Digital literacy has become an important aspect in education for the success of a 21st century learner. There is value in students being equipped with the knowledge on how to use technology to collaborate, research, and create. Digital literacy prepares learners for their future in education and the workforce.
Social media is a valuable tool to facilitate educational discussions. For example, during the online conference that our class attended, I enjoyed witnessing the power that Twitter could have on class discussions and individual participation. It inspired me to attempt to use Twitter in my classroom with my middle school students. It was encouraging to discover in my endeavor that the quieter students, who are less likely to voice their opinions, were participating on Twitter! I think the PLN project was one of the most valuable things in this class. I liked that it was a relevant project and each student presented their mind maps. It was helpful to listen to others’ presentations because it gave me ideas on how to enrich my own PLN. Throughout the course, I found value in the different resources shared by peers. I have learned to be more open to try new educational technology. I have integrated more resources with my current students. It was interesting to see what resources were valuable to others For the future, I will continue to expand on my PLN. Just as educational technology evolves, it is important for me to evolve with it. My PLN may change and hopefully expand! I will also search for online conferences that involve educational technology and language arts. I want to continue to stay up-to-date with social media in education. It will be interesting to see what changes and what will become popular. It is inevitable that technology will continue to evolve. Technology will continue to be a tool to enhance education at any age-level. The internet provides an ever-expanding resource if students are taught how to properly, and efficiently, use it! Social media can have a future in education if teachers are empowered to use it, parents are educated about the purpose, and students are inspired to complete assignments. Our team, Mirai No Techie, created a video that compared commercials played in Hawaii and Japan.We agreed as a group that it would be best to compile all our resources onto a shared folder in google drive. Everyone participated and offered input. We communicated through email throughout the process, and also had one google hangout session at the start of the project directed by the professor. It was beneficial to have one “face-to-face” with google hangout so we could introduce ourselves and meet the other members. Instead of just meeting on google hangout, I think it would have been beneficial to have a community building activity during the google hangout. Since two of the Japanese members had little english, it could have been a simple exercise. Language barrier was bit of a challenge but thankfully one of the Japanese members were more fluent in English because I know about two words in Japanese! There were some delays on google hangout but everyone was patient with the delays. In the end, tt was rewarding to see the final product of the collaborative video project! I also enjoyed seeing the other submissions via Google +.
FACETS is an acronym for the process of successful curation. I think it is valuable to think about each step when creating a list of resources. I like that the author included all six steps because they are all specific in what to do. It is an easy acronym to remember and I will definitely think about it as I curate.
I thought the creator of this storify brought up some key points regarding the advantages and disadvantages for the FACETS process: https://storify.com/kroos/curationtools4edu I think one of the most useful advantages of proper curation is the ease of access to resources in one desirable location. Various websites can be used depending on the topic of the resources and who the audience is. Some sites are not assessable to DOE schools, so separate websites should be used in an educational setting. I thought the disadvantage of there being so many sites to choose from could also be considered an advantage! It depends on how you look at it! I agree with the disadvantage of "maintenance" because that can also be time-consuming, or one can forget to do this. Social networks can have a strong influence on our society, whether it be a positive or negative influence. People create and exchange information and ideas now with the click of a button, much faster than Hawaii’s coconut wireless! As people branch out their social network to family, friends, and co-workers, more connections are further made to people they haven’t even met.
Social capital does not just relate to an online presence. Social capital is made by being a valuable resource in one’s personal network. I think it is important in the success of careers as well as one’s personal life. I feel I have benefited from others with online learning in graduate school courses. My classmates have insightful things to say and it is interesting to read their perspectives on various topics. Sharing information is so much easier nowadays with technology and I appreciate the ability to view their projects/presentations. My own personal interest and curiosity has driven me to learn from others through other means online such as social media and an array of online resources. Since I have the skills of how to properly research online, I can gain more knowledge. I feel I have a lot of room to grow with my contributions to my social capital in online learning with others. I think I could ask more thought-provoking questions when responding to peers. I could also offer more of my own experiences to others in the field of education. This class has “forced” me to share my work with others, but maybe in the future I will do so without the obligation. I think it takes time to build up one’s social capital but every little bit helps! This week I found the article titled, “Mapping twitter topic networks: from polarized crowds to community clusters,” to be an interesting analysis of Twitter data. These social-networking maps shows how hashtags/tweets are connected from around the world. I’m surprised these map structures were hidden before. Zoomed up, the maps look like a big knotted mess, but they are actually quite the opposite! It is interesting how the maps show the connections among the tweets with a formula that I could never in my dreams make! It would be interesting if there was a site where one could make their own maps to see the audiences location of specific hashtags. I also learned that some posts and tweets are computer-generated from “bots” that people can buy to market their brand. Some of these connections in the maps could essentially just be from a robot, depending on the topic. I’m sure some computer genius out there will learn how to find and recognize these false contributions. I have seen certain prompts that make you decipher weirdly formatted letters or numbers, but maybe someday IP addresses will be part of a known-individual identity (kind of like a social security number). TCCfx 2014 was a well-structured academic conference with a variety of speakers and topics. The facilitator did a great job by keeping the event on schedule and checked for any questions that the attendees had. I like the fact that the conference was available online. According to Shimabukoro, online conferences are fairly new and began in the 1990s through e-mail. I have been to many conferences before but never a virtual one. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised that it kept my attention! Using Twitter allowed participants to still interact with each other without actually physically being at a face-to-face conference. Twitter was also helpful to reference back to notes or conversations. It is also beneficial that online conferences are recorded and easily accessible if one could not attend or missed part of a lecture. I thought the application “join.me” was a great way for attendees to attend. I liked the chat feature and the ability for presenters to share their screens. It seems to work more efficiently than blackboard and google hangouts. “Join.me” ran smoothly and didn’t have glitches with so many participants attending, but google hangouts sometimes has issues like that.
Shimabukuro, J. (2000). What is an online conference? The Technology Source Archives. Retrieved fromhttp://technologysource.org/article/what_is_an_online_conference/ So far, LTEC 642 has opened my eyes to a lot of different resources to use in my classroom. I have showed my students different options for sites to use for their presentations. My students have responded well to the new tools and enjoy using something other than google presentations for their projects. However, I will not be using Twitter or Google + in my classroom because both are blocked at my school. I think Edmodo is more appropriate for a middle school setting.
I would prefer if this class used one site, instead of the many that are used: reflection blog, facebook, twitter, google +, and class website). I would appreciate if everything was turned in and responded to one location. It can get confusing and I don’t see many benefits in having information dispersed throughout many sites. Dr. Bert and the co-teachers have been very helpful and they respond to emails very quickly! Whenever I have a questions, they are on it! The directions each week are very clearly written on the website, which is essential for an online class. I really appreciate the explicit instructions! One difficulty I have faced involves the collaborative group video project. It would be helpful if there was a collaborative video tool, because as of now, one person will end up having to do extra work. Unless our group decides to break up the storyboard and use one log-in. I think the larger the group, the harder group work can be. I like when groups remain small! Overall though, meeting and collaborating with classmates have been an enjoyable experience! Everyone has been actively involved and participates :) In the article by Tiemen, it discussed the value of Twitter in the classroom. I thought it was a progressive idea to incorporate Twitter into the lesson to increase student engagement. I like the idea of asking students a question and they all have to respond in a quiz-like, game-show fashion. In my age-group, I don't know anyone without a smartphone so this type of engagement is definitely possible on an online course or a face-to-face course. For younger students in earlier education, lack of technology and privacy concerns from parents would make it difficult. I think Edmodo has a feature similar though that would suffice. As our society is becoming more open to using technology at a young age, I think a lot of schools will change their electronic-use policy. I know a lot of faculty that are apprehensive to allowing cell phones and personal computers in the classroom. I think it is more important to teach a child about when and how to use it appropriately.
Tiernan, P. (2014). A study of the use of Twitter by students for lecture engagement and discussion. Education and Information Technologies, 19(4), 673-690, doi: 10.1007/s10639-012-9246-4. It was very interesting to read the Spotlights this week on our Facebook group! I am always looking for new tools to use in the classroom. I chose Bitly as my spotlight because I had heard of it but never used the URL shortener before. I have experience with Tinyurl.com but wanted to research its competition! One issue I had with Tinyurl.com was that it didn’t keep a running list of all my links that I had created. I really like that Bitly keeps track of the pages and how many clicks it gets.
Another tool I thought was interesting was a classmates Spotlight on thinglink. It is visually aesthetic and so easy to use! It is a great presentation tool. It is user-friendly and I know my students would be eager to create something with it. I can use Thinklink as a lesson for the students to follow or I can assign it for an assessment. In the article titled, “How social media is being used in education,” privacy is still a hot topic and a major concern. However both social media tools, bitly and Thinglink, allow the user to control the privacy settings. I’m a newswriting and yearbook teacher, so PIktochart is another very useful tool that I will definitely be using! My students write articles on various topics and make monthly newsletters that the rest of the school reads. Currently, we just use google apps to create a visually appealing document. However, I am not a graphic designer and my eye for lay-out design is at beginner status! I really appreciate that Piktochart has FREE templates for inspiration. Some of the templates require a subscription to the service but they offer an educator price. |