3 Educational Facebook, Digital Citizenship, and Creating Newsletters

Good Evening Readers!

Last week my ed tech class learned about a social media site known as Edmodo and we created our own profiles. I really enjoyed Edmodo and found it to be a very useful website. I would refer to it as an educational Facebook because of its design that appears and funtions much like Facebook, the popular social media site. Edmodo is a great tool for not only educators but also parents and students. Teachers can send out classroom news and updates, post links and activities for students, and have students complete quizzes and surveys. The majority of people have had a Facebook profile at some point in time so Edmodo and its concept should be fairly easy to grasp. Edmodo also appears to be a safer site for students than Facebook because its content is monitored by the teacher and there seems to be less spam and click bait links.

One type of technology I would like to use in my classroom are wikis. In chapter 9 of the textbook, a wiki is defined as "a website that presents collaboratively written content". Last semester I used wikis in my biology lab. We were placed in a group of four students to complete  project and our assignment was to enter the information we had gathered into a wiki document. We could all view the same document and enter information into it, and the wiki kept track of which student entered what information. That is helpful because oftentimes, in group projects the majority of the project is completed by one hardworking student and the rest of the group members slack off. That is not fair to the person doing all of the work so by keeping track of who is entering the information, the educator knows who actually contributed to the assignment. Teachers in a fourth grade classroom could use wikis to promote collaborative creative writing. The teacher would easily be able to identify which thoughts belong to which student. If the students were attaching images to the wikis they could be educated in a quick lesson beforehand about which images fall under fair use and which images have a copyright and should be avoided. I would teach my students how to adjust the search options on google images to find pictures they could put in their wikis.

I found the newsletter assignment to be a bit challenging because I lack creativity. I was blown away by some of the newsletters today when we looked at each other's in class. I instantly felt like my newsletter needed drastic improvement but I seem to lack a lot of the skills that others used to create their newsletter. I did learn how to create columns in only a certain section of the page which was quite helpful. I liked how people were able to express themselves in the designs of their assignments. I wish we would have spent a bit more time in class learning how to improve the visual aspects of the newsletter because mine looks pretty boring. I would love to learn how to section off my newsletter better and how to create a cute border like the nautical rope border I saw on one student's newsletter in class.

2 Microsoft, Copyrights, and Twitter

Throughout my entire educational career, I have used Microsoft Word in a variety of different ways. In elementary school I leaned how to type using the program by creating small works such as poems, sentences using weekly spelling words, and completing short book reports. In middle school, as the level of difficulty of the school work increased, so did the projects I was creating in Word. I began to type lengthy essays and research papers which had to include headers, footnotes, and specified margin sized. I also used Microsoft Word to help beautify science fair display boards and make them appear more professional. In high school I took a digital design class where I learned many different ways to use Word such as creating magazine pages and promotional flyers. In college, I mostly use Microsoft Word to type up notes for class and academic papers. In the past, my former teachers have used Microsoft Word to create study guides, exams, and newsletters regarding classroom news and information. As noted in the textbook, I would like to use Microsoft Word as a way for my future students to journal about their summer vacation and the wonders they experienced. They could also present a few of these fun journals in class to enhance public speaking skills. Word could also be used by the kids to create "All About Me" pages that can be helpful for the teacher and for a new group of students to find similarities among each other and encourage interaction.

In all honesty, I do not have much experience with copyright or fair use. Teachers of mine have always stressed the idea for students to not plagiarize but not much has been taught about copyright and all that it entails. The only way I was even taught to avoid infringing on copyrights was to create a works cited page at the end of a powerpoint or essay to credit the author you borrowed ideas from. By reading Best Practices for Fair Use and listening to Copyright and Fair Use podcast, I learned that tiny bit of information I had been previously taught about copyright was incorrect and that citing sources is not how to properly use works that have copyrights. Before I become a teacher I want to become aware of all of the copyright laws that apply to works I may be using and I also want to educate my students on these, especially because I never was. I could create a powerpoint to give an overview of what a copyright is and how to go about properly using things that have copyright laws attached to them. I could even create an activity to help the students understand the concept. Also, before my students begin an assignment that may infringe on copyright laws, I will educate them on how to correctly and lawfully complete these assignments.

I really have not learned anything new since we began using our twitter accounts but that is probably because I have been a member of the twitter community for about six years. During high school I was very active with my twitter and was obsessed with always reading the newest tweets that my friends and celebrities had posted. I was on the site all the time until it started to feel like a chore. I have not used twitter much in the past year or two until we began using it in tech class. Although it became a bit much for me, twitter can be a very important tool for communicating and sharing ideas with other educators and brainstorming new classroom techniques and activities with them. I fully supports using social media to expand one's "toolbox" as a teacher.