Digital Story Telling

Attached here is the digital story I created. I enjoyed this assignment very much. I can definitely see myself using this as a project in the future with my students because it is very creative and open to the mind. It really lets the student show off their creative side and lets us see into their mind. It is definitely a different and fun project that really helps encapsulate writing and creativity.

One of the things I did not like about this project was getting all the pictures to line up correctly with the words being spoken in the video. This is a very time consuming project and can be very tedious. The most revealing part of this project to me was how special the place I come from is and how blessed and lucky I truly am to be from Minster. I think this project has the ability to let students really sit down and reflect on themselves and those around them.

Extra Credit #3

After re-designing my classroom to accommodate my students disabilities my classroom looks a little different. To accommodate the student with a hearing problem I thought it would be best to add a PA system in the classroom that would be on the ceiling. I as the teacher would speak into a microphone I wear around my neck and it would go through the speakers and help the student hear better no matter where he is at in the classroom (the red circles). For the student struggling with reading and math I installed an iPad and audiobook station. The iPad has apps and activities to help those students in the subject they're struggling in and the audiobook can help those kids who are struggling with reading.  The SmartBoard can also help the students struggling with reading and math. I expanded the width between all the desks to help the student who is in the wheelchair so they can still move around the room and collaborate with other students.

Building A Learning Space

The above picture is the learning space that I have created for my 12th grade English class. The classroom includes computers at the desks of every student and a smart board in the front of the classroom. The desks are set up in rows so it will be easy for all the student to see what's going on in the front of the classroom and what we are discussing on the smart board. Every desk includes its own computer so the kids can use them to follow along with presentations, power points, watch videos on lessons, write papers and do research. This classroom also allows students to work in groups by surrounding a desk and utilizing the computers and also allows them to share work easily. The smart board will be utilized to make the classroom more interactive.

Growing Up Online

For this assignment we watched a program titled "Growing Up Online" which talked about a wide range of things. It focused on how the online world has affected kids and how they grow, learn, and interact with one another and it also focuses on how parents are dealing with all of this. It was very interesting and showed a light on some things that I had never really thought about or considered.I thought it was really interesting how some of the parents were dealing with their kids being online and how they tried to prevent their kids from posting bad stuff and trying to stay away from cyberbullying. 

1. One reason why parental support for their children’s independent internet use is decreasing is because parents are starting to realize just how easy it is for their child to access things on the internet that they shouldn't be looking at. Another reason why parental support is going down for their children’s independent internet use is because the children are spending so much time on the internet and they’re not spending time interacting face to face with family and friends. I think the number of parents who reported the internet being a good thing for their child has decreased is because parents are staring to realize the severity and widespread problem of cyberbullying. I also believe that more parents are saying the internet is not good for their kid because they believe it is damaging the kid’s ability to properly communicate with one another and that they may sometimes post stuff that they don't realize could hurt them down the road. Lastly, I believe parents are beginning to realize that the stuff that is posted online by their children can possibly stop them from getting a job later on in life. 

2. One way we as educators can stop students from using material they found online as their own work is by doing what they did in the program and use plagiarism-detection sites and make them do their writing assignments in class. Another way we can prevent this problem is by properly teaching them how to cite the work they found online so it does not become plagiarism and proper credit is given. In my opinion, it is cheating if a student uses the material they found online and tries to pass it off as their own work without properly citing it or giving credit to the person who originally came up with the idea. I consider this cheating because they are just using someone else’s work and aren't doing any work on their own. When a student uses the work they found online and passes it off as their own they are essentially looking at another students test or paper and copying it and that too is considered cheating. 

3. For the student who said that he never reads books and instead reads summaries and annotated notes online I do and do not feel like he should feel guilty. I believe he should feel guilty for not completing his assignment fully because he isn't reading the entire assignment. I also think he should feel guilty for taking the easy way out and selling himself short and not giving his best effort. I also feel like he should feel guilty for not giving his best and full effort toward the assignment. On the other hand I can understand where he is coming from though because by reading those summaries and annotated notes he can complete roughly three hours worth of work in one hour or so. 

4. In my opinion, people who become “famous” through their online presence should not be considered celebrities. I don't think they should be celebrated or be given special treatment just because they have a cool online profile. I definitely think that the ability to create an online persona has affected our cultural values. People nowadays are judging themselves and others based on likes and page views. We now as a society try our best to make it seem like our life is great trough online posts when in reality the life we live may not be that great.  

5. One story that shows how being online has affected a young person is the story of Shania Sechrist. She was a 15 year old girl who hanged herself in her home because she was constantly getting cyberbullied. She had try to warn her father that the cyberbullying was getting extreme and out of hand but it became so much that she took her own life. She is not the first teen to do this and likely won’t be the last. This is just another sad story about the negatives of being online. http://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/news/2016/05/27/father-bullying-cut-daughters-life-short/85055224/ 

6. When the girl talks about fake flirting with guys online and says, ”You wouldn’t do that to someone’s face, but online is completely different. ... No one can do anything. You’re at your house, they’re at their house.” I believe she is describing the online disinhibition effect of “It’s just a game (dissociative imagination). This is where people “split or ‘dissociate’ online fiction from offline fact” and that is exactly what the girl in the program is doing. She is doing something  that is seen as okay online but knows that it is something she could never do in real life. Once she is online she is dissociating norms and behaviors that we have offline in real life. 

7. There have been times where I have thought about “disconnecting” from all of my stuff online but I have never gone through with it. Personally, I don't think it would be that difficult for me. I believe this because even though I use social media I feel like I wouldn't miss out on much and would still be able to communicate with the people I need to communicate with. I feel like if I did disconnect I would have a lot more free time and more time to do things I enjoy and more time to get things done such as homework. I also feel like disconnecting would cut my distractions down. The things I would most enjoy about disconnecting would be having more free time, not having to worry about missing out on something online, and enjoying the world and life that is around me.  

Tech Tool Review

An app that I stumbled upon for a class presentation was the app emaze. Emaze is a wonderful app to use in the classroom. Emaze is an app that allows the user to create, share, and view countless presentations, games, e-cards, etc. It is an app that I could definitely see myself implementing in the classroom.

Emaze was very easy to use and I had few struggles while using it. The presentations have so many cool and interesting templates that give them a cool, artsy feeling (something that I feel Microsoft PowerPoint lacks). The app is also very accessible and helpful for both students and teachers. The one downfall of emaze is that it costs money to unlock all of its great features.

Overall emaze is a wonderful app that I am glad I found. I plan on using it in the future for both myself and my students. I think it opens up creativity and allows the teacher and student to both better themselves. Attached to this is a presentation I did that goes a little more in depth on emaze.

Pinterest in the Classroom

From this Pinterest activity I learned how to use and navigate through Pinterest because I had never used it before this activity. I learned that there are endless things to find on Pinterest that can help me in and out of the classroom. I also learned how to create boards and how to pin things to those boards in order to keep my pins organized.

As a teacher, I believe I will utilize Pinterest in many different ways. I think I will use it to find fun activities that can spice up a boring lesson. I will also use it to find ways to make my classroom more engaging and organized. Pinterest can also help me as a teacher by leading me to other teacher blogs that can give me insight and tips on becoming a better teacher and show me ways to keep the class interesting.

One of the strengths of Pinterest is that there seems to be an endless amount of pins and ideas that relate to my classroom. Another strength is that it is very easy to keep ideas separated and organized by pinning things to different boards. The search method is also a strength I noticed on Pinterest. This is because you can search by keywords which is very helpful.

Some challenges of Pinterest are making sure that the pin you're looking for relates well to your lesson plan/classroom. Another challenge is making sure that the pins you're looking at are reliable and useful for what you're doing in the classroom. One last challenge of using Pinterest is there isn't always something for what you're exactly looking for.

Overall, I never really expected to use Pinterest in general, let alone in my classroom, but after this exercise it is definitely something I plan on using. It was easy to use and easy to keep everything organized. There were countless ideas, lesson plans, activities and helpful tips that would benefit the classroom that I believe it would be silly not to utilize this tool.

Khan/Koller Review

When I visited the Khan Academy site I definitely saw it as something I would use myself, the videos were easy to follow along with and there were so many different areas of learning. I also believe this is something my students could use because it would give them the individual attention a teacher can't always provide. They also have a ton of different areas that could help the student. After watching some of the videos I thought they were well put together and easy to follow along with and learn from. I even used some of these videos while in high school and college to help me with my math homework. I do believe that Salman Khan was right when he said that in the future we will rely more on "credentialing" through the use of online courses. I believe that this style of education makes learning more accessible for more students because they can just pop online at anytime and get to learning whereas it used to be that the student would have to wait to go to school or go to a library and find material.

When I explore the coursera course offerings I think the course on "Game Theory" is the most interesting. Columbus State does accept coursera transfer credits. Coursera classes do seem to be more more challenging or interesting to me because I know that through coursera that classes are coming from universities that are held in a very high regard and the professors teaching the class are very qualified. I don't think MOOC's are the wave of the future. I think that MOOCs might change the way a student like me would receive their education is by allowing me to learn wherever I may be. I could be anywhere with an internet connection and learn instead of having to go travel to a certain classroom to receive my education.