Be Social

Last semester, I explored the article The Social Media Teacher – Do’s and Don’ts. Since I never had thought about the area of social media in the classroom I felt this was a good place to begin. Below are my summaries and conclusions about the Do’s and Don’ts presented. I am including these in this blog posts as well because I think it’s a quick, good reminder for anyone about to indulge in social media in the classroom for the first time.

Borrowed from Positive Results Marketing 

The Do’s:

• Spice up your classroom – The can enhance writing skills through new areas such as blogging, instead of an old tactic like journaling.
• Get yourself involves – You may consider having a page yourself as the teacher in the social media site you choose. This allows you to post assignments, discussion topics, or leave comments on student work.
• Set up a monitoring system – A teacher needs to understand how he or she will make sure that the language and conversations going on online are appropriate. A teacher should also make sure that there are no online dangers to their students.
• Personal Learning Network - The use of other resources and people to connect and share ideas!

The Don’ts:

• Forget about online reputation management - It’s important to keep personal and professional life separate.  You also have to consider about the content your students are posting and how they will be a representation of themselves, your class, and the school.
• Become stagnant - A teacher should do their best to keep their educational social media site active and engaging. Once a teacher becomes inactive, students may loose interest and attention.
• Try and do too much - Educators must understand their limits and be prepared to manage a social media site to the best of their abilities.
• Forget traditional teaching - Social media should be used in collaboration to enhance traditional learning, not to replace traditional learning completely.

This semester however, I’d like to focus more on a new article, 9 Ways to Use Social Media in Your Classroom. Now that I’ve reminded myself of the Do’s and Don’ts, how can I actually engage in social media with my students in the classroom? This article intrigued me because right away I felt like I related to it. It starts with an introduction of the overwhelming feelings of anxiety that teachers can have when it comes to not only starting a new school year, but also including a new instructional strategy in that school year. Yes! I can relate to that.

It then continued with its 9 tips for bringing social media into the classroom. Below are the nine points the article suggests. I’ve explained a few in of these tips in greater detail and how I would use them in my specific classroom. 

Borrowed from Top Education Degrees 

• Get Social. I feel like the most beneficial way my classroom could get social would be to set up a classroom account on Twitter where we follow the authors of our books throughout Literature class. We could try posting questions or comments to the author. I think the students would love logging into this once a week and seeing what contact we’ve had.
• Blog. Each week, sometimes twice a week, students are required to journal. Instead of using the “notes” application on their iPad I could have them journal their responses in an online blog. Then their classmates could actually respond to their blogs.
•  Tweet.
•  Scoop.
•  Pin. Pinterest could be used to develop a board of potential lesson plans or a board that has to do with a specific topic. For example, we just finished a unit on weather in science class. We could create a Pinterest board with different images of weather, videos on weather, worksheets to complete about weather, maps and weather graphs, etc.
• Tumbl.
• Point and Shoot.
• Skype.
• Time it. A timeline platform can be used to discuss the events of a Civil War. This allows students to discuss and contribute to the same timeline during class.

Borrowed from Awe Learning 

This article provided me with small, easy tips to help adjusting my teaching style and incorporate social media into my instruction. I'm excited to implement this ideas, while remembering my do's and don'ts!

Media Literacy

Media consumption is something that’s always intrigued me. I personally think I myself use too much media in my life, and I see the same type of media consumption with my students. Sometimes I find myself on my phone, logging onto a social media site, then swiping up to exit that site, only to open it again in 5 minutes because I’m bored. Media can be an extremely beneficial tool when used correctly; it can also be dangerous when abused or sharing the wrong message. 

Media literacy is the concept of interacting with media and the messages received. I greatly enjoyed Rheingold’s article on social media illiteracies. His five focuses of attention, participation, collaboration, network awareness, and critical consumption sure had my attention. Therefore, attention is one of the two areas I would like to focus on for today’s blog post.

Although I’ve only been teaching at a high school for four years, I have already seen a shift in attention from when I attended high school (2006-2010) to when I am working and teaching in a high school (2014-2018). I’ve talked to other colleagues and we seem to agree that it has become more difficult to keep attention of students.  I appreciated Rheingold’s comparison of a physical presence competing with the online world during instruction. All of our students have an iPad at their fingertips throughout our lessons and it is extremely difficult to keep them engaged in classroom discussion while they have the temptations of websites, applications, and games. Just as Rheingold mentioned he wouldn’t ban laptops from the classroom, I too would not take away the iPad or our technology because it has so many positive aspects as well, when the students choose to stay on that attentive avenue.  I think it is on the teacher to become the best teacher they can be to engage students and have the students want to listen to their lessons. Here’s a quick article on keeping students engagement in class.

I also appreciated his fifth point of critical consumption. I feel like we are constantly telling students that certain internet sources were not legitimate or are not allowed for specific assignments. I personally remember in high school the constant reminder that “Wikipedia is not a reliable source.” I included some Wikipedia memes for your enjoyment, below. I think teaching students about critical consumption would be the most beneficial point for them to focus on. It would be a good lesson on where or how to find reliable information and how to fact check information online.

For your viewing pleasure, inspired by our meme posts from a few weeks ago: 

Borrowed from MakeAMeme.org

Borrowed from Meme Generator.

Created by SchruteFarms2 and posted on Reddit.

COPPA and CIPA

This week I’ll be talk about the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA). Both of these are federal laws geared towards keeping our children safe on the Internet. Being in a digital world, the Internet has greatly shaped our teaching styles and education. Therefore, it’s fitting that laws have been put in place to help protect students on the Internet.

In my educational setting, I work at the high school level. All 800 of our high school male students have an iPad, resulting in a 1:1 technology device. As educators, we’ve found it difficult not only to protect children, but also to manage their use of the Internet so it is used for appropriate, school related services.  One filter that my school in place to block access to specific areas on the Internet is Barracuda, a web security gateway that assist in web browsing safety. This is one of the many filters used in school districts so you cannot access certain websites and materials. I'm not sure that CIPA and COPPA are enough to protect our children on their own. I think parents, educators, administrators, mentors, and/or coaches are all responsible in teaching our young children about the safety of the Internet. 

Many of my classmates have spoke to the fact that students need to be 13 to access certain websites. However, we've read and seen that it's very easy to fake a birthday in order to get on that website. I honestly don't know what the solution would be for fake birthdays. Our school also puts in extensive descriptions in our handbook that requires students to agree to all of our protocols when it comes to using technology. The screenshot below shows that we state that “The school reserves the right to monitor all computer users’ activities both on and off campus.” Therefore, students can be held accountable for any inappropriate Internet use both at home or school when they are part of our school community. We hold our students to the highest expectations in order to avoid any potential safety concerns and dangers they may encounter.

Personal screenshot of Notre Dame College Prep handbook. 

I also think it’s extremely important that both parents and teachers are on the same page when it comes to Internet policies. Parents and teachers or administrators need to be a team when it comes to protecting children on the Internet. We provide information to our parents at parent meetings, back to school night, and via email communication and policy agreements that need to be signed.

So yes, CIPA and COPPA are steps in the right direction when it comes to protecting our children, but I'm not sure they are enough. I think it's a team effort, it's an educational opportunity to teach students, and it's an ongoing process. Keeping students and children safe on the Internet will be ever changing, as our Internet is ever-changing. 

My Information Isn't Private, What Do You Meme?!

This is the second data mine I’ve completed for graduate school purposes. What I’ve learned is that there is some of my personal information that is out on the Internet that maybe I wasn’t compiling or I wasn’t putting onto the web myself. This was information compiled through other databases, some that I had no idea even existed.

I’ve never been scared of my digital footprint because I understand the reality of our digital world, but I was curious to see how much I could find. I started with my most common search engine, Google, and then moved on to others such as PeekYou, Pipl, Radaris, Nuwber,  Spezify, BlockShopper, Social Mention, and People Finders.

First off, there were tons of pictures popping up. Old social media profile pictures, current social media profile pictures, a photo of me that I used on my professional website for a graduate school class, and even a picture of the yearbook page from my high school. I also found it interesting that when I Google image searched myself, a lot of pictures that popped up were not me, but people I worked with. I’m assuming this is because we share an online directory for our school and all of our photos are listed by our contact information. I was also associated with some of the pictures of our students doing activities around school  (raking leaves, grilling food, etc) that have been posted on the school’s website. See my screen shot below of some of the images that popped up! 

Personal Screenshot taken of Google Image Search

Other information that I came across was my address, age, and both my cell and home phone numbers. Nuwber even gave me a list of neighbors that lived near me. I glanced over the names and many of them I knew, but a few stuck out that I did not recognize. Why someone would need to associate me to my neighbors is interesting to me, especially because we have such a variety of age range.

Most of my family was listed as relatives on almost every site. I also saw that not only was it my parents and siblings, but my grandma’s name was always included as well. My grandma lived with us for many years so I’m assuming that is how they clumped her in with us. I was intrigued to see that my dad’s brother, his son, his son’s wife, and their children popped up a few times as “relatives.” This is interesting because my dad is one of ten and there are a ton of people who share our last name, so why they were the only ones to be associated I’m not sure. It may be that the live in a closer radius to us than the others?

Overall, completing data mines is always fun and it was interesting to see the information that came across while researching myself! Therefore, the meme I created for this blog post is below.

Personal Meme created on Imgflip.com

I used Buzz Lightyear and Woody to describe my opinion on digital tattoos because I think the image captures the visual of how vastly and large the amount of websites that are out there on the web. I also love that Woody and Buzz have completely different facial expressions. Buzz seems to be excited about the possibility of the Internet, while Woody is terrified that his personal information is being shared with strangers. I think this is often how people feel too, either we are comfortable with our information being out there or we are doing everything in our power to secure and protect our personal information. How did you feel about your own personal data mine? What did you learn? 

Show Me the Facts!

This year’s Beloit College Mindset List provided an interesting cultural touchstone for those students entering college this past August. They stated that this is the first generation for whom a “phone” has been primarily a video game, direction finder, electronic telegraph, and research library. These students, or 18-year-old young adults, are heading into college and have had a phone, with all the above features, available to them their entire lives. So, what does this say of technology and how it is shaping the future leaders, future teachers, future lawyers, future doctors, etc. 

After looking over the research reports provided to us, I personally found that Project Tomorrow's Speak Up was most interesting and beneficial to me. From their website, I would like to touch on three facts that spoke to me as an educator. 

1.     Technology leaders (67%) say that the greatest challenge they face in implementing digital learning or expanding technology use is motivating teachers to change their traditional instructional practices to use technology more meaningful with students. 

            I have only been a teacher for 4 years, so when I was going though my academics in undergraduate courses, technology was part of our learning. Therefore, when I stepped into the teaching role I knew technology had to be part of it. However, it makes me cringe when I am sitting in a professional development opportunity with some of my coworkers who have been working for 30+ years and the lack of desire they have to even attempt technology in their classroom. It is not even that they don’t understand the new technology resources; it’s just that they refuse to change the way they’ve been teaching. I myself can admit I am no perfect teacher, and that is why I decided to continue my education to continue learning new and improved teaching styles and strategies. My personal goal would be to avoid becoming like the majority of teachers who are unmotivated to change their ways. I wonder if any of you have similar coworkers? How have you (or higher administration) dealt with them? 

2.     Teachers who have experienced online and blended classes for their own professional learning demonstrate advanced uses of technology with their own students, have stronger valuations on the role of technology within learning, and higher aspirations for leveraging technology to support transformed learning environments. 

            

            As I stated above, since I was in school with technology I think it is easier for me to adapt to technology and use it for my teaching. It comes more natural after I’ve seen other professionals use it and learn from them. This course alone has provided me with opportunities to evaluate how I am being presented with material, and how I can use some of the same presentations in my classroom. So how can we encourage other teachers who aren't as familiar or comfortable with technology to become engaged with technology?

3.     Teachers identified five essential elements that they need to effectively and efficiently integrate digital content, tools and resources into daily instruction in their classroom:  planning time, access to technology in the classroom, technology support, professional development and consistent, high quality Internet connectivity.  

            Time. Time. Time. It seems that as teachers we never have enough time. I think the five points mentioned here were very accurate. Teachers are asked to have a million things going on at once, so to expect them to keep up with the technological demands of our ever changing internet requires more time. Then there is the question of how to provide each student with Internet access or who will help us when those Internet accesses don’t work. We need to consider professional development opportunities (that require more time!) for teachers who are less comfortable using technology to learn the new skills. Most importantly, I think most teachers in our generation can speak to the fact that they planned a perfect lesson using online resources and then the Internet connection was lost and the whole class period seemed ruined. How can we rely or count on the Internet at all times? Truthfully, we can’t. So as teachers, we always have a back up plan! 

This photo was borrowed from Project Tomorrow's Speak Up website. 

I also enjoyed stumbling upon the many graphics available on Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up website. The one above listed the 10 Things Everyone Should Know about K-12 Students’ Digital Learning. Number 6 on their list stuck out to me the most because it stated that only 48% of high school students are using the Internet daily to support their homework or school assignments. This SHOCKED me because I am currently in a high school setting where each student has his or her own individual iPad. I would have to say that 100% of our students are using the Internet to supplement their learning, not only daily, but several times a day.

The search article on Common Sense Media talks about how teachers feel that some students’ use of entertainment media on the Internet has hurt their academice performance. I hope we can all agree when I say that the Internet has it’s pros and cons. The use of video games, texting, iPods, iPads, cell phone games, social networking, applications, online videos, etc have definitely impacted the way our students learn. The biggest problem area for teachers is students’ attention span, with 71% of teachers saying the use of above media has hurt their students “a lot” (34%) or “somewhat” (37%). From personal experience I can state that students seem more distracted because of the fact that they have the iPads accessible to them for the school day. There is more temptation for students to use the iPad for things that are unrelated to school, taking their attention away from the task at hand. 

This has also impacted their writing skills. Nearly 58% of teachers say their students’ use of entertainment media (such as texting) has hurt their students’ writing skills. I have first handedly seen “u” instead of “you” or “b4” instead of “before” in papers that were turned in for grades. Students have become comfortable with writing in short hand.

So where do we draw the line? What does the research tell us? Is there more good than bad that technology brings us in the classroom? My hope is that with the writing monitoring and balance, technology will bring more good than headache.