John White’s perspective of Digital Residents and social web

 “Visitor and Resident map”, I heard about this first time, but it looked interesting to me. I really liked how David White explains Internet usage with the help of map and also relating it with two words “visitor and resident”. Now I can easily visualize myself in which quadrant I fit in the visitor and resident continuum.

Moreover, I completely believe in what David said, ”Long back most peoples’ primary source of information was library.” His statement refreshed my memories of the time when I was in college. At that time, my primary source of information was library, other than textbooks. Furthermore, the Internet and search engines were not powerful either, and searching resources for any topic was very time consuming. Also, the reference books were too expensive and not easy to afford for most people. Now, it’s true that searching for recourses has become much easier via Internet, and also it’s less expensive. The only challenge is to find the reliable and legitimate recourses.

Most importantly, I liked David’s “Visitor and Resident map” useful to use in the classroom. With so many social media sites available and with students liking more than one social media site and with understanding how students are using the social media sites, this map will help figuring out which sites are mostly used by students and in what capacities. It’s possible that the most popular social media sites used by today’s students may not be allowed by the school or may not be appropriate to use in the class, then choosing an alternative similar site will be a good approach for the teachers. This is the fact, that today’s teens are too much involved in social media sites and is very difficult to keep them away from these. Instead, teachers can use these social networking sites, as a tool to engage students in learning and this video would help analyzing students social behaviors and figuring out how to leverage social media in classrooms.

http://ideasandthoughts.org/2014/05/12/mapping-the-internet/

Generation Like and Social Media

It was amazing to watch this video and to know how much this little icon   means to 21^st century kids. Kids are so much fascinated by and curious to know how much they are liked by others, and on the other hand, there are companies who are keeping their eyes on these likes and collecting data to make money. Oh god!!! Unbelievable, but true.

This is also true that majority of students are lavishly spending time on social media and sharing their interests with their peers. Therefore, it’ll be good approach for teachers to incorporate activities related to social media. The only debatable issue could be, how to incorporate these activities in a safe mode and also to what extent. In my opinion, social media is a very powerful tool and if it’s not utilized properly, anyone could become the target of cyberbully etc. and it could be difficult, especially, for teenagers to come out from this mess. So I believe that the social medial will be a valuable tool for teachers to use in their classroom instructions, as long as the sites can be restricted to the class uses only and these allow to socialize for educational purposes only and not for pure socialization.

Below is the link that I found interesting to share, this tells us what are the benefits of social media in the classrooms and suggestions on few social media sites that are safe to use.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/study-suggests-social-media-has-place-in-classrooms.shtml

 

 

New Learners of the 21st Century video

Digital Media and its role on 4Cs of learning

The video was an eye opener for me and showed me how the technology can be exploited to make 21^st century students learn in different ways and how technology can foster their 4 Cs; Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration and Creativity to learn and grow for future. When I played the video “Digital Media – New Learners of the 21st Century”, I couldn’t get away until I watched the entire video. I felt very impressed by seeing young students flourishing and inventing new ideas in the technology filled environment.

The ‘Quest to learn – School for Digital Kids’ in NY shows how they have incorporated technology within the core curriculum, using digital games. The game design promotes critical thinking among students when they are presented a new game as a problem and having them come up with a concept of how to solve the problem, keeping in mind how the player would be encouraged and kept engaged throughout the play and how the player would move up various levels to solve it, without losing interest.

By integrating digital media and introducing digital projects, students are consistently encouraged to work together in groups, which promotes collaboration. As I saw the technology keeps our younger students connected very well, it would help develop their inter-personal, problem solving and knowledge sharing skills with better collaboration.

The paradigm of communication is shifting. The technology and digital media has created a new way of how people communicate and integrating technology in schools proves that. The video shows how students are using internet, social media and blogs to communicate among themselves, with professionals and with outside resources, thus providing them with tremendous learning opportunities and access to vast majority of resources.

I was impressed with the creativity that I saw in the younger students and realized the today’s students have tremendous potential to be creative, provided the right environment exists for them and I truly believe that integrating technology in core curriculum is the way to go in future. The game design and playing games fosters creativity when students are asked to draw diagrams etc. and challenging them with what-if questions and having them come up with various ways to reach the end and win the game

I really enjoyed the video and learned how the paradigm of learning is going to be changing in the future and how I could incorporate technology in my future classrooms. This video made me realize that current teachers not only have to be pro in their own subjects but also in technology. Though, the video shows how technology would foster 4Cs of learning in 21st century students, I wonder how the technology would foster and help in the higher levels of core subjects, like algebra, calculus etc.

Linking 4 C’s with Virginia SOL

Semester Standard

This semester, I would be focusing on Virginia Standards of Learning for Algebra 1 and I would pick SOL A.2: The student will perform operations on polynomials, including

1. a) applying the laws of exponents to perform operations on expressions;
2. b) adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing polynomials; and
3. c) factoring completely first- and second-degree binomials and trinomials in one or two variables. Graphing calculators will be used as a tool for factoring and for confirming algebraic factorizations.

During this semester, I’ll try to integrate more technology related activities in my lesson plans. Some of the activities that I can link with 4 C’s skills in this semester will be:

• Communication – Other than instructions, this skill will be achieved by sharing individual thoughts while solving problems, by playing games in the class, during group work, and via project presentations.
• Collaboration –This skill will be achieved by using various cooperative learning strategies. Furthermore, students will collaborate with each other while performing WebQuest activity in groups.
• Critical thinking- To promote higher level thinking skills, students will be asked to answer open ended questions and solve real-world problems. I will also introduce different graphic organizers like- concept map, compare and contrasts, and Venn diagram to encourage critical thinking,
• Creativity- To show how much learning has been achieved from these standards, students will create a project as one of the final assessment, which will incorporate individual thoughts, thus evoke their own creativities. Additionally, students will use their prior knowledge and skills to creatively solve various problems based on polynomials.

 

 

Connecting Education and Technology

 From the list of the recommended blogs, I wanted to give my reflection on “Edudemic”. This is an excellent blog, perfect for pre-service teachers like me. This blog contains lots of informative posts for new teachers as well as for experienced ones and will be a valuable resource in terms of both technology and education. As a pre-service teacher, I’m aware that it’s a great idea to use technology in today’s classrooms to enhance students’ learning, but I’m not sure of what new educational technologies are available at present that will help and enhance the classrooms, and this blog provides a lot of information and guidelines to me, e.g. Sarah Muthler’s post “The Best Interactive Web Tools for Educators”; Kristen Hicks’s post, “2015’s Top Education Technology Trends” and many more such posts.

Furthermore, teachers could read posts in this blog and enhance their ways to spark ideas, creativity, knowledge, and innovation to enhance their students’ 4 C’s skills and thus help their students become successful in their lives. As an example, Pamela Deloatch post, “How to turn any classroom into a Makerspace”. Also, Kristen Hicks’s post, “5 Ways to Make STEM More Exciting For Students.”
Though, this blog provides good information about new apps, classroom strategies, various techniques, educational resources and many more such details to overcome everyday problems in classrooms, however I’m still missing topics related to math subject area. As a future secondary math teacher, I’m always looking for math related resources that will help me in my future math classes, but looks like this blog seems to be not completely fulfilling my requirements. Though, I found some math related posts like, Robyn Scoot’s post, “5 Math Averse Students” and Ann Elliott’s post, “3 Best Educational Apps That Improve Math Fluency” but I expected to see more such posts. It would be nicer if this blog provides more posts that relate to both math and technology. As technology is becoming one of the most effective teaching tools right now, I’ve always been fascinated by use of technology in math classrooms. Furthermore, 21st century students are so technology savvy and they want to learn everything using technology, and in more fun and interesting ways. I wish this blog provides me some more ideas about math apps available in the market right now and help me figure out which ones will work best for my students. Overall good blog to follow!