Week 3 - Blog Posting #5 -Social Media

Facebook is my friend! When I started in January, I was hoping to get in touch with some family and friends that I hadn't seen in a long time. So much has happened since then. I have made friends in England, Australia, Greece, Malaysia, and all over the United States. Now I am reconnected to friends from grade school to college. Yesterday I got an e-mail from my friend, Laura. I was the maid of honor in her wedding and we had lost track of each other.

Social networking has opened up many opportunities, friendships, and learning experiences for me. Before I joined, I was clueless about what it was, or why people were so enamored of it. At my school, we were concerned about students that had not used good judgement about pictures that they posted. Then my friend, Shelby, sent me an invite to join Facebook myself.

My conclusion is that Facebook, blogging, and social networking is a positive force. The potential good outweighs any negatives that I have seen. It has allowed me to get to know some teachers at school better also. We occasionally talk about the games we mutually play, like Yoville, and enjoy sending each other messages there. In the article Blogging Boosts Your Social Life by Claudine Ryan for ABC Science Online, blogging allows a person to feel more connected...and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face. This has been true in my experience, as I'm sure is true for many others.

As an educator, social networks provide opportunities to read, research and discuss the best practices worldwide. Groups like the Global Education Collaborative and Classroom 2.0 provide educators a forum to learn the latest technology, how to use it effectively, and get advice as well as support from a wide variety of educators outside of the circle at one's own school. The knowledge base is staggering! Isolation is abolished by the open doors of internet collaboration.

This past weekend, I was researching blogs because I want to give my students an opportunity to fall in love with writing through blogging. Literacy today should involve the computer in some way. Some of the blogging sites I found are Edublog, Classblogmeister, and many more that I have put on my Netvibes page.

Then, I was taken aback when a friend told me he discourages kids from blogging due to predators online. He works with groups that catch such people and knows their tricks. Originally I wanted to do the free blogs through Blogspot, like this one. However, I must open e-mails for each of my students. Edublog allows control and the ability to add students, but it also has a fee, as does ClassPress. The cost is not high, but usually this comes out of my pocket and not the school budget, especially in today's economy.

One alternative is a wiki. Wikispaces has both free and pay plans. The free plan allows for an unlimited number of users. I'm still researching and plan to start by the end of this week. Any suggestions or feedback are appreciated.

Some references worth reading:

Educators Click with social Networking

Wiki Shines Spotlight on Top Educational Blogs

Moving Forward Wiki - Education Blogs by Discipline

Education Total Blog Directory

Week 2 - Blog Posting #4 -21st Century Skills & Lifelong Learning

Ropes courses and military obstacle courses have long been training grounds for collaboration. I've participated in a few in my lifetime and can attest to the fact that the only way that people 'get over the wall' is with help. The team must work together to get everyone over to the other side. For some people, the 'wall' is their independence. They must learn to work with other people for the common good. Whatever constitutes a wall that blocks collaboration will discourage, delay, and deny the team an optimal result.

Collaboration is a way to break down walls and connect to the network of human ingenuity. According to Wendy Drexler in the video Networked Student, students need teachers to be modelers, synthesizers, and change agents. Educators are in a unique position to be facilitators of knowledge acquisition in Web 2.0. As the student faces a 'wall' of information to sort through, the learning concierge directs, helps evaluate, and encourages. A Web 2.0 educator must be willing to allow other experts to contribute to the knowledge bank.

Students today were raised in a world of technology that has affected them beyond just their taste in video games. Marc Prensky in his article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (2001) says young brains today are changed. They process information differently than earlier generations. Marc Prensky quotes Dr. Bruce D. Perry of Baylor College of Medicine as saying “Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures,...it is very likely that our students’ brains have physically changed –and are different from ours – as a result of how they grew up."

Ruth Reynard commented on this change in The Journal article 21st Century Teaching and Learning, Part 1. She asserts that educators are not seeing, nor understanding, that their students do not see the world or learn the same way that they did. The way technology has affected education is more than teaching techniques.

Educators have an even more profound need to be lifelong learners and students themselves in today's world. In order to connect to the skills of the current day, teachers must study. I do not believe it is an option. Those who are not are obvious. Districts who ignore the need to update technology, use media, and train their teachers are making a serious mistake that may build unnecessary walls to their students' potential and future.

A 2003 class from the University of Illinois created an Educational Technology Timeline that is worth reviewing. They projected some possible scenarios for the future with links that show their research, and imagination. Whatever the future brings, more change is inevitable. I only wish there would be a housekeeping robot like on the Jetsons!

Week 2 - Blog Posting #3 - Media Literacy: Language of Screens

The Center for Media Literacy website defines media literacy as a framework to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages in a variety of forms — from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.

Media literacy is a not whole new dimension. Media is defined as a way, or manner, of communication through various channels such as television, radio, videos, the internet, and more. Literacy is competency, education, and learning on a subject. Media literacy involves the use of television and computer screens. Thus Barish (2002) dubbed it as the language of screens.

Media literacy is thinking critically about the communcations that we receive, and send. Thoughtful consideration and discernment of information is essential to making sense of the information available on the web today. Potentially ridiculous as well as remarkably researched material is available. The humongous amount of data would be an amazingly awesome sight if it were presented in front of us in the form of a library filled with books! Imagine the massive building(s), myriad of books, and endless rows of shelving that would be required to hold that many texts! [Follow this link to a very clearly detailed definition of Media literacy by the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE).]

My father used to say that when he was in high school he had made a list of things he didn't think he needed to know. He marked things off the list when he found that there was a use for them. By the time he graduated, there was nothing left on his "don't need to know" list. I've often thought about what he said. Simply by making that list, he was evaluating and categorizing information. He used his judgement and experiences to determine the value of each skill. Those same skills are needed today as we access new information. The value, relevance, and reliability of messages must be determined critically to be successful.

My own media literacy is currently growing. I am becoming more educated, competent and skilled at expressing myself with various forms of media such as videos, podcasts and blogs. Although I have used the computer in a Web 1.0 sense, as a word processor and a source of information, for some time now, the transition into the Web 2.0 world has required some expert guidance.

Facebook became a friend of mine in January of this year, 2009. My first Twitter account was opened in June. My first collaborative document on GoogleDocs was in August. Margaret Campbell, Devin Bryant, Bonita Blair and I started our first Ning in August, too. This month, I started using Delicious to bookmark websites to share. Today I spent hours adding and editing my Netvibes page. This blog is another new endeavor into 21st century skills.

Web 2.0 has been a delightfully dangerous discovery for me. Dangerous only because I have basically become addicted. I'm having more fun than I have in years! If Web 2.0 can sweep me out of the doldrums I was experiencing, then it can do the same for others.

How do you measure media literacy? Take this PBS Teacher's Quiz. My score was dismal but not hopless. Obviously, my studies on this subject are not complete. The PBS Teacher's site is an excellent place to start. They have provided activities, research, and links to other organizations to be more informed. Check out the following ideas for media activities. All subject areas are included:

The Arts

Reading & Language Arts

Social Studies

Math

Science & Technology

Health & Fitness

Early Childhood Education

Media is not new, but the presentation of media by the common man really is new. Modern media is interactive. Media literacy is simply using this new language of screens to communicate clearly, effectively, and with intelligence.

There is more to explore in the above definition of how modern media literacy contributes to the need for self-expression in a democracy...something to think about.

References

Barish, S. Edwards, R. Anderson, S. Fron, J. (2002) Innovative Pedagogies for 21st Century Multimedia Education: An Introduction to the USC Annenberg Center for Communication Multimedia Literacy Program Information Visualization, 2002. Proceedings. Sixth International Conference on Volume , Issue , Pgs. 617 - 621