Here is the PB works site for my the group assignment.
http://edu653group1.pbworks.com
Group members are: Cari Tester, Eric Johnson, and Adrion Walker
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Colbert on Editing Wikipedia
I have actually seen the Colbert video on Wikipedia which is quite hilarious I might say. I viewed it again and I do not hold the same opinion about Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a good site to use for research and find out information that you would have not known otherwise. Even still, I would always check additional sources to verify that the information is correct. I believe that the editing process of Wikipedia is still left up to any and everyone. I do believe that it does hold some accountability to originators editing a page. I think individuals are notified of changes and they can correct them or leave them. It is still left up to individuals that may not hold an account anymore or care that much to correct the information. I still don't feel comfortable with the information being absolutely true. I really had no idea of what source to edit with incorrect information. I happen to be watching The Voice. A new television show similar to American Idol. One of the guest were R & B singer Monica. I looked up the page for Monica edited the work place of Monica's mother from Delta Air Line to Delta Airport. I checked back a few hours later and the error was corrected back to Delta Air Line. Obviously, someone was notified of the change and corrected the information quickly. I was happy to know that the information was corrected but what if I needed that information during the time the information was incorrect? I'm just not sure about everyone being able to add and edit information. Even myself.
Group Project: Social Media on Wikipedia
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
Social Medias and Networking site are a part of our world. Adults and children are using them on a daily basis to communicate with friends, relatives, colleagues, and even strangers. Social Media isn’t going anyway anytime soon. “According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, almost ¾ of seventh to twelfth graders have at least one social media profile, and the survey group used social sites more than they played games or watched videos online. Also, you cannot ignore social medias like Facebook have grown to over 500 million users in 7 years, and I haven’t even gone into the details of sites like Myspace, Tagged, MyYearBook, Ning, Hi 5, and LinkedIn. Social media growth is exponential. (Gary, 1). How important is using technology in the classroom in today’s world? It is very important to help students learn and become ready for their futures. Pitler says that the use of technology in the classroom can have a very positive effect on student learning. Scores go up and students will actually learn more as well. His book has many suggestions for teachers and students and also has the seven categories of technologies that would be useful for parents to learn as well as their children so that they could help them when completing homework and assignments using the specific resources. These seven categories are multimedia, web resources, communication software, data collection tools, organizing software, spreadsheets, and word processing applications (Pitler, 2-12). Why should students use technology and what benefits does it give them? This section stated that the emergences of technology based learning environments require parents along with teachers to pay attention to how and what children learn outside of school and the home. Not only can the parents and teachers raise awareness of the new technologies they can also begin to appreciate the range of new skills that kids develop when they get to start using these technologies in school and at home (Collins, 122-123).
Here are five easy tips to ensure students safety from the article, “We should talk-what are you doing to ensure student safety online?” by Ronnie Burt. In the article he explains how schools can prepare students to be safe users of the internet as well as how teachers should teach them. #1 is to set clear guidelines. Teacher and the school system has to set clear guidelines for students and parent on the expectation and appropriate behavior of students on blogs and social networking sites used for educational purposes. #2 is whether to use a student's name. Decide if you are going to use codenames, first or last names only. Full names are not suggested unless the blog or social networking site is listed as private. #3 is the use of Photos. Teacher allowing students to use photos of themselves is not suggested. You must have parental consent to post pictures of students for the site anyway. Using photo opens many door for legal issues with the school system and parental concerns. Stay away from the issue to keep students protected. Next #4 is whether to have Public or Private accounts. A private setting will definitely keep the unwanted visitors that may cause harm to your site and students but it limits the global learning aspect from visitors to comment on blogs. This may even limit friends and family from being able to see the work of students. Finally #5 deals with student work and confidentially. Commenting on blogs and social media sites are expected but remember that they are left for others to see and be careful not to put comments that refer to grades and assessing of a students work out in the open. (Burt, 1).
How can parents keep their children safe online when they are using social media and the internet for educational purposes and in their everyday lives? Safe internet use starts with good parental involvement. Parents need to make sure that they set guidelines and that they are involved and guide their child through the online world the same way they would in their everyday lives. Some suggestions this article gives for parents to go by is to create a family agreement for internet use, place the computer in a central and open location, look at the sites your child visits, block offensive sites, encourage your child to tell you if anyone is asking for personal information, talk to your child about potential online dangers, steer them away from chat rooms, and tell them that talking to a stranger on the internet is no different the talking to one in person (Lynn, 3-4). For parents the first thing that they can do to make sure their child is safe is give their student permission to use this technology for school. Most schools send home an acceptable use sheet to sign and parents should be aware of this and make sure that they get one. Parents also need to communicate with teachers about what the teacher is doing to make sure that student privacy is protected. Parents need to make sure they talk to their children about never putting personal information on the blogs and the parents also need to know the process for reporting problems with blog content. Lastly as a parent they need to oversee the student’s blog and then decide what to do with it at the end of the course (Richardson, 46-47).
Some examples of keeping students safe when using social media in education is a high school in Minnesota that wanted to open up a school Facebook page. What the teachers and parents encountered was that Facebook wasn’t the safest place for their children to be, that most social media sites aren’t made with security in mind; they go on communication and ease of use. To use Facebook one only has to be 13, and in the end the school decided to use Google Apps for Education with Google Docs because their main platform is education for kids while keeping them safe. They asked Facebook if they would create a “Facebook App for Education” so that educators could interact and engage with students but Facebook declined to create one. The school has also started using Edmondo which is a way for teachers to safely share the web with their students and can be turned on and off by administrators. Since the parents and teachers did research on the safety of their students they made it possible for the students to use social media in education, but also made sure they were protected. (McGraw, 52).
Schools and teachers aren’t the only people to have to worry about social media and their jobs. Many companies including Delta Air Lines and Google have fired employees for what they wrote about work on their blogs. In 2005, over 8 million adults had blogs. Employers are becoming more aware of the risks of personal blogs and some companies are creating social media policies. A social media policy would give clear guidelines to employees so they know the rules and expectations. For example, IBM unveiled blogging guidelines for its 329,000 employees in May of 2005. The guidelines state that employees should identify themselves (and, when relevant, their roles at IBM) when blogging about IBM, and avoid ethnic slurs and controversial topics like religion (Armour, 1).
REFERENCES:
Armour, S. (2005, June 14). Warning: your clever little blog could get you fired. USA Today.
Burt, Ronnie. "We should talk-what are you doing to ensure student safety online?" Edublogs.org November 30, 2010. .
Collins, A. & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Gary, H. "Social Media A safe place for our kids?" Kid Internet Safety Guru.Com. May 4, 2011.
Lynn, K. (2011). Help to Keep Your Children Safe Online. San Diego, CA: Burnaby Now.
McGraw, G. Keeping it Clean: Introducing online Social Media into your educational mission brings you right into a hacker’s bull’s-eye. Can you ensure your learning environment stays safe? THE Journal (technological Horizons in Education). 38.1 (Jan. 2011): p52 (5). (2877 words) School Library Journal.
Pitler, Howard, et al. “Introduction.” Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. ASCD 2007. Pages 1-14.
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Social Medias and Networking site are a part of our world. Adults and children are using them on a daily basis to communicate with friends, relatives, colleagues, and even strangers. Social Media isn’t going anyway anytime soon. “According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, almost ¾ of seventh to twelfth graders have at least one social media profile, and the survey group used social sites more than they played games or watched videos online. Also, you cannot ignore social medias like Facebook have grown to over 500 million users in 7 years, and I haven’t even gone into the details of sites like Myspace, Tagged, MyYearBook, Ning, Hi 5, and LinkedIn. Social media growth is exponential. (Gary, 1). How important is using technology in the classroom in today’s world? It is very important to help students learn and become ready for their futures. Pitler says that the use of technology in the classroom can have a very positive effect on student learning. Scores go up and students will actually learn more as well. His book has many suggestions for teachers and students and also has the seven categories of technologies that would be useful for parents to learn as well as their children so that they could help them when completing homework and assignments using the specific resources. These seven categories are multimedia, web resources, communication software, data collection tools, organizing software, spreadsheets, and word processing applications (Pitler, 2-12). Why should students use technology and what benefits does it give them? This section stated that the emergences of technology based learning environments require parents along with teachers to pay attention to how and what children learn outside of school and the home. Not only can the parents and teachers raise awareness of the new technologies they can also begin to appreciate the range of new skills that kids develop when they get to start using these technologies in school and at home (Collins, 122-123).
Here are five easy tips to ensure students safety from the article, “We should talk-what are you doing to ensure student safety online?” by Ronnie Burt. In the article he explains how schools can prepare students to be safe users of the internet as well as how teachers should teach them. #1 is to set clear guidelines. Teacher and the school system has to set clear guidelines for students and parent on the expectation and appropriate behavior of students on blogs and social networking sites used for educational purposes. #2 is whether to use a student's name. Decide if you are going to use codenames, first or last names only. Full names are not suggested unless the blog or social networking site is listed as private. #3 is the use of Photos. Teacher allowing students to use photos of themselves is not suggested. You must have parental consent to post pictures of students for the site anyway. Using photo opens many door for legal issues with the school system and parental concerns. Stay away from the issue to keep students protected. Next #4 is whether to have Public or Private accounts. A private setting will definitely keep the unwanted visitors that may cause harm to your site and students but it limits the global learning aspect from visitors to comment on blogs. This may even limit friends and family from being able to see the work of students. Finally #5 deals with student work and confidentially. Commenting on blogs and social media sites are expected but remember that they are left for others to see and be careful not to put comments that refer to grades and assessing of a students work out in the open. (Burt, 1).
How can parents keep their children safe online when they are using social media and the internet for educational purposes and in their everyday lives? Safe internet use starts with good parental involvement. Parents need to make sure that they set guidelines and that they are involved and guide their child through the online world the same way they would in their everyday lives. Some suggestions this article gives for parents to go by is to create a family agreement for internet use, place the computer in a central and open location, look at the sites your child visits, block offensive sites, encourage your child to tell you if anyone is asking for personal information, talk to your child about potential online dangers, steer them away from chat rooms, and tell them that talking to a stranger on the internet is no different the talking to one in person (Lynn, 3-4). For parents the first thing that they can do to make sure their child is safe is give their student permission to use this technology for school. Most schools send home an acceptable use sheet to sign and parents should be aware of this and make sure that they get one. Parents also need to communicate with teachers about what the teacher is doing to make sure that student privacy is protected. Parents need to make sure they talk to their children about never putting personal information on the blogs and the parents also need to know the process for reporting problems with blog content. Lastly as a parent they need to oversee the student’s blog and then decide what to do with it at the end of the course (Richardson, 46-47).
Some examples of keeping students safe when using social media in education is a high school in Minnesota that wanted to open up a school Facebook page. What the teachers and parents encountered was that Facebook wasn’t the safest place for their children to be, that most social media sites aren’t made with security in mind; they go on communication and ease of use. To use Facebook one only has to be 13, and in the end the school decided to use Google Apps for Education with Google Docs because their main platform is education for kids while keeping them safe. They asked Facebook if they would create a “Facebook App for Education” so that educators could interact and engage with students but Facebook declined to create one. The school has also started using Edmondo which is a way for teachers to safely share the web with their students and can be turned on and off by administrators. Since the parents and teachers did research on the safety of their students they made it possible for the students to use social media in education, but also made sure they were protected. (McGraw, 52).
Schools and teachers aren’t the only people to have to worry about social media and their jobs. Many companies including Delta Air Lines and Google have fired employees for what they wrote about work on their blogs. In 2005, over 8 million adults had blogs. Employers are becoming more aware of the risks of personal blogs and some companies are creating social media policies. A social media policy would give clear guidelines to employees so they know the rules and expectations. For example, IBM unveiled blogging guidelines for its 329,000 employees in May of 2005. The guidelines state that employees should identify themselves (and, when relevant, their roles at IBM) when blogging about IBM, and avoid ethnic slurs and controversial topics like religion (Armour, 1).
REFERENCES:
Armour, S. (2005, June 14). Warning: your clever little blog could get you fired. USA Today.
Burt, Ronnie. "We should talk-what are you doing to ensure student safety online?" Edublogs.org November 30, 2010. .
Collins, A. & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Gary, H. "Social Media A safe place for our kids?" Kid Internet Safety Guru.Com. May 4, 2011.
Lynn, K. (2011). Help to Keep Your Children Safe Online. San Diego, CA: Burnaby Now.
McGraw, G. Keeping it Clean: Introducing online Social Media into your educational mission brings you right into a hacker’s bull’s-eye. Can you ensure your learning environment stays safe? THE Journal (technological Horizons in Education). 38.1 (Jan. 2011): p52 (5). (2877 words) School Library Journal.
Pitler, Howard, et al. “Introduction.” Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. ASCD 2007. Pages 1-14.
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Make it Stick!!!
Making is stick is an interesting book. It gives you a interesting way to make unexciting ideas stand out and be notice. Chapter 1 of making it stick gives you great ideas to give your ideas lasting memories to your readers. First we need to focus on our presentation of our ideas. How we present them. "Standing up straight, make eye contact, use appropriate hand gestures." This was the first step to presenting your information. Then we have to be clever about getting the attention of the audience. I tell my students when they are writing essay to me I don't want to read a boring paper in the beginning. Capture my attention in a interesting way. Another key point is knowing who your audience. We haven't even gotten into the six principles of sticky ideas, which are:
1. Simplicity - keep your points and ideas simple and profound so the audience can understand.
2. Unexpectedness - Use surprise to grab the audience's attention. Also we have to keep generate interest and curiosity to keep their attention. Give them something they didn't expect.
3. Concreteness - Ideas have to be concrete images. Not abstract or unseeable. They have to be explainable in terms of human actions.
4. Credibility - Our ideas have to carry their own credentials. Give opportunities for people to test our ideas for themselves so they are proven and credible.
5. Emotions - We get people to care about our ideas by appealing to their emotions.
6. Stories- it is better to communicate an idea by telling a story.
It is essential to incorporate these six principles in making your ideas concrete and are able to stay with the audience you are presenting them to.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Twitter - Julia Fallon
I was recently able to hear Julia Fallon from the Washington Department of Education. The presentation focused on Twitter as the main topic and how we as Educator could use it in our jobs. I learned the basic functions and understanding of how Twitter works. Actually, I have heard about Twitter and how it works already from friends that Twitt or Tweet. Im not quite sure which is the correct term to use. Mrs. Fallon presentation was very informative but not convincing enough for me to join Twitter. Actually, I prefer Facebook as my social media of choice. I do think that Twitter can be used in Education as Mrs Fallon explained but I prefer Facebook because it is more interactive and user friendly. It would meet the needs of what I plan to use with my students and parents. I still have that hesitation about connecting with parents and students through Facebook or Twitter. Both are social medias that I truly believe are personal for individuals and what they choose to post is up to them. I do not want to mix my personal life with coworkers, students, and parents.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Prezi: Something New in Powerpoints
Want to introduce something new to your students?? Try Prezi. Its a new and creative way to present information. To be honest, at first I wasn't buying it. I didn't want to have any parts of it. No reason other than it seemed too complicated for me. I avoided it like the plague and I put off many days completing my assignment for class. Basically, because I didn't want to learn something new. I was comfortable with powerpoint and that was enough for me. One day I gave it a chance. I created an account and I was welcomed with instructional videos that were brief and to the point. I then started to create my Prezi presentation. It's a new twist to the same ole boring powerpoint presentation. Trust me on this one.
Don't worry its simple, and easy to create presentations and the more you create the more you learn. I know that learning something new is the hardest part, but this was easy as 1, 2, and 3. I plan to use this in my classroom before the end of the school year with my 8th graders in some form or fashion. Get them exposed to the program and then start including ideas that connect with meeting educational standards. Take a look and give it a try. It doesn't bite.
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