Education Engineering

·                         I am not sure I learned too much new information from Rheingold’s NetSmart book but I definitely made some connections in my thinking among the books we have read this semester. The ideas in Rheingold’s book jive with Hobbs’ and Johnson’s assertions that kids need to USE media and be good information users in order to be connected to our society and culture.  I think they would all agree with Rheingold’s thoughts on being a curator of information and its importance in developing digital literacy skills as well.   These skills are good ones to teach and weave into our lesson designs. It seemed to me that Rheingold’s main goal is to help digital citizens gain skills necessary to succeed online and learn digital mindfulness.   He describes his five literacies as   “specific advice about benefiting from and protecting yourself from today’s always and everywhere media.”  ...

            I appreciated everyone’s comments on my To Use or Not to Use blog post.  It seems like we all share some sort of disbelief about the fact that more formal copyright education and professional development for teachers isn’t in place.  Maybe it is because of the speed at which technology has taken over our lives.  Sometimes it feels like in the last few years technology resources have developed so quickly that we don’t know what hit us, and maybe the whole copyright and fair use ideas are just lagging behind.  Until teachers are educated on understanding fair use, it seems we are stuck in this fearful, ignorant spot.               Even over lunch today when I was talking about our class and fair use, teachers were defensive over the whole thing.  Teachers who are smart and effective were SURE what I was saying was wrong.  They were SURE that we would all get in trouble…th...

              I have heard the term Fair Use before but I honestly had no idea what it meant.   Before reading Copyright Clarity and the Code of Best Practices booklet (which by the way I really liked, even more than Copyright Clarity because I thought it was succinct and gave great examples), I was the teacher who thought that I would get arrested if I used copyrighted material!   I have always existed without any clear guidelines of how and when it is ok to use copyrighted items in my classroom.   I totally agree that “educational guidelines about copyright and fair use have more often hurt than helped” (Media Education Lab, Temple University).   There are certainly times when I am planning instruction that I shy away from what might be the best source of information or video clip or artifact because I am worried about “stealing” someone else’s work and someone tattling on me (parents too; we have had parents complain to admi...

It’s fitting for my personal life that we have started talking about information consumption in class.   This past year I have really tried to slash my consumption simply by putting down my phone and engaging more in the moment.  I am guilty of becoming engrossed in social media and news apps as a way of “relaxing” but I have slowly realized it isn’t relaxing for me at all and actually stresses me out.  Just as Liz said in class, I want all the cute outfits I see and feel bad that I can’t buy it all.   I compare my life to the perfect and wonderful life people portray online and in terms of news it is so hard to know what to believe and who to believe.     It gets my head swirling.   I like this NPR article about how to find news that is true (it is crazy how much is fabricated or stretched to be sensational, and NPR is a source I trust).             https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsi...

My group and I had a blast making videos about the design principles and working together as student designers.  Dawn gave us freedom to design and produce videos in any format we wanted and as a result our group felt we could be creative and funny and we were all highly engaged.  It reminded me how important it is to give kids some freedom when you can.   All of the groups at Loudoun showed their understanding of the principles in very different video types but in my opinion it all worked because we weren’t stifled by rigid constraints.   My thoughts about creative spirit lead me to visualize our STEAM lab at school.  The kids LOVE the STEAM lab and the freedom they have to create and be creative.   It certainly isn’t a free-for-all in the lab, however.  The teachers carefully design activities that have a purpose and a learning goal, but they design with creative spirit in mind: tinkering, imagining, experimenting and collaborating are at th...

              I remember when I was maybe four or five years into teaching (2008??) and one of our main goals that year as part of our evaluation was to show that we were teaching our kids 21 st century skills.     The day my administrator came in to observe me I was showing my students how to put a document on blackboard so they could work on it at home and at school which, by the way, was a very laborious process compared to the Google Docs of today!   The goal was simply convenience.   I wanted the kids to be able to keep typing their documents at home without me having to email them to their parents (yep, that was the only option at the time aside from a jump drive which the kids did not have).   Anyway, the feedback from my professor was fantastic: “You are REALLY getting these kids ready for the 21 st century!” she wrote.   I will never forget it.   I was happy but also confused...