Think Aloud

ISTE- Nets Standard

Standard 2: Design and Develop Digital Age Learning 

"Teachers design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessment incorporating contemporary tools and resources to maximize content learning in context and to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes identified in the NETS-S.
a. Design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity.
b.Develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning, and assessing their own progress.
c. Customize and personalize learning activities to address student's diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources.
d. Provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching."

I believe that being able to use iPads in schools most closely relates to Standard 2 (as described above). With using iPads in schools, the children and the teachers can be more creative in learning and teaching. With all the apps out there, teachers could find fun and interesting ways to teach that would draw the students in. The Think Aloud project will definitely help me integrate technology into my classroom later on down the road because this project helped me in many ways. It helped show the relationship between websites, and by looking at mine, it draws your attention to the most important aspects of the website. The Think Aloud project can be used for all ages and with all kinds of subject matters. Doing a project like this in class can help students, as stated above, in helping them with learning experience as well as to promote student creativity by incorporating digital tools into the mix. 

Website Analysis

Although the website that I used on School Shooting's came from Wikipedia, I believe that this article was very credible. There is no author that I could find, because just anybody can go into Wikipedia and change things, however, there were outside links that led me to believe that the things being said were true. Wikipedia isn't always a good and credible source for every subject matter, but I feel that it was okay to use for this subject. Basically, it was opinions about why teachers should not be armed along with quotes from actual teachers.

Should Teachers Be Armed?

Teachers should NOT be armed.

Teachers should not be armed in classrooms due to many reasons. As stated in the article, some teachers feel that if they were armed, that it could cause more danger. One teacher stated that although she is pro-gun, she felt that she wouldn't be able to maintain gun safety in school. People also have concerns about teachers leaving the guns around in reach of students. Bigger and stronger students could also over power a teacher to take over the gun. A research report published by the Center for Homicide Research stated that having armed classrooms can have "weapons affect' - the phenomenon of being in the presence of a fire arm can cause feelings of aggression. There are many reasons why teachers should NOT be armed, and I personally feel that arming teachers could potentially cause more harm than good. 

Code of Best Practice

Answers: 

1. Media Literacy Education is used to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in different forms. It may occur in separate programs, but is often embedded in other subject areas, including literature, history, sociology, etc . “Media Literacy Education helps people of all ages to be critical thinkers, effective communicators, and active citizens.” Media in Education is always being used. Teachers are including audiovisual and digital material to convey facts and information. Schools often times show films as a way to reward students for their hard work and high achievements. These activities are examples of using Media in Education (mediaeducationlab.com).

2. That bargain is explained as: Society gives limited property rights to creators to inspire them to produce culture; we also give other creators the chance to use the same copyrighted material, without permission, in some circumstances. If there wasn't the second half of the bargain, we could lose all important new cultural work (mediaeducationlab.com).

3. Fair use keeps copyright from violating the First Amendment. Also, since licenses to incorporate copyrighted material are harder to obtain, Fair Use is that much more important today as a result (mediaeducationlab.com).

4. The two questions judges use to determine Fair Use are: “Did the unlicensed use ‘transform’ the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose that that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and values as the original?” and “Was the material appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work, and of the use (mediaeducationlab.com).

5. The use of The Lion King to reflect on stereotypes would be considered Fair Use due to the fact that it is being used for educational purposes and the original version isn’t being changed in any way.

6. Principal four is most closely related to My Photo Story that I created because it is the use of copyright material in the academic and creative work of the student.

7. There really isn't a set number of photos or a set length of music and videos that can be used in a multimedia project as long as the content is relevant to what is being taught as well as there not being too much media being used to get the point across.

8. Requesting permission from the original creator is not necessary, as long as the copyrighted material meets the criteria of Fair Use.

9. Of course educations should try to change the policies in their school if they are not in line with the Fair Use doctrine because the only way to get full advantage is to spread the word along.

10. The myth about Fair Use that surprised me the most was “Fair Use can get me sued.”

Retrieved from:
<http://mediaeducationlab.com/sites/mediaeducationlab.com/files/CodeofBestPracticesinFairUse_0.pdf

My Photo Story

The Beach 

My Photo Story can be accessed on YouTube by using the link below:

I love the beach. How about you?

Comic Strip

RA 1: Digital Media

Are Digital Media Changing Language

Quote:
"For example, in a study I did of college students' instant messaging conversations, out of 11,718 words, only 31 were "online lingo" abbreviations, and only 90 were acronyms (of which 76 were LOL). In a study of college students' text messaging, my colleague Rich Ling and I found a few more lexical shortenings; yet the grand total of clear abbreviations was only 47 out of 1,473 words, which is hardly overwhelming."

Reaction:
I found the above quote very interesting because you always here from educators that "texting lingo" is destroying the English language and causing a lot of misspellings in papers, documents, etc. However, this study proves that the amount of abbreviations and acronyms really aren't as common as everyone seems to think. It's actually rather surprising that out of 11,718 word, only 31 were abbreviations and only 90 words were acronyms with 76 of them being LOL, therefor there were only 14 other acronyms besides the every so popular LOL. Those statistics are actually shocking, but in a good way. I figured that those numbers would have been way higher, however, I'm sure there are a lot of people out there like me who have to spell every word out correctly in a text. The only acronym I use is LOL, but everything else is spelled out.

Quote:
“Whatever the benefits of digital media, it is destroying the ability of young people to construct the basic unit of the English Language...the sentence."

Reaction:
I feel that this quote is untrue. As brought up in an article that I recently read, children and teens have the capability to "code-switch" as the author put it. What she meant by "code-switch" is that students have the ability to switch from different standards of communication when communicating with different people or different forms of media. One girl stated that texting lingo is only used when she is talking to friends, and does not interfere with her ability to write whatsoever (Dunnewind). The English language is always changing and evolving just like everything else. Using abbreviations and acronyms are used to save time, not because those who use it don't know how to spell or write out a sentence.

References:
Dunnewind, Stephanie.  “’Generation Text’: Teens’ IM lingo evolving into a hybrid language.”  The Seattle Times: 12 April 2003.  4 September 2013.
Retrieved from <http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030412&slug=immain12>.

Related Article:
As I was searching online, I found an article that was titled "Is Technology Ruining the English Language?" This article was very relevant and outlined how although times are changing with all the media out now, that of course "online lingo" is going to be popular, however, it does not affect the English language in a structured environment such as the classroom. 

Wordle

What is your favorite food?

Wordle would be very helpful in a math class by helping the students visualize frequency. For example, if the students pull M&M's out of a bag and record the frequency of the colors that were chosen, the information could then be put into Wordle to give a nice visual aid for the results.

Poll Everywhere

This is the link to my poll