Twitter

I honestly never thought or anticipated having a Twitter account. I used to think (based on stories I had heard) that people used twitter to give us a minute by minute update on their lives. Therefore I was little surprised when our Internet for Educators professor, Mike, asked us to join the twitter world as one of our tech tasks.

It’s sad to say that my first tweet was to announce that I was hacked. Yes. I was one of those people who opened ‘have you seen this pic of you?!’ message... wasn’t my best moment. Other than that experience, I really have struggled getting into twitter. I tried ‘tweeting’… but I couldn’t think of what to say, so I epically failed at that. So instead I chose to use twitter to follow fellow educators and see what they tweet. I was shocked by how often some people tweeted AND how they were tweeting 2-3 different resources daily! How do people have time for this?! I mean it’s great for me because the resources they’ve posted are amazing (I will definitely be using some of them), but it seems incredibly time consuming.

I guess you could say my take away from twitter is that it is a great teaching resource. I don’t foresee myself using it to tweet personally, but maybe I’ll work up to it. That’s all for now folks… tweet tweet.

Until my next post… JD

Web-Based Courses (WBCs) – Donald Girouard & Sophia Palahicky

 First off, thank you to Donald Girouard and Sophia Palahicky for taking the time to come and speak to our class about web-based courses! This was quite the informational session as I don’t have any experience with WBCs.

Donald and Sophia shared with us that there are currently 46 web-based courses available from Manitoba Education.

Reasons for using WBCs as a teacher?

• For distance delivery
• To cover curriculum
• To share courses
• Could develop your own courses
• As a teacher resource
• As part of blended learning environments

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Reasons for taking courses online?

• Student interest in alternative methods of learning and earning credits
• Resolve timetabling issues/provide flexibility
• Implementation of new curricula/courses
• Students use WBCs to fill in some gaps
• Preparing students for lifelong learning
• Teacher availability

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For rural schools I can see how WBCs can be valuable, but I’m still unsure if I would use one in city schools. One concern that was brought up by many in our class was: are we the next profession to be replaced with technology? MB Education does require that even web-based courses are teacher run and facilitated by teachers, so that brings some relief. However, it still makes me wonder… and make me a bit uneasy. It may not be possible now to replace teachers with web-based courses, but maybe it would be in the future. Could you imagine a world where students no longer went to school, took all of their courses at home and teachers were no longer needed? I only ask because that was the 'flash' visualization or daydream I had during our discussion lol. Now back to reality… what are your thoughts? Would you or have you used a web-based course in your classroom? If so share your thoughts/experience, I would love to hear them!

Until my next post… JD

My Digital Footprint

If you are unfamiliar with what your digital footprint is, I'll give you a brief description: it’s the trail, trace or ‘footprint’ that you leave online. Some of these ‘footprints’ could be made intentionally (eg. blogs or forums), but some ‘footprints’ left on the web may be left unintentionally… and much of it will remain online indefinitely. So, why is this important? Well, a couple of weeks ago we had George Couros speak to our Internet for Educators class about this. George shared with us that most principals are now hiring teachers only after doing an online search on them… that’s not intimidating (sarcasm)! Now, more than ever, I’m worried about my digital footprint. I find myself thinking about everything I do on the web today AND trying to think back to what I have done since I was... 13?! I had no idea what I was doing on the web at 13, let alone how it would impact my future...  Gah!! I know the easiest way to find your digital footprint is to Google yourself.. so that's what I did... here’s what shows up on the first page:

• That I have a twitter account,
• My old swim team (Brandon Bluefins) club records,
• Some track and field results from 2003!?,
• That I have a Facebook profile,
• An education bursary I received and…
• Tries to associate me with the Doppler radar (I’m not).

It appears I have an okay digital footprint! Phew! Now that I know how important it is to have a clean professional appearance on the internet, it is now my responsibility as a pre-service teacher to educate my future students on it as well. The question is… how?

Until my next post... JD

My PLN & The Connected Student

Well here it is folks... my PLN!

 It looks much bigger than I had initially expected it to be, but then again my Internet for Educators class has introduced me to a lot of new things! If I had made this at the beginning of the course, it would have been MUCH smaller! I thought I would give everyone a visual, for some reason it makes me giggle a little seeing it! Here is my before PLN:

See? It's considerably smaller... it's weak... Anyways here's what I thought a connected student might look like:

I feel like I'm missing something on there, but you can get the gist of it. After seeing my current PLN compared to the connected student's I can see now that I'm a tad ahead of them in the tech game! Yay! Now I just have to keep adding to my PLN by keeping up to date and constantly learning... let's see if I can do it!

Until my next post... JD

Clarence Fisher

 Our class had the privilege of speaking with Clarence Fisher who is a teacher in Snow Lake. While his students were in Gym class, Clarence sacrificed his break to share with us some of his thoughts and personal experiences with technology.

“Done dealing with the days that EdTech is optional”

Clarence began his discussion by sharing with us a little bit about his current teaching job. He teaches in a K-12 school (the only school in the community) with population of around 145 kids. Clarence says his biggest issue in his classroom is that fact that education is in transition. It used to be static, unchanging and now teachers are on the front line of globalization. Now, education needs to be passion-based teaching/learning, engagement and very mobile.

“I want my kids to create and not to consume”

First off, I never thought that technology could be used so effectively in such a small community, but this discussion definitely proved me wrong. Clarence does lots of multimedia representation in his classroom, but also emphasized how we can’t just use technology just because it is there. Too often we see teachers use the iPad, for example, just because it is there. Just because its high tech doesn’t mean it immediately increases or enhances student learning.

It seems Clarence has a good handle of using technology in the classroom. Just because you are in a small community doesn’t mean it is out of your reach! So thank you Clarence for taking time out of your day for a very informational and inspiring presentation!

Until my next post… JD

Issues Affecting Manitoba Teachers – John Evans

On January 29^th, our Internet for Educators class had the privilege of having John Evans as a speaker and it was very informational and a little frightening! John spoke with us primarily about cyber bullying, precautions educators need to take for using technologies in the classroom and the new copyright law, but I found the discussion on cyber bullying the most interesting!

Cyberbullying = a real problem or is it manufactured by media?

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I’m sure we have all heard about cyber bullying and how it is “on the rise” and “spiralling out of control,” but is it really? What happens on the internet is hard to decipher whether it is bullying or if it is just drama. Contributing factors to this confusion are the facts that anything that occurs on the computer doesn’t ‘blow over’ as quickly as verbal or physical bullying does, people don’t forget as easily and cyber bullying is easier to commit.

John shared with us the findings of a study which showed that students say on average 25% are bullied once a week verbally or physically and cyber bullying had the smallest percent. So is the media reacting too strongly to cyber bullying? With studies showing cyber bullying is seemingly insignificant to other forms of bullying why is it such a focus of the media?

What are your thoughts?

Until my next post... JD