Cool for the Summer - Web 2.0

Who would I be if I weren't consistent? The discussion board has once again got me thinking about the topic of this blog post. So without further ado, here is my list of favorites from this semester!  Favorite Challenge: The Week Long Twitter Challenge! So fun getting to interact with each other and not have to be so formal, like discussion board posts!  Favorite Tool:  It's a tie between Padlet and Trello. They are super similar, but both have unique features that allow you to do different things.  Favorite Week/Topic: Week 2, Digital Natives & Produsage. This is the week that thinks really started to take shape in my mind, so it stands out as the favorite for me!  Favorite Assignment:  Definitely the Produsage assignment. It allowed me to be creative and to think outside of my comfort zone, which is what I need sometimes :) Favorite Discussion Question:  This was a hard one. I did a lot of searching through the discussion boards, but ultimate de...

I think that a little reflection is good for the soul, don't y'all? When I think back to the beginning of the summer, I didn't even know what Web 2.0 was. I had never heard the term and was completely in the dark on the subject. However, this class has opened my eyes to the way we use social media and how it can be used in education.  We've talked about developing PLNs and communities online. We've talked about sharing resources and asking for help. We've talked about how social media can influence and help learning, and also how it can hurt learning. Through it all, I have learned so much.  Knowing now that there are tools out there that I want to use in my classroom so that my students have a better learning experience is so important to me. I know that this class has made me a better teacher, even though I'm not currently teaching a class. I have learned from Dr. Dennen, from Omer, and from all of you, my peers. We have shaped and discussed and listened a...

Also on the discussion board this week was a topic about making online communities accessible for international communities. The biggest part that stood out to me when I first thought about it was the language barrier. Elementary school teachers are often the first ones that a student who doesn't speak English is exposed to, when coming to a primarily English-speaking school. As a teacher, knowing that there is this huge barrier between you and your student can be a daunting feeling.  However, the technology these days that allows for us to communicate with one another is amazing. Translators and programs that allow for students to learn in their first language are so helpful. I think that these have allowed for us to design more learning towards students who speak a language other than English.  Upon doing some further investigation of the topic, I came across this article . It discusses how computer technology is helping students, who don't speak English, take tests. It firs...

As usual, the discussion board topics got me thinking this week. The last topic on the discussion board is one that asks if the internet is truly international and if it isn't, what implications does this have for education? This led me to thinking about censorship and the countries that censor websites that might allow for others to speak out about the government there. Restricting access to certain websites is the norm in countries like China and North Korea. It would seem that this is about more about restricting what people could learn from these sites and less about the sites themselves. Censorship is a dangerous game to toy with because it leads to a central way of thinking and doesn't allow for others to form opinions. They can only have the opinion of the one doing the censoring.  In education this could be very problematic. Students should be exposed to all kinds of different cultures and lessons so that they can learn about others and learn from others. Now, this isn...

I don't think that I've given much thought to what other countries do about their social media use. It seems that even though I know and realize the US isn't the center of the world, I haven't ever really explored social media use in other countries.  This week's reading and discussion board prompts really made me think about how I use my social media accounts. I know that the premise of this class has been to make us think about social media and how it can be used for learning, but this week showed me that it's not just the US that uses social media for learning purposes.  However, I did realize that we have more advantages here than other countries. There are some places certain social media sites are blocked or restricted in some capacity. Which seems wild to me.  First world problems here would be that we use socials for so many things that it seems unimaginable and unreasonable (to some degree) to us that developing countries don't have the same usage a...

One of Dr. Dennen's blogs this week got me thinking about our social media use and how we often use it for our own personal life. We post pictures, videos, gifs, tweets, etc. and it's all usually about us. We use it as a sort of digital time capsule to make sure that we don't forget what has happened in the past. Old posts come back around to us and we remember the good times that we had when we posted those things.  I think social media is great. It's one of the most useful things to come with the advancement of our time, but I think that it has the power to do so much more for the world than just being our own personal photo journal or thought log. We've seen the power that social media has had with social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, but also with other movements like climate change, voting rights, and gun violence. And it's astonishing that topics can spread through the sharing of a link or through a hashtag.  These issues come up of...