Thursday, December 10, 2009

Final Sections 2-4

I just completed the class ratings and the online survey for IP&T 287. I also checked my scores on blackboard and they are all up to date. I am excited to take the actual final and be done with classes for the semester, but I am glad that I had the opportunity to take this class. I look forward to the presentations tonight and can't wait to see what everyone else did for their TPACK projects. Good luck to all in your preparations for finals.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Internet Safety Reflection

1. What article did you choose to read for your article of choice?
I selected the article Setting Family Standards for Entertainment by Carla Dalton. I selected this article because she speaks specifically to the fact that the media and technology we have is a blessing and we simply need to choose the media that will be uplifting. I loved this article and had a great conversation with my mom about it because she and I both feel that most talks focus on the negatives saying that television and the internet are so corrupted. We both loved that Sister Dalton could see the great good in these technologies and understood that it really is about agency. We select what we watch and we monitor the choices that we make which is just what the plan would provide for us. She does however caution families and people against violence, immorality especially with the quote at the bottom from Elder Peterson that states "I plead with you to leave it alone." She says in a positive way that to do these things, we should simply be good examples to those around us. Watch movies with our family, monitor what our children do online as well as filtering what material is available. Just being active in one anothers lives is the answer to the problems of corrupted media.

2. Describe the video resources you watched?
I decided to watch FauxPaw the Techno Cat, Katie's Story, and Cybersafe your Teens on NetSafeUtah. Fauxpaw was a really fun cartoon that shows kids the dangers of the internet in a non-aggressive way. It explains many situations that students might find themselves in online at school and at home and tells what to do, like not agreeing to meet people or giving name and phone number. Katie's story was not as entertaining as FauxPaw at all. It was a real world experience of a teenager and what happened to her when she met a man online and gave him too much information. They talked on the phone and when he wanted to meet in person, her parents became suspicious and talked to police and a school counselor who suggest that they intervene. Police investigated a little and discovered that this man online was a sexual predator who was wanted for the rape of a 13 year old girl. Katie's experience allowed her to testify in the trial against him. She was very lucky that her family intervened. Cybersafe your teens was more of a formal newsreport type video. Experts on internet safety, real-life testimonials and tips for being safe were all discussed. I loved the way that there was a live audience for question and answer because a lot of the parents asked questions that I had myself. As a person who grew up in the technology age and used internet chatting services, I was not aware of a lot of these dangers until after the fact. I wish that my school had shown a video like, not that I was ever unsafe, but there were a lot of great tips that I would have followed, like not giving the name of my school.

3. Write a paragraph describing what your most important "take-aways" were from the readings and video?
From the readings and from the videos I realized that safety on the internet and with media in general is all about choice. We decide which information we give out on the internet and if we are informed we know not to give full names, phone numbers, etc. Even as adults we need to be cautious where we provide this information for identity security reasons. I also saw that choice relates to accidental viewing of media. It is our decision whether or not we stay on a pop-up page that is inappropriate or quickly close it and tell a parent or adult what we saw. It is our choice whether or not we leave the movie if it is vulgar, violent, or inappropriate. We simply need to teach our children how to make good choices by setting the example of good choices and explicitly explaining what questions are answerable online.

4. Write a paragraph or more describing the details of your "doing" experience.
I called my mom in Michigan to talk about this assignment and what I learned about internet safety and really found that she knew about chatroom safety and all of the provident living standards that are outlined online, but she and I had never discussed them. It was through our discussion that I realized this was something she and I should have talked about when I was younger. She is also a teacher and is very specific in her guidelines for computer use with her students. She has filters on all of their computers and monitors over the shoulder that they are only using the music software as she has instructed, but I cannot think of a time when I was growing up that my mom monitored my personal computer use. She did make sure that I did not have a computer in my bedroom and that it was in a main living area, but since it was a laptop, it was difficult to keep the computer on a desk where anyone could see what you were looking at. It never caused a problem, but it was funny to see how as teachers we can be so focused on good practice at school, but forget about the expectations at home.

As I talked to my mom about internet safety she was surprised to hear that the videos from the news shows here in Utah were available online. She knew that she could get information from the local news station in Michigan, but was really impressed that the experts were backed by the UEN and that they even made the resources available to a parent and teacher like her in another state. She just wishes that the information was more easily accessible without knowing who made it and all. Since she already knew a lot about the topic, she was not shocked about the tips they gave or the information in the talks about pronography, illicit materials, or any of that, she was just appreciative that a class would have us focus an entire day on the topic.

I was mostly amazed that my mom already knew this information. She is very tech savvy, but I guess I never considered that she might know more than me about good internet practice in relation to chatting. Reflecting on conversations and bets I had with friends growing up, I realized that I should have had this conversation with my mother much sooner. As a child it was not something I ever wanted to talk to her about, but it would have been smart. My senior year my friends and I created a wager, we each signed up with a different personals dating website on the free membership and our goal was to get the most awkward comment from the most inappropriate person back on our profiles. Now, looking back at it, that was a really dumb idea. We were all over 18 so these sites were available to us, but that did not mean they were safe. Many of us received crude comments about our physique even though the pictures we posted had us dressed in modest clothing. The person who won the wager was propositioned to meet an 82 year old man for a "good time." Had I communicated more with my mother I would have known that setting up an account like that was not smart and not safe. I shared this story with my mom and she said that she wanted to share it with my sisters so that they could be more cautious when talking to my school aged nieces and nephews about internet safety. She also said that she regrets not knowing about that account at the time. She would have blocked me from the site had she known. As a disclaimer, I will say that none of us gave out our phone numbers and none of us met with the men who sent us messages, but if someone had slipped up, it could have been disastrous.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Friday, December 4, 2009

My Traveling Tour of Asia

This is the link to my tour. Hope you enjoy!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Learning from Examples

What I learned from these videos:
As I watched the videos posted for week 10, I realized that technology is not only appropriate for teaching young children, but beneficial for them. In my own experience I have seen how using technology can motivate students to learn and how much they love it, but watching these really solidified the fact that even in early grades children can do a lot. Not just the teachers demonstrating how to do things, but the students using the technology on their own as well.
The Brown Bear, Brown Bear lesson seems to be the most beneficial to me because it covers so many aspects of student learning in so little time. The students get to hear the story read aloud which is a good model for reading. Then they create an illustration using KidPix which helps with fine motor coordination using the mouse and also creativity. Then for typing skills they can type in the text. Lastly they get more language arts experience by reading it fluently with proper rate, volume, and expression, for the slideshow. It’s amazing how many birds get killed with this one stone of a lesson plan.
Just like we learned in making our own photostory and in the voicethread experience, these programs are easy to use. Without a program like kidpix, the students could still create a drawing and then scan it or take a digital photograph of it to be used in the slideshow. I think adapting the science habitat plan to a social studies plan for first grade community objectives would be really fun. Where students would have the opportunity to draw their own “habitat.” All in all, I learned from these videos that technology integration does not take that much extra work on the teacher’s part and if anything, it makes assessment easier because it is stored in one place rather than on oodles of papers. I can’t wait to get to teaching more lessons this semester using our smartboard and our computer labs.

Technology in My Classroom

I completed the classroom inventory and both of the surveys this week. What I found, was a school full to the seams with technology for both teachers and students to use on a daily basis. I had the opportunity to use the smartboard a few times this week already and found that the students love it. They love to come up and use it and I have no problem getting them motivated to learn when we use it. I already taught my math lesson using a file I found for notebook. It was about expanded form in writing math numbers and the students could come up and manipulate the numbers to get them from standard to expanded form and vice versa. They loved it and all but two students got 100% on the written activity that followed it which tells me that they understood it. I love that they love the technology.
The document camera has also been a life saver in modeling. I lead a choral reading on Dios de los Muertos and was able to group the students by highlighting one copy and posting it, rather than highlighting every copy before handing them out. I am excited to get more experience with all of the resources available in our school.