Growing Up Online Response

Technology and the internet seem to be ingrained into the lives of students in this day and age. This video actually seems to be around the same time I was still a student like the ones portrayed. I have always been pretty easily distracted and this could be as a result to instant gratification from media in this time period. Just as "Autumn Edows" is a completely different person from Jessica, today's youth can create a completely different persona from themselves online and portray who they want to be. It is very important to be updated and aware of what is going on online in order to understand the lives of your students.
I think as a future teacher it is most important for me to follow this new wave of instant media and technology. I will embrace it rather than push it away and try to include ways that use new technology to keep the attention of students.

Ch 4-5 Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts Response

Right off the bat I was interested in what this reading had to say. The entire time I was in school I was told not to use Wikipedia because "anyone can edit it." Why is this a bad thing? The internet has changed learning and society forever due to the fact that everyone within the intellectual world now has access to one another. I can learn about things more accurately then I could ever before because of websites like Wikipedia. The more authors there are who can access and edit important articles such as neurology the better. Who should we trust more, a handful of authors of an encyclopedia that becomes outdated as soon as it is off the press, or every possible expert that can edit Wikipedia and make changes as soon as it is outdated? On top of that, as long as you have access to internet Wikipedia is free.
I have never really thought about my stance on websites like Wikipedia until now. As a future teacher, I will boldly push to utilize websites such as Wikipedia. Of course, like every source on every subject, there is a possibility of the source being flawed, so I will make sure to teach my students that before I allow them to use Wikipedia. As a future 4th, 5th or 6th grade teacher, it is also likely that I will be closely monitoring any sources my students use, and I will make it a slim likelihood for there to be a piece of information that will be misrepresented.

Meaningful Student Blogging Strategies

After looking over the 14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging blog entry, I would like to emphasize the importance of the first step. Utilizing technology in the classroom is essential as it increases teaching efficiency and teaches students about new technology for themselves at the same time. However, I don't believe that rushing in and teaching students to use a social media service which isn't designed for the classroom is the best idea either. Take Twitter for example; it's great how teachers are figuring out ways to use it and make it work for them, but it also provides distractions for the students and I think in a few ways it is superfluous and unnecessary. There are many free services on the internet that provide what teachers are looking for in terms of blogging in the classroom, many of which could be designed for the classroom. This teacher found a website found Kidblog, which is unfortunately down at the moment, but I am sure it is more designed for teachers like her to use in the classroom. Perhaps one day there will be one website or program that is completely designed for the classroom and teaching students how to utilize technology.

Enduring Understandings for the readings

The enduring understanding for chapter 6 is: Utilizing social media technology can aid in collaboration of students and teachers to outside resources. It creates an efficient way of interacting with experts or other useful resources to create the best possible lesson plan.

• How can you use social networking sites, such as Twitter, to interact with the parents of students?

 Perhaps a teacher can start by posting important information to Twitter for parents to read, and then encourage more communication via twitter. Including fun information such as tweets on how students are doing throughout the day/week could generate interest amongst parents to follow you and read your tweets.

• How can social media sites aid teachers in creating lesson plans?

A teacher in Baltimore utilizes twitter by having his students collect information, have his students keep track of what they are doing, and build up their grammar skills.

Multitasking discussion questions

1. Multitasking could be detrimental to whatever tasks you are trying to accomplish. While it seems obvious to me that browsing Facebook during a lecture is never a good idea, if I am trying to do two things that are important for me to do, such as listen to somebody talk and work on homework at the same time, I can be losing focus on either one and could be doing a bad job listening to the person and a bad job on my homework. It is important that I focus on one task and do it right, rather than juggle several tasks at once and do a worse job on all of them. Plus, if I focus on one task, I can get it done quicker.
2. Laptop computers and any other sort of technology can be a powerful tool to students in the classroom, but also a large distraction. It is important to utilize technology in a way that won't be a distraction.
3. I will make sure that my students are utilizing their time correctly when they use technology in the classroom. If I have students in my classroom who have phones or laptops, I will make sure to stress the importance of not multitasking in a bad way, such as browsing Facebook while listening to a lecture. I will try and promote the only multitasking one should be doing while listening to a lecture: taking notes.