Personal Learning Network

RSS Feeds

I subscribe to four RSS feeds on my Blogger site; the US Department of Education feed, Edutopia, Education Next and the NPR news feed.  The US Department of Education feed puts out information regarding federal education policy.  This feed keeps me in the loop about federal funding, state initiatives, and legislation.  Edutopia, whose podcasts I also subscribe to, is a product of the George Lucas Educational Foundation which is dedicated to improving educational strategies through the dissemination and discussion about collaborative projects which will prepare students to thrive in both their school and adult lives.  This feed gives me information about innovation and methodology that practiced educators have been able to successfully implement.  Education Next provides news about school reform and innovation.  I like this feed for its contributor opinions.  The Nation Public Radio news feed keeps me up to date with world and national news; I like the international slant of the reporting, as well as the way the stories are told.

Twitter          

Thus far, I only use Twitter as a news source; I have yet to tweet actively because I don’t have many things to say yet which are worth tweeting, in my opinion.  I mostly follow my course colleagues and educational accounts.  I really enjoy a woman named Patty Bode’s tweets; she is a visiting associate professor at The Ohio State University Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy.  I discovered her in Sonia Nieto’s book, Why We Teach, and I think that she has some very interesting insights into education and the arts.  I also follow TED Talks Updates, which provides links to recent discussions regarding technology, education and design. 

Whenever one of the accounts that I follow posts something that I find interesting, I follow the path of the hash tags.  I think that the ensuing conversations are often insightful and interesting.  Though there are a lot of opinions, advertisements and self-promoting accounts to look out for, I see the value in Twitter as a social media platform that is portable in easy to navigate.

Diigo

Similarly to Twitter, I have only used Diigo as a tool for this class, so I only follow fellow classmates and our instructor, but the information that I have used from that small network has expanded my internet source library.  I definitely see it as a helpful tool for networking, organizing information and bookmarking articles to look at later.  The internet has so many resources available and it can be difficult to navigate to relevant sources of information.  Building a Diigo library helps to sort through digital information as well as to keep that information organized. 

Ning

I joined The Educator’s Personal Learning Network.  The site is an online community for educators with blogs, videos, and articles related to education.  The first video that I watched was called “Bloom’s Taxonomy According to Seinfeld;” it used clips from the popular sitcom to show different aspects of the philosophy.  I thought it was an interesting and relevant way to demonstrate the different points using pop culture.  I also read several blogs specifically related to technology in education.  One, called “The Big Lie in Education,” was about whether teachers who do not use technology in the classroom are really preparing their students for the “real world;” the author, Thomas Whitby, also created the Ning group and posted the aforementioned video.  

Visit The Educator's PLN

Conclusion

Ning groups, Diigo, Twitter and RSS feeds are equally useful in networking and exploring new ideas and methodologies.  I think that being connected to other teachers, especially veteran teachers and other novice teachers, is important in building a career; I will definitely be returning to most of these sites.  I think that my personality is generally averse to social media as a recreational pastime, but I think that using Web 2.0 resources is a necessity for career building and professional networking.  I appreciate being exposed to these different resources and being able to connect with my fellow students in a way that will last throughout our careers.

 

A Social Media Journey Through Eighth Grade Literature

In Pamela Carver’s article, “What Would Romeo and Juliet Say to Jack and Piggy on Facebook?”, she tells about her experiment to review eighth grade literature using role play and social media technology.  The project, called Connecting through Time—A Journey through Eighth Grade Literature, used Ning, a private social networking site, to facilitate discussions between characters from each of the books the students read.  “[Carver] assigned a character to each student and then put them into groups of four or five.  [She] made sure that each group contained a variety of personalities and a representative from each major piece of literature” (pp. 26).  The week long project, which students later decided should have lasted a month, was meant to forge connections between the different novels; it did that, as well as provided a fun way to review for the final, opportunity for creativity, to practice citations, do internet research, quote from the texts, format dialogue and hone presentation skills. 

I think that this is an ingenious use of technology for working on all of the skills listed above.  Additionally, the students explored emotional themes of each character as they portrayed them online which allows for deeper interpretation of motivation and the literature.   The exercise satisfied the standards for creative thinking and innovation, communication and collaboration, research fluency, critical thinking, digital citizenship and fluency in technology operations; in short, it satisfies all of the standards in at least some way.  I would definitely use this in my classroom just for the fact that it brought some students to the table who may have been resistant to reading or needed extra review.

Read the full article here:What Would Romeo and Juliet Say to Jack and Piggy on Facebook

Carver, P. (2013). What would Romeo and Juliet say to Jack and Piggy on Facebook? Learning and Leading With Technology (40.5), 26-28.

Digital Driver's Licenses

In the article, “Students Need a Digital Driver’s License Before They Start Their Engines,” authors Gerry Swan and Marty Park discuss The Digital Driver’s License (DDL) project, which is designed to educate students about digital citizenship.  “The US Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and Protecting Children in the 21^st Century Act emphasize schools’ responsibility to educate students about internet safety” (pp. 26); the DDL is designed to help educators do just that by tracking students’ progress on a set of self-paced cases.  “The DDL has five core cases and one final cumulative license case that captures the skill sets of nine elements of digital citizenship, as outlined in Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey’s book Digital Citizenship in Schools” (26).  Using two types of assessments, the “practice-its” and “prove-its,” the DDL cases, or modules, expose students to information regarding digital etiquette, digital communications, security, digital access, health and wellness, digital commerce, media fluency and digital law, rights and responsibilities. 

I think that the DDL should be mandated in all schools which allow students to use technology, in or outside the classroom.  Exposing students to these ethical and legal behaviors, which are expected of them in the NETS-S standards for digital citizenship, at a young age will help to ensure ethical and legal behavior throughout their learning and professional careers.  In my future classroom, I would use this at the beginning of the year to create accountability for internet and device use; being sure that kids know that plagiarism, cyber bullying and online safety are serious issues will probably help to deter immoral conduct.  

I did see a couple of negatives within this particular article.  I see the tracking of a student’s digital citizenry by a private company as just one more instance of corporate profiteering from student information.  If these kinds of programs either generated funds for the schools which implement them or if these kinds of programs are developed for non-profit use, I would see no problem with it.  Another issue that I found was blocking access to students who didn’t complete the modules; this seems unethical on the part of the schools because it prevents students from learning everything they might need to.  I understand that access would only be blocked on devices provided by the school, but that could still alienate some students.

Read the article here: Students Need a Digital Driver's License before They Start Their Engines

Park, M. & Swan, G. (2012-2013) Students need a digital driver’s license before they start their engines. Learning &Leading with Technology, 40(4), 26-28.

Technology of Choice: Go!Animate

                Technology can be a very useful tool in a teacher's arsenal. In today’s digital-age, teachers are being given the responsibility to introduce and provide opportunities to students that incorporate technology and subject matter. Go!Animate is a very simple tool that teachers and students can use to create animated videos. The website is very easy to navigate and gives numerous options of settings, characters, and dialogue. This allows the teacher or student to be more creative in expressing themselves as well as the lesson or material. Teachers can use this as a quick substitute for lecturing that adds an entertaining quality to any lesson plan. 

Our group thought this tool would be a very inspirational tool for students. Go!Animate is a great way to introduce students to a safe digital environment, while expressing themselves and their understanding of the material. It can be used as an engaging tool that encourages students to interact with the subject matter and collaborate with their peers. Lastly, it is fun and can inspire enthusiasm in learning. 

One of the negatives that we found about Go!Animate was that a membership costs $8 per month. It's free if teachers want to make their own, but the only way to guarantee safe and appropriate use is to purchase it. The other downside is that older high school students may not find this tool as challenging as other video options on the web. Those very minor details aside, we recommend Go!Animate as a useful teaching tool. Listed below are links to Go!Animate, our Go!Animate example, and a how to use Go!Animate video from You Tube. 

If you like this idea, explore it for yourself at: http://goanimate4schools.com/

Here is an example of a Go!Animate we created to discuss World War II:
WWII by conno035 on GoAnimate


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Conquering the Frankenbook

The article, “Conquering the Frankenbook,” is about two teachers’ efforts to use digital books in the classroom.  The author, an instructional technology integrator, and her colleague, a literature instructor, used iPads to assign the book, Frankenstein, to a tenth grade class.  They developed a set of technology goals and a set of content goals: “on the technology side, [the author] wanted to make sure students could actively read on an electronic device”; while the literature instructor wanted to be sure they “could meet the objectives of a literature unit” (32).  They first introduced the students to the technology, exploring apps and websites relevant to the task.  In implementing the iPads, they discovered some great sites and apps for free digital books in the public domain, though they also learned that some of the digital copies were superior to others. As the project moved forward, they assigned more traditional literature assignments with modern twists; for example, using themes, each student researched an individual topic relevant to the period of the book, wrote a paragraph and emailed their assignment which was assembled into a collaborative Wiki-style e-book and shared on the iPads. 

There were more problems, however, besides the superiority of certain e-books over others.  They found that moving between devices presented a problem; iPads are designed for individual use and so return to the last user’s settings and place in the book.  They also found the lack of page numbers made referencing and citations difficult; this also made the task of ‘turn to page…’ during class discussions extremely difficult without using a word or phrase search.  Taking notes was difficult for both teacher and student, though students were more open to exploration than the teachers admittedly were.  The author concludes that “perhaps much of the resistance we and our students experienced was because we knew how to actively read a paper copy…while [the author is] still looking at new app releases and waiting for that game changer, at this stage, a hard-copy book is preferable for active reading and discussion of a text” (33).

I think that nothing beats a hard-copy for active reading.  I use my Kindle mostly for downloading PDFs and travelling; e-books prevent the user from knowing how thick a book is, from the tactile sensations of turning a page, from being able to doodle in the margins.  I can see how using e-books in the classroom could eventually save a school money over time, but I agree with the author that active reading requires a hard copy almost always. 

This article addresses both NETS-S standards and NETS-T standards of technology operations and concepts and professional development.  The e-book was a great example of communication and collaboration, and the students were also taught about digital citizenship and plagiarism (this was part of the discussion and trouble with citing the materials). 

Read the article here: Conquering the Frankenbook

Barrett, J. (2012-2013) Conquering the Frankenbook. Learning &Leading with Technology, 40(4), 32-33.

Creative Professional Development

The article, “Design Creativity!” argues that teachers must develop critical and creative thinking skills in order to be able to teach their students to use the same skills.  The article’s authors propose that through the combination of technology and thinking skills, “educators can better prepare students for the world of industry and innovation” (17).  The IDEAStudio, a section of the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology at Virginia Tech, first established a set of criteria for projects to be based in: projects had instructional potential, they made creative use of technology, and they included products of the arts.  They then worked with teachers to “define the direction of projects and to design and develop instructional materials to support the products” (17).  Two workshops were held to develop and evaluate the materials.  The workshops focusd on the four basic components of critical and creative thinking: idea generation, reflective judgment, self-regulation and attitudes and disposition.  By developing the creative process, teachers found that they could make “surprising uses of everyday, affordable technologies” (19).

I firmly believe that creative thinking is one of the most beneficial, yet undervalued, assets to our society and it should have a much more prevalent role in education at all levels.  By helping teachers to develop their own creative processes, the authors and those at the IDEAStudio are doing a great service to the children who will be affected by this down the line.  I come from an art background and thoroughly understand the value of imagination, ingenuity and innovation; each of these characteristics should be nurtured in children especially.  The article examines both NETS-S and NETS-T standards dealing with learning and creativity.  Though the article focuses mostly on NETS-T standards of professional growth, leadership, and the development of digital-age learning experiences, it also focuses on the NETS-S standard of critical thinking, problem solving and decision making.

Read the article here: Design Creativity!

Baum, L. & Newbill, P. (2012-2013) Design creativity! Learning &Leading with Technology, 40(4), 16-19.

Saltwater Therapy

Duct tape surfing