to integrate these mechanisms into their lesson plans. According to the video, only 28% of students find school actually meaningful, and only 21% find their coursework interesting. In order to give students a boost and make school a place where students can feel as if they are actually learning, technology needs to be incorporated into the classroom.

The video gives good examples of just how technology can be used in the classroom, ranging from using text messaging as a simple way of communicating and gathering data, to the use of podcasts. I recently created my first podcast and I can honestly say, I not only learned the technology, but I also picked up a lot of information along the way from my peers about using technology in the classroom. Rather than having to sit and sift through articles about ways to use technology, I learned from a podcast, and the information stuck with me.

Because we are now a society where we are indeed "digital learners", it is imperative that we update our teaching styles to reflect this because if only 39% of our students believe school work will have any bearing on their success in their later life (see the video), than as a society as a whole, we will not be successful.

Blog # 2...Safety Blogging

According to my Mom, the world was a much safer place when she was growing up. Now I’m not completely sure if I agree with that comment, but I know there may be more threats that exist in the world because of the Internet. While an awesome tool, if one is not safe, there can be major unhealthy consequences to a person’s actions. Since this weeks main focus is on blogging, here are a few tips that we can teach our students to use to ensure blogging safely:

Publicity, Publicity, Publicity: A lot of people don’t realize that most of the things that are published on the net become public domain. Be careful of pictures that you post and information that you publish. Anyone may be able to see these pictures and take them (sometimes illegally) and anyone can read your blog (which can be really bad if you have a blog about something you do that’s embarrassing during your free time and your teacher stumbles across it).

The Password issss….Yours and yours alone. If you give out the password to your blog, it may fall in the wrong hands and your page may be hacked or even deleted. Make sure you don’t give out your password.

To Comment or Not to Comment…That is the Question….You can always delete the bad comments but students should remember…..although you delete yours, someone can easily copy and paste your comments and they will live on in cyber space. Also, you don’t want to break your sites “terms of service” by using foul or indecent language so hold your tongue and follow the commenting rules….press delete not reply.

Be Careful Where You Visit….Make sure you are visiting an age appropriate blog and not one that is filled with indecencies. If students are blogging for school than there should be no reason they are on a blog that deals with anything inappropriate, once again, violating the “terms of service”.

Blogging should be a fun experience if done the correct way. Stay clear of trouble and you will have the ultimate blogging experience.

-Amanda

Blog # 1...Why Blog in the classroom?

In a world today when students are more influenced by athletes, singers, and movies stars, it is hard to capture the attention of a pupil with school and assignments, and it is even harder to keep their attention. With new emerging technology, it has become somewhat easy, but challenges still lie ahead.

And the number 1 culprit?  Ironically, it’s technology.

             While helpful, technology can still be a hindrance to an educator, mainly because students use technology for reasons educators would deem wrong. For example, a teacher would not have a problem with a child texting after school. But when the student texts during class, or even worse (gasps) submits an essay written completely in texting jargon it is there the problem arises.

            Luckily, educators have begun to incorporate new strategies into their lessons in order to somewhat repair the damage that has been done the psyche of students by incorporating tools students may use on the outside of the classroom for fun into their lesson, in order to engage students and make their learning experience slightly more authentic to their actually lives.

            On technique that educators can incorporate is blogging. Blogs or web logs as some call them, are an interactive websites maintained by an individual or individuals who provide news, video, commentary, and other types of media to the public on a regularly scheduled basis.  The use of blogs in the classroom could help students gather information about their local community as well as the world at large. For instance, if a student had to complete a report about local clubs in his or her community, he or she could turn to their blogging community to gather information about specific clubs and their practice (almost as if they were gathering information for an ethnographic research paper). In turn, because they were able to gather this information by reading these blogs, they could then become bloggers themselves and through their own written word, report back on their findings. This option will help students with their creative and writing capabilities and would also satisfy a few standards in a few academic areas. If this project were in fact for an ethnographic study for English Language Arts (my field of course), than it would satisfy standards 1 and 2 which state respectively, “Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding,” and , “Students will read, write, listen, and speak for literary response and expression.” Students will be able to practice writing and through their comments to each other, they can actually learn from each other. Also in the end, students will save many trees, as they will be able to upload their work onto their blog rather than print it out and hand it in. This will minimize:

1)    The random papers that students carry around the entire semester

2)    The  missing homework assignments

3)    The missing paper that you as an educator want to use at the beginning of the year as an example for your next group of students but can’t because it has strangely enough disappeared.

Clearly in this case, blogs are winners.

            Besides focusing on improving the writing and sharing between students, blogs can also be used by teachers is the “class portal”.  I have seen several schools use it and it is a tool that can be used to minimize the land I like to call the “Land of I Didn’t Know/ I Forgot”.  When I was a student, I had an agenda and I wrote down all homework assignments and there was no question as to what was expected of me in school. The new harsh reality nowadays is that students don’t write down homework, they don’t remember when things are due, and parents are so busy they don’t really know what’s going in their child’s school. A class portal is a tool usually run by the teacher that can list EVERYTHING from due dates to homework assignments, to the syllabus to class notes. A class portal would be the end to the “Land of I Didn’t Know/I Forgot”. And parents can always check the portal so they can feel like they have some knowledge of what is going on in their child’s academic career.  

            Finally, I’d just like to say that it’s up to educators to incorporate technology in the classroom to guide our students to better academic futures!


-Amanda