Social Responsibility Online

Nothing I am going to say in this post is ground braking or new information but simply some reflection on things that have be going in on social media for sometime.  This is one of those moments of thought that comes to all of us in our own time even when other people have been talking about it for months.

This morning I was listing to NPR on the way to work.  Of the top of my head I can not remember exactly what the story was about but they started talking about a gentlemen posing on Twitter about his experience in his country as they where under attack and they interviewed the gentlemen via Skype.  This is when I started thinking about the social and political impact that social media has had on the world.  I started think about the occupy movement, the events in Egypt, and the other events that have been fueled by social media. The more I think about it the more questions I seem to come up with that have no good answers.

Who teaches the youth how to be responsible with social media?
I think we have seen this falling on the schools for the most part but is that where it needs to be taught?  In this era of No Child Left Behind do we have time to be teaching it? When it comes right down to it schools are expected to teach the students to be safe online and how to be responsible developers/protectors of their digital footprint. If we don't let students use social media in schools how can we assess what we have taught them? Is taking a test over the responsible use of social media really an effective assessment? We all know that kids say one thing and do another. I feel that this is kind of like teaching a kid to run a mile and then having them take a test over how run the mile instead of having them run. (OK that may not be the best comparison but you know what I am getting at).  Then we run into the question is having social media in the schools a good idea?  I still don't know how to answer that question.

What if Doogie Houser had Face Book?
I know that may people my age have had this thought.  There are even several funny things online about it. I am sure that if Dr. Houser had posted his journal on Face Book or a blog, not just a word doc, that he would have inspired many people.  Here is the thought that crossed my mind today. What if Hittler had a Twitter account? I know you just cringed when you read that. Think about the influence that Hittler had on the world and think what could have happened if he was able to reach us all with Twitter and Face Book? Maybe we would have been able to intercept the ideas that Hittler was putting out there and change the direction things where going....but maybe not.

So there is my non-answer to the question I posed.  Just some general, maybe not so thought out, observations.  I think we are all still struggling with the best practices with social media education and implementation in education. There are so many things to take into consideration with these topics it is hard to know where to start....but it will be interesting to see where we end up.

Are you guilty? I am.

I had a moment of clarity a few weeks ago and it had impacted the way I plan on teaching. I realized that as I, and other teachers, work with kids in that lab there are lots of things we just expect them to know. We want the kids to type a poem with the right formatting and I would see the teachers, myself included, get so frustrated when the students did not know how to do it.  I then had to stop and think about when do we teach the kids HOW to do this?  I do assignments with MS word in the lab but when do I teach them HOW to use the program?  I did a lesson with the 4th and 5th grade students this month just going over some basic things the kids needed to know.  The next time I had them they the had to type a short document using the formatting tools we had talked about.  I was amazed at how much better the kids did.  I did the same thing with saving to the server and saving as a 97-2003 doc with positive results.

I guess the point I am trying to make is we need to not be blinded by getting our students to use the technology, no matter how basic we think it is, until we teach them HOW to use it. The extra time I took to go over the things we THINK they know will pay off in long run. Now I will not have to tell 25 kids how to indent so we can spend more time on a polished finale product.

This is the same problem teachers all over the country run into when they get new technology and get no instruction on how to use it.  Without training the technol is underutilized, if utilized at all, but the teacher is still expected to be making full use of the technology provided.  This is a no win situation for everyone but it is the same situation I see us putting our students in every day.  We cannot assume what they know....we need to teach them what they need to know.

Bring on the DARE reports, famous Missourian projects, and counting books because we know HOW to use MS word!!!!

Your help is needed!

This semester I am teaching ED 514 Instructional Technology for Central Methodist University.  We have a very active class blog but we need more outside input.  Please follow our class blog and add your thoughts to the mix.  We are all trying to build our PLN and share information so please consider giving us some of your time. You can check out the blog at http://ed514cmu.weebly.com/class-blog.html or check the hashtag #cmuedteach.  Most of my students are new to Twitter so lets give them a reason to use it! Hope to hear from you soon!

Ed Tech Bill of Rights

If you read lots of blogs you may have see this post by Brad Flickinger on the Educational Technology Solutions blog.  It was also re-posted byCyndi Danner-Kuhn on her Technological Bits Bites and Nibles blog.  Educational Technology Bill of Rights is a must read.  You may not agree with everything it says but there are some very good points that we ALL need to take into consideration. Personally I like #3 best.

Pin This!

I got a Pinterest account a couple of days ago and it is has been a fun distraction to some of the stresses of life and I have learned some things too.  T night as I was pining things and looking at pins I thought of something that we talked about in one of the classes that I took for my masters.  Students now are becoming visual learners because of all of the media that we are subjected to everyday.  I then thought...How are we compensating for this in our classrooms?  How much media should we have in our classrooms?  How do we use the media to help prepare our students for high stakes testing?  There are some things to think about for the new year.....maybe I will find a photo that will answer my questions on Pinterest.

Rethinking the 21st Century Classroom

With technology becoming a larger part of classrooms, and the push for project based learning, the classrooms are starting to change. There are several schools that are changing the way that things are done and the way that things look. Below there are two links that talk about what different schools are doing to move into the 21st Century Classroom.  I am not saying that these are the right choices for every school or classroom but they get you thinking about what the options could be. There may be parts of the ideas that work in your classroom.  Keep an open mind and think of what could work for you.

Sydney Center For Innovation in Learning - Blog by Stephen Harris the Founder and Director.  This blog has wonderful photos of the school/classrooms they are using. 


iSchool Initiative, A Highs Schools students vision on school change using mobile devices - This is a repost from the Technology Bits, Bites, and Nibbles Blog. Has good information and a video.  

Prepare Students for the 21st Century

This is a repost from the SimpleK12 blog

Are Your Students Prepared for the 21st Century? They Can Be…

[Written by Grace | 1 Mar 2011 | No Comment | ]

Psst! I’m about to share with you the secret we’ve discovered to engaging today’s digital students with 21st century projects that actually make homework fun – not to mention, can increase homework completion rates, information retention, and student engagement…
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