TIE 300

 Okay, please bear with me. I swear I have a point to this long story.

Ah…the 90’s, the glorious decade of my childhood. At the time computers were emerging as not only a part of business but as a new home essential. I remember getting our first desktop computer back in 1999 when I was in 5^th grade. It was a really crusty, clunky, windows 98 computer that my brother in law got me because he got ‘a good deal’ and my own parents couldn’t afford to get us one. So there I was, this young little girl excited about running a Crayola disk program where I could “magically” color in fun pictures. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. We still had no Internet, but I thought computers were the best invention. I was in love.

Since that sweet age I’ve been a tech addict. My co-workers call me a “techie” because I’m always on some sort of gadget. I was also almost always the tech teacher in my family. For example, just a few months back my sister asked me, “How do you copy and paste?” I laughed of course, but that wasn’t too nice of me. I grew up learning and evolving with technology. People older than me haven’t had that luxury.

Now, remember that I said I WAS the tech teacher of the family and I have a reason for using past tense. I got my first job last year at a CPS school last year and I was so excited because I could finally afford to buy myself a MacBook air. I never owned any apple product because they are so expensive but I finally got one, but I was so confused! Everything was different from a Windows computer. How did I get get on the Internet? What’s a screen shot? How do I get full screen? I had to turn to my 12 year old nieces who attend an all Macbook school. They’ve become the new teachers because I was old school and didn’t know all this new stuff.

My nieces doing school work.

So, this brings me to my point: I thought I knew everything about computers, and programs, and the Internet but I really don’t. Throughout the past 10 weeks I’ve learned about so many different awesome tools that have given me so many ideas on how to incorporate more technology into the classroom. It’s given me the courage to teach with technology when before I wasn’t sure if I could. For the first time in my life I became the lost student that didn’t know how to be an expert at all the different tools that were introduced to me. It’s shown me how resources are out there right under my nose, and how to teach and learn in a new fresh way.

I see now that technology surrounds and consumes a lot of our education, but in a good way! We are preparing students for a world powered by these tools and the skills that they acquire.  

Media Literacy

image source

According to the National Association for Media Literacy Education the definition of Media Literacy is as follows: 

“Within North America, media literacy is seen to consist of a series of communication competencies, including the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, and COMMUNICATE information in a variety of forms, including print and non-print messages. Media literacy empowers people to be both critical thinkers and creative producers of an increasingly wide range of messages using image, language, and sound. It is the skillful application of literacy skills to media and technology messages”. 

Even though our students believe that they know all there is to know about technology, I think that when it comes to learning with technology there is still a disconnect. I think that students are very strong in being able to access technology and even analyze different technological activities, but I don’t think that they could clearly communicate what they’ve learned about those activities. 

Sometimes, as educators, we get really excited and we want to use all of these cool devices, but how much is too much? If we are using specific devices in the classroom sometimes the lesson itself becomes how to actually USE the device rather than how we can use it to learn a specific subject. 

I think that continuing to expose students to familiar technology will allow them to grow into much better analyzers who will not only use technology well, but they will comprehend the importance of the technology they are using and how it helps them to better understand the information they are receiving. 

Media Literacy is important in our education because we are evolving everyday into a much more ‘media dependent’ society. A place where we are not only exposed to different forms of Media daily, but we also seek it out and enjoy using different media forms.Being able to take an image, video, or passage and give it a source of meaning to understand what it is trying to tell/teach us is a very important skill. 

Awesome questions to guide Media Literacy learning.

Twitter as a Tool?! Yes.

Twitter is an interesting site. There is a wide spectrum of users on Twitter. You start with celebs tweeting juicy drama, to young people tweeting their friends and family a simple “Hi, I miss you”, and then you have teachers across the country sharing and spreading awesome ideas.

On Twitter discussions are held under the hashtag #edchat for Teachers and the rest of the Twitterverse to go and talk about different aspects of education. I really wanted to attempt an online discussion on Twitter so I tried it out. After a bit of time searching for something that sparked an interest to me I decided to respond to edutupias question pictured below.

I read through the responses and saw some that I really agreed with and others, like the one below, that I felt the need to comment on.

I never got a response from the person that I messaged and I really hope it wasn’t because I came on too strongly in the chat. I felt like if someone would have made a comment like the one he made in person I would have NEVER responded because I am just way too shy. I feel that this being an online chat really gave me the “guts” to be brave and just put myself out there.

It was also really interesting to see so many different thoughts on the role of parents in education. I for some crazy reason thought that everybody had to think like me. Parents must be actively involved and also teach their children basic life skills, and manners at home. Teachers are meant to teach about history, math, science, writing, literature, and yes, sometimes life but they shouldn’t be the only ones educating.

Educators were (obviously) smart enough to see Twitter as not just a social media site but as a resource. Now, Twitter has endless amounts of information available to the teachers out there that may be looking for a new way to spice up their classrooms.  

While exploring on twitter I found two really great resources. The first was about technology and how we can utilize a tool that many people already have—an iPhone. There are millions and millions of apps available for you to download straight onto your phone that you could utilize in a classroom. My favorite from the list of apps described was the iLEAP Pick a Student app. It does exactly what it says and creates a generator, that you can program students names into, and it will pick a student at random to take a turn at whatever it is you’re doing. In the classroom I work in now we still use the popsicles in a cup method—okay but boring!

The other resource I came across was Edutopia’s article on how to teach your student how to have a conversation. I think that as we’ve become more technologically advanced we’ve begun to lose a lot of human contact. We find it normal to just read and write a conversation  but find it more difficult to just talk on the phone with a person. That’s why I found these tips to be such a great resource because reiterating skills that we as humans know and trying to enforce them more often with sessions of turn taking ,where everyone stops and listens and questions what one individual is saying, can make a big impact on a students communication skills.

Well, that’s all for now! I hope you enjoy these resources and find some use for them in your own classroom or home.