Critical Thinking

1. Can we define what it means to be information literate?
I think we can. It means that we know hoe to not only use the information that is given to us but also know its worth. A person can pick up a piece of information and most importantly understand who wrote it and if they have any importance whatsoever and know if what they are saying is truth. Both of these are extremely hard to do sometimes because we have come accustomed to believing everything we see on the internet. Finding the reliable information within the sea of unreliable information can make anyone frustrated. But that is why we need to learn how to do it. So it will not be a head ach anymore.

2. Can we teach our students to have the skills essential to information literacy?
Yes, but first we should learn it ourselves so we can be a good example to our students. All that the students will need to learn is how to define credibility. We can do this in various ways such as truthfulness, trustworthiness, expertise, objectivity, relevance, reliability, and believability.

3. Can we truly prepare students to be effective users of the most powerful medium?
To get kids on the right track they need to understand four areas and then put them into practice. “Author, What makes this author credible, Currency, how old is the source type, and has it been updated, subject, how thorough is the coverage of the topic, and balance, its the coverage biased in any way”. True or Not by Debbie Abilock
I know if I would have been taught these four easy steps when I was in school it would have benefited me a great deal. I still find myself and will probably continue to in the future, looking at websites or magazines wondering if what is in them have any truth. With these tools I believe it will become much easier telling the good from the bad.

Pod Cast

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Multimedia Creations for Students

I’ve said before that I do not get along with technology very well. However, the more and more I learn about all the things you can do with it not only personally but in the classroom my excitement grows. The reason I tend to not like technology is because I am terrible at it. I never know how to operate anything so how am I supposed to teach my future students how to do all these amazing things? We learned about Jing in class, but the book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson we read dove deeper into it’s workings. The fact that I could learn how to do things by others who have used Jing to create informative tutorials makes me really happy, but most importantly is all the possibilities that my students could use it for. I love how students learn from other students. I could have my students group up and make their own screen casting on how to use Word Documents, Excel,  Google, ect. Then each group could view each others screen casting and learn from one another. If they wanted to take it a step further or the students are older, I could have them create their own podcast or video to share not only with the class but with parents and other teachers. Will Richardson described it very well when he said, “Whatever you and your students create can be shared widely” and also, “these videos… should be created for real audiences outside the classroom”. By creating a podcast through Podomatic or creating a video and using MovieMaker or iMovie to edit and put it all together builds their technology skills while sharing it with the world builds their confidence and maybe even their public speaking abilities. Teacher Tube is a great services for students and teachers to use and also Izzy Video for helping plan out these great resources. I was always jealous growing up and seeing the TV shows of schools with kids doing the morning news casting being broadcasted  into every classroom. Although the age group I’m looking to teach couldn’t handle putting a video together, I can imagine giving the camera in their hands and letting them go wild with whatever they are working on or assign them a project that they need to document. Each group could then have their projects displayed online for the whole class to look at and if I used Ustream.tv the parents could see them present their projects in real time on line. The possibilities of projects and assignments are limitless or as Will said, “It’s limited by only your and their creativity”.

Classroom websites are AWESOME!

This is the awesome site where students and parents will be able to connect to the classroom and see what the week has to unfold.

Never ending hastle of copyright laws -_-

As a child, you look up to your teachers as the amazing people who know everything. They do everything right and for some crazy reason they want to help you do things great too! When teachers do not do things the right way they are not only setting a bad example for their students but you also lose their respect. The classroom relies on respect for teachers so the students can actually learn something. Even when your students don’t know how you got all the material your supervisors can find out and then you will not have a job. So just do what you have to do and let your students enjoy the awesome teacher they love! 

 

Web 2.0 Assignment

Schoology
Yes, this website more than meet my expectations. This program is about giving teachers all the tools they need to succeed in one place. They can have their email, assignments, grading system, and allows the teacher to communicate not only with the students but also with other teachers. This website would demonstrate my ability to use new recourses, and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. They remembered to state how safe it its to use and easy to manage, and it also has a free package so if a teacher works at a financially struggling school getting this program would not be impossible. The audience for this website is teachers who would use it in their classrooms.
Smore
It wasn’t what I thought it would be at first because I was envisioning it helping you create print out flyers but, in fact they help you create online flyers. I think it looks really cool. I love creative things that actually serve a purpose and this is one. You custom design your flyer and then you can post it in your email, to your facebook, and it can be looked up in a search engine. This would be extremely helpful with communicating with parents and grabbing their attention on upcoming events or activities that need help. The only down fall I could see is that I’m not entirely sure you can print them without paying for the full thing and I really like hard copies that I can tape up everywhere. This website can be for anyone but they do have a premium package specifically designed for teachers that includes fancy school designs.
Pixton
This website looks pretty good. You can go on and create a comic and design the story, the characters, the background, everything is up to you. Then you can share it with anyone you want. It too has a special teaching design where the students can submit their work and the teacher can approve it and post it for the rest of the class to see and comment on or they can send it back to the student to edit first. That is really its only function, is to create comics, so that is kind of a draw back but, on the other had it is a great way for students to learn about how to tell a story the proper way.

How about a little fun this weekend!

I just cannot wait to get some sleep this weekend! That and actually catch up on some homework too! And of course we cannot forget about having some fun!

Safely blogging in the classroom

I am warming up to the idea of blogging with students. I have to admit that I do not tend to enjoy using technology, but creating a blog of my own is giving me second thoughts. I’ve always thought of technology as being a hassle to deal with, when in fact it decreases a ton of time it would have taken you doing it manually/ paper trail style. Well now of course I just found out this awesome new way of learning/teaching strategies however, we cannot be too careful. Some great ways to keep our students safe would be to first sent out a letter to all the parents describing the entire blogging process and rules and restrictions students have to follow, for example the terms and conditions that are stated in this internet safety briefing . Also having a full day or class period to explain and walk  through how to create their blog and setting everything up properly so they understand how to use it would be a great way to insure students knowledge about what they were doing.

Now I have always wanted to teach elementary kids and I am now wondering how they would use blogs in the classroom. Because whenever I thought of blogs in classrooms I was definitely envisioning middle and high scholars. Blogging would have to be simplified for them and safety precautions would have to be increased. Getting elementary students to create their own blog may be a bit difficult so a great alternative that I found would be to have one class blog and that each student can contribute to. The blog itself would then be a gate way for building up the skills that they had just learned in class that day and would then get a chance to use them on the blog.

The blog that I found is the same one that helped me better understand blogging in elementary school. Her name is Kim Cofino and she has so many great ideas on her blog. She has lesson plans for getting student blogs up and running in schools and discusses safety concerns and teaching strategies. There is a link on her blog that sends you to ISB, which is a place for students to login with a username and a password to get into their school blogs. She went from a middle school that every student had a blog and all the teachers were comfortable using them, to an elementary school where no one had ever had any experience with blogging. So she made a way for both students and teachers to learn and like using blogs as a form of educating.