Blog #8 Reflections on Blogging

The use of blogs is a positive educational tool. It enables students to reflect on content and continue to practice writing skills. It also allows collaboration by commenting on other classmates posts and also receiving those comments. My experience in the past with blogging has been more of a free form journal. Mostly posts were done for my band and it was information and insights on shows and recording sessions that kept the blog going. The formalized approach I have used in the class I am taking seems a bit forced and out of my style to use as a journal of information.

The Web 2.0 tools I have discovered over the past month is too large to list. All of these tools will streamline my work as an educator. I can now share bookmarks, set up social networks for my performing groups and coordinate calendars and help my fellow teachers do the same. Integrating these tools into daily routine has already streamlined some of my work. The major drawback of using any of this technology is the lack of technology available to my students. There are still students without computers or internet. My school lacks the funding to up keep computers and we are forced to work on old equipment that can not run some of the new tools available.

The tools and technology is great to have in education as they open many doors of possibility for students and staff. This technology needs to be supported well and regualr funding available to keep up to date computers in the hands of students.

Blog #7 Second Life

Second Life is an uncharted world for most educators. What looks like a game as well as a site with bad press will have a hard time making it into the first life of education. It is the uncertainty and of what is out there that will hold teachers back from using this virtual world to educate their students.

Although there are limitations and restrictions in Second Life, there is a Teen Second Life that is a good alternative for educators. Imagine the logistics of taking a group of students around the world to visit top art museums or to see another country to experience the language first had. To put these trips in place in the classroom, educators can take their students on virtual field trips to see any content that relates to their subject. This can all take place in the classroom within the time of class.

Many Universities are building campuses in Second Life. There is a possibility to have this environment a high school level as well. This tool can be used for classes, staff development and exploration. Even with current drawbacks of speed and resourcefulness, venturing into virtual worlds can be a great way to collaborate in an educational or business setting. It is a new way of communication.

Wesley Field (2007) states it best in his blog “Like Elvis records and the internet, this is inevitable and is something that we need, as educators, to be aware of and understand”.

References

Field, W. (2007, March, 26). Concerns about second life for kids.Message posted to

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341f02de53ef00d8341f02e053ef

http://secondlifegrid.net/slfe/education-use-virtual-world

Blog #6 Communities of Practice

How many social networks are you involved with? School, church, parent organizations, student organizations, neighborhood communities and work are just a few to mention. What about online social networks? MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Ning and Netvibes are just a few (very few) to mention.

What do these social networks offer you? People often use their networks to gather the latest news within their circle, ask for help for various things or reach out when looking for work or gathering information for projects. This is not only through the real world networks, but also through the various online networks. Reaching out into your network is a great way to solve problems collectively, get various ideas in how to accomplish goals or share events with others in your network. Showing students how to use these networks to reach out beyond their immediate community can also be of value. We now have the capability of networking with people all over the world instead of just around the block.

When do these networks become too much? How do these become streamlined? This is also an aspect we must all ask ourselves and possibly teach our students how to decided what is best for them. as adults, when our schedule becomes overwhelmed with commitments, we usally look at what organizations we belong to and start diminishing our involvement. We keep in contact with people we made connections with we just may decide to leave a certain group for various reasons. Chris Pirillo discusses this in his video blog as his idea of what these social networks are. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp4UfBK5Zw8&NR=1 These networks tend to bring various meaning to the term friends and networks.

As stated in my previous blog post, these are great tools to use, we just need to control how we use them. We need to teach our students how to best utilize the tools to gain something for what we put into them. Another fun video to watch sums up how I think we all sometimes feel as these social networks compete for our time and attention. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkSaNToDbW8

Blog #5 Social Media

Social Media

Humans are social beings by nature. It only makes sense that this translates over into the tools we use the most. Through the internet we are able to connect, or reconnect with friends, relatives, co-workers and a vast majority of people who both share our ideas and beliefs and may argue these ideas and beliefs as well.

The social media tools available are only as good as the user makes them. B.L. Ochman (2009) wrote an article debunking some of the myths of social media in the article. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc20090218_335887.htm Through each of the six myths presented, Ochman talks about how some successful businesses have used these tools but also cautions that the large success is rare. As a marketing tool, the possibilities seem endless it is up to the individual business owner to devise a plan to use these tools and implement them in a way that is best suited for that business.

Moving this media and these tools into the classroom poses the same advantages and disadvantages. Moving away from the social networking sites students use everyday such as Facebook or Myspace, how can this format be used as a learning tool? A god example is Livemocha. www.livemocha.com This is a social media network with tutors and learners in order to study foreign languages. Livemocha is a direct learning social network. There are also collaboration tools such as BoJam for music and sites designed to present contact and gain feedback through forums.

Jacob Morgan (2009) sums it up well in his posting Social Media Education, How? http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/72784. Morgan acknowledges the tools available and that more are being created and changed daily. The issue is how do we train our students or co-workers in using these tools wisely and effectively. This new way of collaborating and interacting is a dynamic tool, we need to learn how to harness it and take advantage of the positive aspects while trying to minimize negative effects.

Blog #4 21st Century Skills and Lifelong Learning

There is a lot of talk of 21st century skills and how we, as teachers need to apply these in our class room. Some of these skills really are not new skills, and they my have even been taught all along in the classroom at some level. These skills just evolve (or at least need to evolve) to include the tools and technologies that are available today as well as prepare for what may develop in the future.

According to the frameworks on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills web site

www.21stcenturyskills.org the elements in the student outcomes are core subjects and 21st century themes, learning and innovation skills, information, media and technology skills and life and career skills. Having graduated from high school prior to the vast use of the internet, and reflecting back to my learning, I recall pieces of these skills in my class. The only major change is we were not discussing 21st century themes. We did learn research and media aand all of the other skills provided in this framework. A standard that should be focused on in this framework is not how to get information and test on it but to teach students how to use the information and think and problem solve. These skills need to continually upgrade with the tools available and culture we live in.

This leads to the aspect of lifelong learning. Educators and parents need to also keep up with evolving technologies. Workers will have to learn new tools for their jobs and be able to keep up to date for their market. Knowing that we are all continually students of these tools makes it all the more important to instill the value of thinking, problem solving and learning in our young students. These are the skills that will make the largest impact for continued success.

I see lifelong learning on a regular basis in my work with musicians. In private teaching I have stunts in age range of 8-80. The older students are going back to re-learn something they enjoyed in school but lost touch with. A successful program in my area is a community education program called Explore Adult Education. This program offers various small classes in computers, the arts, cooking and accounting, just to name a few. It holds to the idea that we should try to learn something new every day. The joy of this learning is demonstrated in my field through a magazine called Making Music. www.makingmusicmag.com Each month there are articles from people who are in other professions other than music telling their stories and offering tips to those who decided to continue their musical education.

These are the skills and values that will last our students longer than teaching how to take a standardized test. If our students can gather the information and think out how to solve problems on their own, the tests will be easy for them to pass if they remain a necessity in our education system.

Blog #3 Media Literacy

According to David Considine (1995), media literacy is an expanded information and communication skill that is responsive to the changing nature of information in our society. People are no longer using books as the main source to gather information, but they are turning to video through television or a multiple of mediums through the internet. The literacy part of media literacy still hold traditional values though. It includes the ability to comprehend, create, design and produce, or in traditional terms, read and write.

Henry Jerkins (2008) defines the new literacy skills as play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgement, transmedia navigation, networking and negotiation. These skills will help prepare students to become full participants in our society. Most of these skills can also be tied into traditional literacy skills we must now evolve our thoughts to include the technology and media available to us and prepare students to think and collaborate in a world culture. We must also prepare them to work with tools that do not yet exist. Considine has a consolidated version of these skills he lists as access, analyze, evaluate and communicate.

With the emergence of Web 2.0 tools and the amount of information available to us, it is important to analyze and evaluate the information we have access to. In the Living Smart #407 video,http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1270957423413378776 Garth Jowett discusses how images and media sources were designed as propaganda to sell ideas or products. He is also shown asking students if there are facts missing in an advertisement, is it a lie? Having various points of view and being able to fill in the gaps through critical thinking skills will help fill in the missing information we did not have access to in early media. Jewett discusses how we need to learn to analyze messages and detect the propaganda, censorships and bias presented.

These new literacy skills really are not new, it is just now at the forefront of our teaching process based on technology that has developed. We can now use a variety of tools to communicate, comprehend, create, design and produce in any medium. I do not see these as new skills, but rather as evolution of skills.

References:

Considine, D. (1995) An introduction to media literacy. Teledum, The Journal of Media Literacy, 41(2) Retrieved August 14, 2009 from http://www.ced.appstate.edu/departments/ci/programs/edmedia/medialit/article.html

Jenkins, H., (2008) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

Blog #2 Learning 2.0

The video No Future Left Behind (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kra_z9vMnHo) sums up the thoughts on education right from the beginning when a student states “Education really needs an upgrade”. This video brings forth the ideas and thoughts right from students. They voice their desire to learn and to create as well as be a part of that process.Just because things have been done a certain way for a long time does not constitute that way as being the right or only way to do things.

Educators have often tried to involve hands on activities in their lessons. Now with Web 2.0 tools they need to think of how to use the things students use on a regular basis to reach them. These tools can take one lesson and reach different students by addressing projects to their strengths. Writers and thinkers can blog, musicians can create songs, artists can create visual web sites to share that corresponds with lessons. All of these students can collaborate to put their strengths together to create a digital story to present to their peers.

The use of Web 2.0 and upgrading teaching does not mean teaching the technology. Most students are more up to date on the various tools and technologies out there than their teachers and parents are. The idea is to use this technology to teach skills of communication. the curriculum needs to be based in lifelong learning. Technology is just the tool used to teach this. (http://newliteracy.wikispaces.com)

A Charter School in New Hampshire is trying to achieve this goal of life long learning and student based learning. The mission of the school is: (http://www.catanh.org)

"The mission of the Cocheco Arts and Technology Academy: a Public Charter School (CATA) is to provide excellence in secondary education in fundamental academics and also performing arts, fine arts and technology related to the arts. CATA is dedicated to creating an education community where each student thrives, exploring personal interests in an atmosphere that encompasses different learning styles, individual learning opportunities, smaller class sizes and multiple methods of learning assessments."

The school’s founders recognized the need to reach multiple learners and help them focus on their learning and educational needs. They are working to achieve an upgrade to education and not blocking the ability of their students to create, if this creation is through art or through the use of technology.

Use of the variety of Web 2.0 tools can help foster community within a school by ease of communication. It will also help educators keep students involved and not locked out of their own learning. This truly is an upgrade to education.

Blog #1 Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is the availability of tools and networking that has not been available to us in the past. I remember using web pages (and still do) to find information and read about various news. Now I can use the web to communicate, share ideas, create and add to the news I read about.

There are a number of tools out there. Everything from group meeting planners such as ScheduleOnce (http://www.scheduleonce.com) to building your own channel in a media player to share with other users, like Tunein (http://tunein.com) These examples do not include some of what has become a staple in computing life like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter for all of us to stay connected.

Through all of these tools, people can be connected and stay connected though the use of the internet and computers. Social interaction is readily available through use of these applications on cell phones and PDA.

Web 1.0 is still around as static web sites can still provide material for research and give information about products, people or events. The two tools seem to be coexisting though as all of the static pages have links to their page on social networks and their social networks have links to their other home pages. This is a trend that will keep families, business and school communities connected and hopefully break down communication barriers of the past.